Of all the snippets of advice passed from Father to Son, the one that made me laugh the most was, "Life's too short to be dancing with the fat girls."
A friend's Dad told him this once and you can probably judge by the language that it is advice from a simpler and easier time. Any bloke who has heard this must surely crack up at it and I've mentioned it to one or two of the ladies too and they all seem to find it amusing, some slightly ruefully so.
But humour aside, it does pose the question, where does that leave the fat girls? The word 'dance' in the context it is used means spending the time to try to get to know a girl. But it is a universal truth that the motivation to ask for that dance in the first place, is some form of initial attraction, (I'll ignore desperation until another time). Since you don't know the girl prior to asking, the only attraction you could possibly have is physical and for most blokes when they are young, the fat girl is just not physically attractive. It may be cruel and sad but that's life, is it not?
For men, weight is just a thing. If you feel fat you do something about it. Some guys are comfortable being fat and don't give a shit and good luck to them. I'm sure there are a few who can't help it also and they'd like to lose weight but them's the breaks and you can only play the hand you've been dealt in this life. But his weight will never define a guy like it does a girl.
Females lay great sway by their relationships with the male. The right boyfriend or husband is defining and becomes a status symbol between them when they are together nattering about life and love. If the fat girl can't even get a dance then she'll have nothing to add to these conversations. Seeing this, some of the girls might take pity and say nice things to cheer the fat one up. But I suspect that only makes it worse. I have read that many girls over-eat when they become depressed and that's just a vicious circle.
This is not to say that the guys have it all their own way though. The obviously pretty girl will most likely look you up and down when you ask for a dance, throw her eyes to heaven and turn back to her friends without even answering. That means 'no' incidentally or 'I wouldn't dream of it'. It's a long lonely walk back then to the jeering of your mates for even asking her. However, wounded pride at such a display of contempt quickly heals as we've all discovered. The following week you are back bold as brass.
But there's something constant about the plight of the fat girl, week after week and watery advice about 'wearing slimming colours' sounds like so much inane crap to me. So for all the fat girls out there, here's the thing to know. Weight equals carbs in versus carbs out. The body converts food to energy and if you exercise that energy off you, you won't put on weight. Store the energy though and it turns to fat, that's it. And to quote Billy Connelly on the subject, "Stop eating your food out of buckets."
Oh! And dancing is a great way to lose some weight!