HEY, CHUBBY: After expanding as quickly as the Big Bang for the past two decades, there are signs your world may be starting to close in on you.
American makers of everything from cars to clothes have given wide berth to the nation’s expanding girth. Some would argue that the ubiquity of oversized couches and plus-sized comforts have enabled the obesity epidemic that has swelled to an estimated 93 million people.
Now the Great Recession is starting to rein in US consumers’ waistlines and bottom lines.
Office cubicles are nearly half the old size, down to a cozy 6 by 6 feet square. Hotel room average sizes are shrinking as “pod” style quarters such as New York’s Jane Hotel get traction among travelers. Even new homes’ square footage is shrinking in part because of the recession and in part because of a mortgage meltdown.
The fashion world speaks loudest: Forget the blousy Tommy Bahama tent shirts that hide flab — men’s clothiers are selling Spanx for men’s chests to accent fitted shirts.
Top women’s apparel sellers such as Ann Taylor have snipped their in-store offerings of “plus-sized” clothes because they’re not as profitable. The big clothes are still available online, but the recession has made it uneconomical to make really big sizes.
Tomorrow’s cars are going to go on a diet as Obama-led higher mileage standards give auto makers no choice but to shed weight and size. The tombstone on Hummer is just the start.
Next year Chrysler — now controlled by Italy’s Fiat — will sell a car in the US that Fiat calls the Cinquecento over there. At about 10 feet long and 4 feet high, it’s smaller than a Mini and looks like a PT Cruiser that drove through a shrink-ray. The Olsen twins might find it snug.
This new stand for smallness is the opposite of what happened most of the past decade — making peace with our fat a@#es.
New stadiums for the Yankees and Mets have wider seats by 2 to 3 inches than in the stadiums they replaced, as nearly every new sports arena has loosened its belt a notch. Want to feel huge? Try attending a bullfight in Spain in Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza in Seville, built originally in 1762, as this reporter did last year; fans are stacked so tight it’s like an involuntary rave.
Some niche movie theaters don’t have just bigger seats, but actual couches and overstuffed chairs. Honda’s flagship Accord has added 4.2 inches of seat width over the past 20 years, and it’s not because the Japanese are carbo-loading.
Yet environmentalists and health advocates have joined folks who don’t like to fly cross-country pressed against the damp folds of plus-size passengers in asking when enough is enough. Locavores, hyper-milers and basically everybody who subscribes to Outside magazine are pushing back against the steady onslaught of what you might call “Team More.” Should we really encourage Americans to turn into the floating blobs of “Wall-E”?
The idea is simple — if we make cars smaller, it’ll encourage people to be more environmental. If we make portions smaller, it will encourage people to eat less. If we resist the urge to “Supersize” everything, maybe Americans will shrink as well.
You can see it in the various government subsidies for small hybrid cars, and private initiatives like the “small plate movement.”
The latter argues that as dishes have gotten larger, so have our bellies. We eat 92% of what we put on our plates (thanks to Mom’s nagging), so wider ones naturally lead to eating more. Using a 2-inch smaller plate every day, from 12 to 10, would result in an 18 pound weight loss for the average American.
This is mostly a diet tip. But some small-plate devotees think it’s the next frontier of health legislation, like smoking and salt bans. Force restaurants to stock smaller plates for the sake of the nation!
But chefs aren’t the only ones accused of enabling the fatties.
For decades women’s clothiers have created clothing size schemes that don’t correlate to any actual sizes or shapes, flattering women whose self-worth was tied to a number. A size 6 a decade ago could still be a 6 in the same line — even if the garment dimensions are now actually a 14 based on the old scale.
“There is no size” system in fashion that accurately reflects women’s body shapes and ratios, said Professor Susan Ashdown at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology.
She studies how clothes fit and wants more research on full-body scanning to steer the industry away from arbitrary sizing systems that deceive and frustrate consumers. “Vanity sizing has been out there for a long time — manufacturers say this is what women want,” Ashdown said.
But going back to “standard” sizes set in the 1920s more accurately reflects the size people have become. If your favorite clothing line says you’re still the same size you were a decade ago, what’s the motivation to pass up cupcakes?
In short — shame can be a powerful motivator.
One battleground in the shame war has been airplane seating, where some airlines have asked larger passengers to buy two seats. Those who have suffered next to the ginormous have cheered the move; plus-size Americans, not so much.
When celebrity director Kevin Smith apparently failed Southwest Airlines’ person-of-size airplane seat armrest test in February, he got tossed from the plane for making a scene.
Smith’s ensuing Twitter blitzkrieg against the airline — he insists he passed the test and should have been left alone — sparked a discussion of what is a “normal” size. Is Smith really too fat to fly? Or are airplanes — where legroom has shrunk and hip room isn’t any bigger — too small to be realistic?
“We’re asking the airlines to handle this with a bit more dignity by performing the test of whether someone spills over into someone else’s seat in a private area,” said James Zervios, of the Tampa-based Obesity Action Coalition, a national group that advocates respect and fair treatment of the overweight.
After the Smith incident, Zervios’ group issued a policy statement asking for better behavior from airlines. “A lot of our members already buy an extra seat for their comfort — they don’t need to be humiliated in front of a planeload of people.”
Zervios also disputes the general notion that vanity sizing and expanding stadium seats are simply enabling America.
“I’m not sure if we’re making it easier for people to live as obese,” he said. “But I don’t think we should be making it more difficult for the morbidly obese to live. We shouldn’t be stigmatizing them because they have a medical condition. We don’t do that for other people with medical problems.”
WHETHER we like it or not, however, the battle over issues big and small will rage on, in both government and industry.
For instance, many are looking to new ergonomic furniture guidelines likely to be released by the non-profit group Business and Industrial Furniture Manufacturer’s Association as a indicator of whether standards for size — of everything from office chairs to ergonomic keyboards — are going to grow along with us.
Or it could be that manufacturers may have had enough with additional materials costs eating into margins just to accommodate big people.
BIFMA’s last standards came out in 2002. Spokesman Dave Panning said the guidelines are still under review but are due soon.
Or it could be that “bigger” becomes a commodity, a fine on the big, or a privilege for the rich — the way some airlines charge you for extra legroom.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg hasn’t started advocating plate size yet, but that may be because he’s too busy going after his axis of ingested evil: transfat, sugary drinks and salt. They join his prosecution of their gustatory cousin, tobacco.
Kicking us to the curb cut down on smoking in the city, but can you really shame or shape people into a thin ideal. Six-pack abs stare at us from the cover of Men’s Health every month; it hasn’t made us buff.
We could say you’re really wearing a size 16 and not a size 6, that you should eat the Olive Garden off an 8-inch plate rather than a 12-inch one, that you’re just going to have to deal with the 18-inch-wide seat, because that’s a normal size — but chances are, we’ll still find the french fries.
“If we’re thinking that because things are being made bigger, we are all of a sudden making it easier for people to be obese,” Zervios said.
“We want things to be bigger and better. I like a little extra room at the ballgame, but I don’t think that’s contributing to an epidemic.”