The Skinny on Manhattan

Manhattan is the center of the thinnest county in the state of New York, according to this article in today's Times. And they say hard-hitting investigative reporting is dead!

The Times has certainly come a long way over the past 40 years, I am usually not one to shriek and point at mild comments that I consider to be homophobic. However, I must say I was given pause when I read this paragraph:

"Beyond that, Manhattan is the national capital of disparate subcultures of the skinny: Aspiring models. Nightclubbing hipsters. Gay men with the time and money to chisel their physiques at the gym. Park Avenue society matrons who remain preternaturally slender into their 70s, the 'social X-rays' satirized by Tom Wolfe."

I can't say that I have an excess of time and money on my hands and, even if I did, that I would necessarily invest it the way this article suggests. And to think Park Avenue society matrons are maligned in the same paragraph.

Then again, I live in San Francisco where I do see my fair share of overweight people but probably not what you'd see in rural Mississippi. How's the waistline in your zip code?