A curious observation
Nov. 10th, 2004 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsA few days ago, I stumbled upon the book Freaks: We Who Are Not Like As Others, which is a book about, well, freaks of nature. Circus performers, sideshow oddities, midgets, three-legged men, hermaphrodites, the whole shebang of humanity's epigenetic extremes.
And as I was thumbing through it, I stumbled upon the section entitled "The Not So Jolly Fat People." And as I was looking at it, I realized just how different a world it must have been before World War I. The "fat people" in this book were exceptionally rare, rare enough to warrant a sideshow appearance; but these days such people, while probably not a daily encounter, are commonplace enough to be, well, unremarkable.
And as I was thumbing through it, I stumbled upon the section entitled "The Not So Jolly Fat People." And as I was looking at it, I realized just how different a world it must have been before World War I. The "fat people" in this book were exceptionally rare, rare enough to warrant a sideshow appearance; but these days such people, while probably not a daily encounter, are commonplace enough to be, well, unremarkable.
