I often have difficulty finding size 33-34 pants. I cannot shop at several stores b/c they just do not carry my jacket/shirt/pant sizes…ever. Yeah, it sucks but I also drive a car (and live in the suburbs) so I usually have more options. I just keep going to more stores and eventually find something.

It could be the dearth of size 28-32 pants is not because America is fat and retailers are ignoring thin men to profit from an obesity epidemic. It might be due to the fact that many men are thin and simply buying them. Or maybe retailers are adapting their stock to fit different store locations, neighborhood demographics and consumption patterns.

On a separate note: maybe it’s time we reject subcultures predicated upon unattainable standards of youth and beauty as unreasonable. Just a thought.

I really liked that news item about neighborhoods built before 1950. I guess it is one of the reasons I like older areas. You can always walk, jog or bike around.

I have the same problem finding underwear to support my 11″ dick.

Life is SO HARD.

does anyone else ALWAYS think of jackie from roseanne when they see very slim&high-waisted pants?

i don't know how the women of the 80s/early90s did it.

Andrew, good catch. And to think statistics is the only math class I didn’t flunk.

Great comments, folks. However, this site works best when you submit your own thoughts as opposed to a string of politically-correct shame words, so if you have a rebuttal or want to give me the smack down, sharpen your pencils and let me have it at submit@thenewgay.net. The more dialogue we have here, the better this site will be. TNG looks forward to your posts.

Furthermore, if you’d bothered to read *my* comment, you’d have read the part about my own difficulties finding clothes made for skinny guys. So I can’t possibly feel “reflexively” threatened.

Finally, I read Ben’s posts. I read all the damn posts on this damn blog because I’m damn addicted to it. And on your last point, I’m so with you: let’s develop better solutions.

Obesity is a staggering problem, and we as a people need to develop solutions to help each other make better choices. We need to do this out of love.

Second, isn’t it likely that places like Marshall’s and Filenes have such a dearth of skinny-sized clothes because they’re bargain outlets? Those clothes are there because no one bought them at their original price. If these places get most of their clothes from retailers that can’t sell them, then most people are buying so-called “normal” sized clothes and we starving students/cheapskates/what have you, are ending up with the margins of the population. I too have had trouble finding pants to fit my scrawny 30 inch waist, but it’s not clear that your experience at Filenes is proof of anything but some bad luck.

Third, the Target thing…Look, I’m not denying that American waistlines are growing. But it’s just as likely that such places cater to lower-income folks who are more likely to be overweight because of poorer diets.

Fourth, and the real issue here, is that the “obesity epidemic” is a hoax. What we should be looking at is not fatness per se, but health.

Insofar as weight correlates with certain levels of health, the CDC data suggests that overweight people are just as healthy, if not healthier, than your Ramen-chomping hetero friend. Some scientists have suggested its because people with supposedly high BMIs have more energy/fat to sustain them through times of illness.

More important, when placed alongside the very real explosion of diabetes in the population, it suggests that the problem isn’t that we’re getting fatter, but that we’re eating like shit. Fatness is a symptom of the serious unhealthinesss of American culture, not a product of it.

I’m all for living better. I’m all for riding your bike everywhere (I do) cutting meat out of your diet, and living in urban areas with alternative transit. It’s high time we purged corn syrup from our diets, and for God’s sake portions need to be smaller than they are now. But rather than demonizing fat people and claiming that obesity is the cause of the decline of American socity, the facts say otherwise.

Your comments and perspective are ignorant, classist, sizeist and ill-informed. The next time you critique yourself or gay people in a public forum such as this, do it with a little more care and thoughtfulness.

Between this post and Michael’s today about ridiculously generalized sexual preferences (rife with misogyny, no doubt), thenewgay.net is nothing more than a platform for all the nasty cliches by, for and about elitist, image-focused gay people.