Plight of the skinny

Being skinny sucks.

Your initial reaction might be to disagree with me. And there are legitimate reasons why you would. One, our culture has serious obesity and overweight problems. And two, a lot of my opinions are kind of stupid.

But this is one opinion that I firmly believe is correct and worthy of your consideration. For years, skinny people like me have been marginalized by society. And I’m not just referring to the fact that girls keep rejecting me, although that is a very serious problem. What I mean more generally is that the plight of the skinny person often feels unvoiced in a culture that’s infatuated with losing weight, burning calories, and drinking weird health drinks. Skinny people need a voice too. And get it? I said, “infatuated.”

The first reason why being skinny sucks is the economic disadvantage we’re subjected to in a clothing market teeming with fatties. I have a very relevant story to illustrate this. Over spring break, I went to a store to buy pants. First, I went to the sale section, where nothing was within my taller, slimmer size range. So I had to go to the more expensive section, where, after nine hours of searching, I finally found one pair that fit. But I couldn’t even buy them for myself, because they were pink girl pants.

This is the shopping experience of all skinny people. In America today, being underweight for your height means you lose valuable time and money that should be spent elsewhere. In my case, I was going to spend that time writing this column. Instead, due solely to my economic disadvantage, I now am writing this just hours before publication, and I’m pretty sure my editor is kind of pissed and might kill me. Totally not my fault, Elaine. By the way, I have this extra pair of pink girl pants for you.

Second, skinny people have a slightly less awesome command over physical elements. In third grade, whenever bigger kids cannonballed into a swimming pool, they’d make huge splashes, and everyone on the side of the pool would get really angry. I wanted to make splashes. I wanted to make everybody angry, too. But all my inner anger had to be suppressed and channeled into a column named “Tony Gong Explains the Universe.” This can all be described quite logically. An increase in my mass would basically be an increase in my power. And from what I remember from physics class, an increase in power is an increase in F*d/t, where I guess “d” must stand for “douchebag.”

Reason three: My fast metabolism cruelly takes away some of the deepest joys of eating food. I may be skinny, but I love food, and I eat a lot. Few things in life are better than the satisfaction of feeling content and full after a big Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, my high-speed metabolism ruins this feeling after about 15-20 minutes. And I’m usually hungry again in about 45. Vegetarian food also sounds kind of fun. But because I’m skinny, it’s not even an option—if I don’t eat meat with every meal, I’m pretty sure I’d internally collapse, experience massive multiple organ failures, and kill everyone sitting around me within an hour.

Fourth, people just think it’s kind of creepy and sad when I do the truffle shuffle.

Fifth, and this is probably the biggest mistake made by weight-loss culture, besides those awful fiber bars, being skinny doesn’t even guarantee healthiness. Skinny people can still get most of the problems that plague overweight people, like high cholesterol. We also tend to have crappier immune systems. I haven’t even factored in mental health yet—my life is very, very lonely. And I disagree with my therapist because I think the issue is my weight, not my personality.

Ultimately, there are two reasons why I’m complaining about all this stuff. The first is that I’m extremely self-centered, so I love talking about my own problems. The second is that this is really a message for the overweight.

The truth is that I’m incredibly self-conscious and jealous over all the things you have that I don’t: a more normal metabolism, awesome cannonball skills, and an ability to do the truffle shuffle on someone’s face and not immediately get unfriended by her on Facebook. Sorry, Elaine.

Our culture glamorizes the skinny, which might make some of you reading this believe that skinny people like me must judge you all the time. But as it gets warmer in the next few weeks, wear those T-shirts and tank tops freely. I’m too busy with my own weight issues to judge yours.

Besides, most of my time will be spent at clothing stores anyway.

Tony Gong is a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in applied math with a minor in philosophy. Bears frighten him. Tony Gong Explains the Universe runs alternate Thursdays.