Feedback: Dancing hippos hurt feelings

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I read with interest your recent column regarding your efforts to secure a sweater for your wife at Wal-Mart. Typically your offerings range from mildly amusing to downright laugh-out-loud funny and this was no exception. However, you took a wrong turn when you suggested that people who wear “women’s” sizes are akin to “those dancing hippos in the old Disney cartoons.” While there are plenty of us generously-sized folks out there who can shrug off your comment as a well-intentioned attempt at humor, there’s plenty who haven’t grown — pardon the pun — to an acceptance of themselves.

Let’s do the math. The 2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that over 60 percent of women are overweight. If you conservatively estimate that at least half of those feel bad about it, and about half your readers are women, then you’ve just poked 15 percent of the people who buy your paper. Now Jim, how smart was that? Good thing your wife is petite, or else you’d be sleeping on the couch for a few days.

Dawn Shumate

Oak Harbor