Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Danger: Wide Load!

I read in my USA Today to my horror but no means to my great surprise that US children's clothing manufacturers are now making a considerable percentage of their clothes in, ahem, larger sizes. 15.6% of American children were reported as obese in 2002, and all that blubber just has to be covered up somehow. Why, my goodness, in the warmer climates of California or New Mexico, all that condition could leave children going down to the store for supplies and coming home basted, completely unbeknownst to themselves.

The haberdashers are being discrete about this fatty range that they're currently flogging ("I don't want to say we have a larger customer than we used to," says Rochelle Williams, spokeswoman for Sears, as quoted in USA Today) but An Spailín believes that as The Market clearly does not make judgement on body size, neither should it let bounds of taste, decorum of feeling stay its mighty hand from turning another dollar. After all, if the king-sized kiddies can't identify with the notion of in for a penny, in for pound, who can?

As such, while applauding JC Penney's consideration in providing teeshirts with wider arms (some people like to keep fat on their arms the way Popeye used his for tattoos), An Spailpín believes that JC should go the whole (pardon me) hog. As well as manufacturing such conventional apparel as trousers and jackets, why not accessorise with Hamburger Holsters, for emergency supplies of Big Kahuna burgers, Fries Supplies, for plenty of chips, and a Personal Drip, where the young person can walk down the steet trailing his or her own personal drip supplying them with sody-pop intravenously?

There's gold in them there grills, I'm telling you.