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(The Latest Word provides Sandy's latest observations about folk music and other topics. The main Latest Word page contains a list of additional installments.) ONE FAT CHANCE Until now, I have avoided using profanity or expletives of any kind in these columns. But that all ends here, for I am going to be using a one-syllable word that has become one of the worst epithets that one can hurl in modern society. Yes, I'm talking about the "F" word.... Fat. It's time for me to be upfront. As a matter of fact, quite a bit of me is upfront, except for my posterior. I'm not particularly proud of that, but neither am I ashamed. I burn fewer calories than I currently ingest, which is what keeps me a regular customer at The Answer and Lane Bryant. Now, I won't go into a discussion about whether I can change that by increasing my activity (the dreaded "E" word), decreasing my intake, or altering the kinds of foods I eat. I've seen diet gurus nearly come to blows on the subject of which foods are good and essential and which are the spawn of the Devil. However I got here, I'm here. For now, I can and must deal with it as best I can. But, apparently, society can't. We have finally become enlightened enough to acknowledge that it's not okay to ridicule or discriminate against people based on their race, religion, nationality, physical disability, or stature. However, there's one acceptable form of bias these days: It's okay to make fun of fat people and refuse to make reasonable accommodation for our size. A "normal" weight has become for all intents and purposes a bona fide occupational qualification for all sorts of jobs, way beyond those that depend on glamour or physical prowess. Fat has become the last acceptable prejudice. Why? Because, as long as a majority of people (especially a majority of decision-makers) are of the weight and proportion considered normal by one insurance company back in the 1950s, obesity is and will be seen as a moral failure, a weakness of will, a deficiency of discipline, and the personification of the Deadly Sin of Sloth. What a crock of cottage cheese! Of course I know that if I moved more and ate less, I'd be thinner. But I wonder if those blessed with "normal" physiques know just how much more moving and how much less eating it takes for the obese to lose weight and keep it off. I'll bet the thin of the world would be surprised to learn that it takes a degree of discipline and exertion far greater than what they themselves have ever had to display. I dare say that many normal-sized individuals would be either unwilling, unable, or both to stick to the kind of diet and exercise regimen that fat people must endure to conform to society's image of what is an acceptable body size. Thin people say, "If they'd only eat like we do, they wouldn't be fat." They're absolutely right: We'd be even fatter. The majority of obese people got that way (weigh?) because we eat more than we burn. But it's not that simple. It's as much or more a matter of how we burn our food and body fat as how much effort we exert to accomplish that. From adolescence onward (and even earlier these days for girls) we are exhorted to diet and exercise at the first sign of flab. So begins the vicious cycle that has come to be known as yo-yo dieting. Our bodies are programmed for this. Mother Nature is no ninny: We wouldn't have survived long enough to be debating this issue if our bodies hadn't evolved into tremendously efficient survival engines, carefully conserving both the fuel we ingest and the fuel we've stored. Eat less, move more&ldots;and for those of us with highly developed metabolisms, our bodies think, "uh-oh: famine!" This shouldn't be surprising: In the grand time line of human existence, our current era of relative plenty equals less than five minutes, and famine has been our lot far more often over the course of history. If we burned up more food than was available, we starved. It's only over the last few centuries that we have come to expect abundance. An example is how we manage sugar, whether it's refined or straight from the tree. In our more primitive days in temperate climes, fruits grew in very short seasons and in relatively small supply. Our bodies react to sugar as a precious treat that must be conserved as a hedge against famine. Up goes our insulin production, and that precious sugar is turned into the fat we need to sustain us during times of deprivation. That's an example of how a food source's calories are but one factor in how completely it is burned or stored. Suddenly, the old in-and-out equation isn't so simple anymore—and isn't the absolute equation our hygiene teachers led us to believe. It's even worse for women. Our biology favors the survival of the species over the survival of the organism. Get too fat and we theoretically tax our systems so much that they fail. But let our body fat dip too low and we become infertile—ovulation ceases. But nature abhors a vacuum, and as vacuums go, that one really sucks. Because, to prevent extinction of the species due to a dearth of births, nature goes into high gear to get our body fat back up to the point where we can reproduce again. Whether by further ratcheting down metabolism or flooding our bloodstream with hormones (e.g., lipoprotein lipase) that make us hungrier, biology's goal for women is the same: Get that body fat back up to where we can make babies again. What about those of us past reproductive age? Well, sisters, Mother Nature had no idea we'd still be around. So how do we get from biology to society, from where efficiency was commendable to where it's now deplorable? To answer that, we have to ask ourselves why anyone feels compelled to classify anyone else as inferior—to reinforce the person's own sense of superiority, however invalid that sense may be. You can't be an Ubermensch without a corresponding underclass. The thin can't allow themselves to believe that they are that way in large part by predisposition, as much as how they acquired their stature or coloring. It would throw their sense of superiority into turmoil. How is this reinforced and accomplished? First, preach the gospel that choosing foods for their nutritional value is good, but choosing foods for taste or texture is sinful. Shove first the Basic Seven, then the Basic Four, and finally the Food Pyramid down our throats as soon as we're old enough to tell a honeydew from a Ho-Ho. Then make it as difficult as possible to adhere to these guidelines as long as we have to eat anywhere but in the privacy and control of our own homes. Been out to eat lately? I'm not talking about wait-staffed, white-tablecloth restaurants where money talks and healthy choices either are on the menu or available by request. I'm talking about where, unless you brown-bagged it, you most likely ate lunch yesterday—probably your local lunch counter or, more likely, fast-food joint. Let's look at the latter. You say there are healthy options at BK or Mickey D's? Those salads and grilled chicken filets look innocuous enough. But the salads come with fat-and-sugar-laden dressings and croutons, and the chicken filets are served up on white-flour buns, slathered in fatty sauces unless we insist otherwise. And have you tasted the "otherwise," the most nutritionally virtuous way to eat this stuff: unadorned? If you have, I'd venture a guess that you did that only once. Breathe deeply and take in the aroma of beef grilling and potatoes frying. Then sit down with your naked salad and plain chicken breast on half a bun, accompanied by a grudgingly granted toddler-sized "courtesy cup" of tap water. Now try to enjoy your lunch. Gotcha. Things don't get much better in the coffee shop. You're brought the ubiquitous plastic-laminated menu loaded with "deluxe" sandwiches, deep-fried appetizers (including the ultimate in senseless excess—breaded and fried cheese), and super-sized dinner platters (in which the proffered "vegetable" always seems to be corn or lima beans). Let's cut to the chase: the Diet Plate. Coffee-shop owners must have learned a culinary truth concealed from the rest of us until now: the presence of a scoop of creamed cottage cheese and a syrup-soaked canned peach half can magically render the largest, greasiest beef patty or chicken breast "low-calorie." Okay, you've finished lunch and you've still got a little time left. Get up, pay, and walk out feeling either satisfied and guilty, or virtuous and cranky. Let's go clothes shopping. Saunter into Better Dresses, Ladies' Sportswear, or Petites. There are racks bulging with the latest, cute, flattering fashions, which are modeled to perfection by hopelessly svelte plaster mannequins. You casually flip over the sales tag—size 0. That's right. Zero. Or maybe instead of mere numbers, there are letters: P,S,M,L—and if you're really lucky, XL. What does that "L" mean? The numbers below declare that to be "10-12." Do I detect some of that lunch coming back up? Here comes the saleslady to the rescue: "Women's World" is over in the opposite corner, dear." You resist the impulse to slug her. You are now in the Women's Department. If the store is a really enlightened one, you may find some of those same up-to-date fashions you saw in Munchkin sizes across the floor in more realistic proportions—1X, 2X, 3X, etc. But put them on—chances are that they're proportioned for the regal and statuesque Big, Beautiful Woman, not the Jumbo Shrimp you more closely resemble. And what's with the price tag? Almost always at least ten bucks more than the standard sizes. Why? Logic dictates that they demand more fabric and should cost more. But that 1X has smaller measurements all around than the XL across the floor—yet the XL is cheaper. Another argument is that "plus" sizes (charmingly called "rondes," or "round ones," in France) are more labor-intensive because they require differently proportioned patterned templates, not just larger ones. Okay, then why do Petites always cost the same as regular sizes? And why, if the store is more typical, do the clothes make you look either like a hooker, a gangbanger, or your own grandmother? Prejudice, of course. We fatties must be punished for our excesses of eating and laziness. We don't deserve the same clothes as "normal" people, unless we are willing to pay through the nose for them (assuming we're lucky enough to find them). And there's the rub: Slenderness, attainable only through heredity or extraordinary effort and discipline, is for all intents and purposes the province of the already slender; thus, their so-called superiority remains unchallenged. Well, off to bed now, in my nightshirt (the peignoir set only goes up to size 12). I reach for the chocolate egg cream going flat next to me on the side table as I finish typing this and opt instead for the remaining seltzer in the bottle as I do a couple of minutes on the treadmill. After all, I can dream, can't I? In America, we're all equal&ldots;well, most of us. 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