Americana: Fat's Where It's At

Thin is in, right? And sexier besides. Well, not according to Anthropologist Anne Scott Beller. In her new book, Fat & Thin—A Natural History of Obesity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $10), Beller argues that fat women are not only cuddly, loving, jovial sorts, but more sexy too. She cites studies showing that endomorphic lasses are more responsive to erotic stimulation and have greater sexual appetites. In one survey conducted in a Chicago hospital, "fat women outscored their thin sisters by a factor of almost two to one," in terms of excitability. Only our culture's notion that fat is "morally and sexually...