There's another thing...

"Dennis M. O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Bryan J. Maloney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote...
> > "Papiols" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> nattered on
> > thusnews:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> >
> > > What does the SCA offer us that model train clubs or fencing societies
> > > don't?
> >
> > Smorgasboard.
>
> And desparate single people.

...It's really shocking to see how morbidly obese most people at SCA events
are nowadays, even the fighters.  I realize it's a problem that's partly a
result of an ageing average membership (which in itself should be setting
off alarm bells, but like most problems in the SCA won't be acknowledged
until far too late), and partly a result of increasing obesity in American
society, but, damn, it gets depressing to look out over all these people and
think, "they're going to die young."

I've lost about a half-dozen SCA friends and acquaintances in the past five
years.  All were in their forties.  Two were normal weight but smoked.  The
rest were all morbidly obese.  The men died of massive heart attacks, the
women of cancer (which latter now seems to have some link to obesity).  They
were all good people, so I'm not going to go into full-on bastard mode about
obesity in general, but still--as with the smokers, it makes the pain a
little sharper when you realize that these people basically *took themselves
away from you* by what they chose to do with their bodies.

It seems we live in an age of grotesques: people are either grotesquely fat,
or if not, then they conform to a standard of beauty that is itself
grotesque (think of silicon boobs in women; collagen lips, bobbed noses and
built-up cheekbones in both sexes, and fake pectorals in men).

And while grotersquery is very much part of the medieval aesthetic, my vote
is we don't re-create it with out own bodies, and the cost of our own lives.

--P.
"Let's to music!  And dancing.  Lots of dancing.  And aerobics..."