Forget pleasure, we're eating to rebel

A scientist says that fat women now constitute a cruelly disadvantaged `underclass'. Sounds just the sort of club teenagers will rush to join. By Glenda Cooper

Parents, do you worry about your children turning out bad? Falling into the "underclass"? Becoming a misfit in society? Once upon a time, middle-class parents dreaded their offspring getting into drugs, having babies on benefit, doing time in jail or even dropping out of society altogether, but they now have a new worry. A survey has discovered the new underclass - the fat.

Researchers in Finland have found that obese women are more likely to be unemployed than their slimmer counterparts, have a lower than normal household income and those who are in work are more likely to have badly paid jobs. On top of this they are more likely to feel miserable and lonely. Sirpa Sarlio-Lahteenkorva, from the Department of Public Health at Helsinki University, surveyed some 6,500 men and women aged 25-65 in Finland, and looked at both their body mass index (BMI) and their socio-economic situation. All the analyses were controlled for age, education, region and illness so that only BMI could be linked to socio-economic situation. Her results, presented at the European Congress on Obesity yesterday, found overwhelmingly that those women with a BMI of 25 or more (the definition of overweight), the less likely they were to have a good job or live in a rich household. Curiously enough the opposite was true for men, with skinnybeans with a BMI of less than 20 appearing to be the rejects of society.

"I guess there's no one answer why this should be," she said yesterday. "My personal opinion is that it may be discrimination or on the other hand the circumstances that the poor are living in increase their chances of obesity."

We are a fatter society than we used to be. In 1980 8 per cent of women were judged to be obese (a body mass 30 per cent greater than it should be) and another 24 per cent overweight. By 1996 the numbers had risen to 17 per cent clinically obese and 30 per cent overweight.

But anxious parents will no doubt already be looking askance at their progeny, dreading the curtain-twitching of the future, not because little Tamsin has broken her curfew again, but because No 12 can see she has already grown out of this year's uniform. Coffee-morning one-upmanship will alter from "My Esther's been predicted 3 As, so she's bound to get into Cambridge" to "My Esther's been predicted a BMI of 21 so she's bound to become a successful female executive." Tamsin's mother will be shrink from having to admit BMI scores of 26 and will slink home to shout at her recalcitrant teen: "Why can't you be like Esther? I've warned you about BMI scores before but you're just so lazy. You'll get nowhere in life by sitting in front of the box like a couch potato. Go and work out."

And whereas parents can always hope the drug-addict child will kick the habit, the stigma of fat is likely to be there for life, as any woman who has ever tried to diet knows. As the wit Erma Bombeck said: "I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."

Ms Sarlio-Lahteenkorva confirms that once you're fat you're doomed: "When you're obese you lose out, but even if you lose weight there does not seem to be any improvement."

As any parents knows, the problem is that the forbidden lifestyle is the more attractive to any self-respecting teen. Smoking dope? What's the point of doing that now Dr Miriam Stoppard seems to be forcing it on eight-year-olds? Protesting against road-building projects? Even middle- aged mums now have a soft spot for Swampy. No, the way to prove to your parents that society is rubbish and you hate the bourgeois standards it espouses is to stuff your chances of ever working and happily munch away on gooey puddings, chocolate and fudge brownies.

Instead of a bust of Lenin on the mantelpiece, expect to find pictures of Sophie Dahl's bust. Vanessa Feltz will become an anti-hero, and model Sara Morrison the number one pin-up. PG Wodehouse's observation that "She fitted into my largest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight round the hips this season" will become something to aim for rather than something to snigger at.

Any objection will be met with the reminder that all the pleasant things in life are either illegal, immoral or make you fat. It will be too late then to wring your hands and offer free aerobics sessions. The little horrors will only quote Professor David Barker of the Medical Research Council Unit at Southampton University back at you. He claims girth may be shaped by the mother's diet in early pregnancy - a shortage of nutrients can trigger a chemical reaction that lays the ground for middle-aged spread. So it will turn out to be your fault after all.

And then, as their coup de grace, they'll remind you it was the Duchess of Windsor who said you could never be too rich or too thin. But then her major achievement was to be married to a member of the Royal Family. Would you really want that for your child?