How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict (epub read online books txt) 📕

Wherever you see curves predominating in the physical outlines of any person, that person is largely of the Alimentive type and will always exhibit alimentive traits.

The Man of Few Movements

¶ The Alimentive is a man of unhurried, undulating movements. The difficulty in moving large bodies quickly necessitates a slowing down of all his activities. These people are easeful in their actions, make as few moves as possible and thereby lend an air of restfulness wherever they go.

Because it is difficult to turn their heads, extremely fat people seldom are aware of what goes on behind them.

The Fat Man's Walk

¶ Very fat people waddle when they walk, though few of them realize it. They can not watch themselves go by and no one else has the heart to impart bad news to this pleasant person.

Spilling Over Chairs

¶ The fat man spills over chairs and out of his clothes. Big arm chairs, roomy divans and capacious automobiles are veritable dykes to these men. Note the bee-line the fat person makes for the big leather chair when he enters a room!

Clothes for Comfort

¶ The best that money can buy are the kinds of clothes purchased by the Alimentive whenever he can afford them. And it often happens that he can afford them, especially if the Cerebral system comes second in his makeup. If he is in middle circumstances his clothes will be chosen chiefly for comfort. Even the rich Alimentive "gets into something loose" as soon as he is alone. Baggy trousers, creased sleeves, soft collars and soft cuffs are seen most frequently on fat men.

Comfort is one of the very first aims of this type. To attain it he often wears old shoes or gloves long past their time to save breaking in a new pair.

Susceptible to Cold

¶ Cold weather affects this type. If you will look about you the first cold day of autumn you will note that most of the overcoats are on the plump men.

How the Fat Man Talks

¶ Never to take anything too seriously is an unconscious policy of fat people. They show it plainly in their actions and speech. The very fat man is seldom a brilliant conversationalist. He is often a "jollier" and tells stories well, especially anecdotes and personal experiences.

Doesn't Tell His Troubles

¶ He seldom relates his troubles and often appears not to have any. He avoids references to isms and ologies and gives a wide berth to all who deal in them. Radical groups seldom number any extremely fat men among their members, and when they do it is usually for some other purpose than those mentioned in the by-laws.

The very fat man dislikes argument, avoids disagreeing with you and sticks to the outer edges of serious questions in his social conversation.

The Fat Man "Lives to Eat"

¶ Rich food in large quantities is enjoyed by the average fat man three times a day and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Between meals he usually manages to stow away a generous supply of candy, ice cream, popcorn and fruit. We have interviewed countless popcorn and fruit vendors on this subject and every one of them told us that the fat people kept them in business.

Visits the Soda Fountain Often

¶ As for the ice cream business, take a look the next time you pass a soda fountain and note the large percentage of fat people joyfully scooping up mountains of sundaes, parfaits and banana splits. You will find that of those who are sipping things through straws the thin folks are negotiating lemonades and phosphates, while a creamy frappé is rapidly disappearing from the fat man's glass.

The Deep Mystery

¶ "What do you suppose is making me so plump?" naively inquires the fat man when it finally occurs to him—as it did to his friends long before—that he is surely and speedily taking on flesh.

If you don't know the answer, look at the table of any fat person in any restaurant, café or dining room. He is eating with as much enthusiasm as if he had just been rescued from a forty-day fast, instead of having only a few hours before looked an equally generous meal in the eye and put it all under his belt. The next time you are at an American plan hotel where meals are restricted to certain hours note how the fat people are always the first ones into the dining room when the doors are opened!

Fat-Making Foods

¶ Butter, olive oil, cream, pastry and starches are foods that increase your weight just as fast as you eat them, if your assimilative system is anything like it should be. Though he is the last man in the world who ought to indulge in them the fat man likes these foods above all others and when compelled to have a meal without them feels as though he hadn't eaten at all.

Why They Don't Lose Weight

¶ We had a friend who decided to reduce. But in spite of the fact that she lived on salads almost exclusively for a week she kept right on gaining. We thought she had been surreptitiously treating herself to lunches between meals until some one noticed the dressing with which she drowned her lettuce: pure olive oil—a cupful at a sitting—"because," she said "I must have something tasty to camouflage the stuff."

An Experiment

¶ Once in California, where no city block is complete without its cafeteria, we took a committee from one of our Human Analysis classes to six of these big establishments one noontime. To illustrate to them the authenticity of the facts we have stated above we prophesied what the fat ones would select for their meals.

Without exception their trays came by heaped with pies, cake, cream, starchy vegetables and meat, just as we predicted.

A Short Life But a Merry One

¶ According to the statistics of the United States Life Insurance Companies fat people die younger than others. And the Insurance Companies ought to know, for upon knowing instead of guessing what it is that takes us off, depends the whole life insurance business. That they consider the extremely fat man an unsafe risk after thirty years of age is a well-known fact.

"I am interrupted every day by salesmen for everything on earth except one. But the life insurance agents leave me alone!" laughed a very fat young lawyer friend of ours the other morning—and he went on ordering ham and eggs, waffles, potatoes and coffee!

That he is eating years off his life doesn't trouble the fat man, however. He has such a good time doing it!

"I Should Worry," Says the Fat Man

¶ It was no accident that "Ish ka bibble" was invented by the Hebrew. For this race has proportionately more fat people in it than any other and fat people just naturally believe worry is useless. But the fat man gets this philosophy from the same source that gives him