Hath a fat person not eyes? Hath a fat person not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

I hear DC asking the marketing assistant if she needs help with a box that she's carrying. She says no, then he asks if she's sure, and she says, no, it's really not heavy at all.

Yeah, I'm a little jealous. You would be too if you had wandered around the office carrying boxes with five reams of paper in them and no one offered you one iota of help. Yet the moment that the tall, wide-eyed, beautiful marketing assistant looks like she might need ANY assistance, she has guys falling all over themselves to try and help her. Yeah…real gentlemen.

Maybe it's because she looks so fragile. I would look fragile too if it seemed like my head was too big for my body because I was so unbelievably thin. This would also explain why Mr. Universe was always hanging out at her desk and whispering to her while I was working at Mr. Leads' desk, which is right next to hers. I'm not jealous of that bit though; that's just sleazy -- he's married. She does a good job of deflecting him.

So am I unreasonably jealous? Probably. Does being fat make me less of a woman? Well, fat cells do emit testosterone, and when you have a lot of em together, that's a lot of testosterone. Yet no one would ever mistake me for a man unless I taped down the jubblies and started wearing man-clothes. So I should be safe from gender misidentification. For now…

I suppose that this type of gentlemanly behavior ought to be rejected on the basis that it assumes that women are the weaker sex. But I don't think any woman's going to argue with me that, in the context of daily life, it certainly does feel nice to have the doors held for you, to have them ask you if you need help with something heavy, to be allowed to go first through any open door just because you're presumed to be a lady.

Those mannerisms are probably more beneficial to men than they are to women. Though it's nice to have guys treat us so considerately, it's certainly not necessary for us to go first and we are definitely capable of opening doors for ourselves. So while we get the benefit of consideration and a small bit of feeling special and esteemed by society because of those things, men who do those things receive our favor, which they certainly must like, since they think about s*x every two or three seconds. Obviously, you usually need a woman's favor in order to attain the goal of having s*x.

That little statement actually answers the question, doesn't it? If we assume that men are motivated to be gentlemen because they believe that it might lead to favor, which might lead to s*x, then we must also assume that no man is going offer assistance to someone whom he has no subconscious desire to be intimate with. However, all the executive guys are helpful all the time, nevertheless, to every woman they come across. I mean the REAL executives. Napoleon will always be nice to you, always hold doors for you, always let you go first.

Yeah…I'm jealous…but I think my jealousy is reasonable. I deserve just as much consideration and esteem as any other female member of society, whether I'm fat or thin. The world doesn't revolve around me, and, certainly, a man decides whom he will offer his assistance to. Yet, is it unreasonable to feel slighted because the same man who would offer his assistance to a thin woman won't offer me the same assistance? Aren't I a person too?