Last week I picked up Love, Sex & Tragedy: Why Classics Matters by Simon Goldhill for a little light reading. I would like to share this quote, simply because it provides cultural and political underpinnings for Raphael’s proposed “fat tax,” which already has a lot going for it on the grounds of aesthetics alone. The cultural context of the quote is classical Greece:

The citizen must train his body to make it as beautiful and strong as possible, in order to have success both in war and in all other public activities. Socrates will walk up to someone and will complain about the flabbiness of his body and nag a man because he just isn’t toned enough. Unlike modern philosophers, fixed in the classroom and seminar, he is out on the street, actively changing people’s lives. Socrates gets involved because the flabby citizen is a public matter, a matter of public concern. Fat is a political issue.

You might notice that this quote refers to men’s bodies exclusively. That is because, as it is explained in chapter 3 (”The Female Body — Soft and Spongy, Shaved and Coy”), the “soft and wet” female body was considered imperfect by definition in classical times. However, given the cultural changes since then, we now do have notions of ideal female bodies and we can therefore extend the responsibilities implied by the “fat tax” to women as well.