JUST THINKING ABOUT THICK AND THIN...

Recently the CEO of our Cleveland Clinic said, if he could legally do so, he would hire no overweight people.

Does this medical executive realize a great many women today are keeping their weight down through eating disorders, such and anorexia and bulimia... and by smoking (none of which are exactly classified as healthy)?

For that matter, what's plump; what's obese; what's slim; what's skeletal?... Is it in the eye of the beholder?... Is it, as the lawmakers have often said about another subject--pornography--that "You know it when you see it"?

One day recently I read a letter to a magazine editor from a 50-plus-year-old woman who bragged that she was 5 ft. 8 inches tall and 110 lbs.

"I've always worked very hard at keeping myself at that level," she wrote, "So I know it can be done." On the other hand, she noted, her sister was 5 ft. 5 and 148 lbs, which the writer designated as obese; the word "obese" seeming to make the woman want to gag (as in bulimia?)...

I can't help thinking about:

*The gym bunnies who spend hours a day all week on the treadmill. (Is that obsessive? Is there room left for living?)

*The skinned-down Hollywood stereotypes, who can tell you everything you want to know about liposuction; tummy tucks; cheek implants (facial and derriere alike); calf implants...

*And those much-ballyhooed "designer sizes." (What the heck does a size zero woman look like; can you even SEE her?)

R.A.T. (Rose About Town) ... accepts comments from people of all types and sizes, at randrmoore@email.com