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

of the comforts of modern life.

The average-brained fat man composes a large percentage of our population and the above accounts for his deserved reputation as a generous husband and father.

The Fat Man a Good Provider

¶ The fat man will give his last cent to his wife and children for the things they desire but he is not inclined as much as some other types to hearken to the woes of the world at large. The fat man is essentially a family man, a home man, a respectable, cottage-owning, tax-paying, peaceable citizen.

Not a Reformer

¶ He inclines to the belief that other families, other communities, other classes and other countries should work out their own salvation and he leaves them to do it. In all charitable, philanthropic and community "drives" he gives freely but is not lavish nor sentimental about it. It is often a "business proposition" with him.

When the Fat Man is Poor

¶ Love of ease is the fat man's worst enemy. His inherent contentment, accentuated by the inconvenience of moving about easily or quickly, constantly tempts him to let things slide. When he lacks the brain capacity for figuring out ways and means for getting things easily he is never a great success at anything.

When the extremely fat man's mentality is below the average he often refuses to work—in which case he becomes a familiar figure around public rest rooms, parks and the cheaper hotel lobbies. Such a man finally graduates into the class of professional chair-warmers.

Fat People Love Leisure

¶ A chance to do as we please, especially to do as little hard work as possible, is a secret desire of almost everybody. But the fat man takes the prize for wanting it most.

Not a Strenuous Worker

¶ He is not constructed to work hard like some of the other types, as we shall see in subsequent chapters. His overweight is not only a handicap in that it slows down his movements, but it tends to slow down all his vital processes as well and to overload his heart. This gives him a chronic feeling of heaviness and inertia.

Everybody Likes Him

¶ But Nature must have intended fat people to manage the rest of us instead of taking a hand at the "heavy work." She made them averse to toil and then made them so likable that they can usually get the rest of us to do their hardest work for them.

The World Managed by Fat People

¶ When he is brainy the fat man never stays in the lower ranks of subordinates. He may get a late start in an establishment but he will soon make those over him like him so well they will promote him to a chief-clerkship, a foremanship or a managership. Once there he will make those under him so fond of him that they will work long and hard for him.

Fat Men to the Top

¶ In this way the fat man of real brains goes straight to the top while others look on and bewail the fact that they do most of the actual work. They fail to recognize that the world always pays the big salaries not for hand work but for head work, and not so much for working yourself as for your ability to get others to work.

The Popular Politician

¶ This capacity for managing, controlling and winning others is what enables this type to succeed so well in politics. The fat man knows how to get votes. He mixes with everybody, jokes with everybody, remembers to ask how the children are—and pretty soon he's the head of his ward. Almost every big political boss is fat.

Makes Others Work

¶ One man is but one man and at best can do little more than a good man-size day of work. But a man who can induce a dozen other man-machines to speed up and turn out a full day's work apiece doesn't need to work his own hands. He serves his employer more valuably as an overseer, foreman or supervisor.

The Fat Salesman

¶ "A fat drummer" is such a common phrase that we would think our ears deceived us did anyone speak of a thin one. Approach five people and say "A traveling salesman," each will tell you that the picture this conjures in his imagination is of a fat, round, roly-poly, good natured, pretty clever man whom everybody likes.

For the fat men are "born salesmen" and they make up a large percentage of that profession. Salesmanship requires mentality plus a pleasing personality. The fat man qualifies easily in the matter of personality. Then he makes little or much money from salesmanship, according to his mental capacity.

The Drummers' Funny Stories

¶ You will note that the conversation of fat people is well sprinkled with funny stories. They enjoy a good joke better than any other type, for a reason which will become more and more apparent to you.

¶ That salesmen are popularly supposed to regale each customer with yarns till he gasps for breath and to get his signature on the dotted line while he is in that weakened condition, is more or less of a myth. It originated from the fact that most salesmen are fat and that fat people tell stories well.

Jokes at Fat Men's Expense

¶ "Look at Fatty," "get a truck," and other jibes greet the fat man on every hand. He knows he can not proceed a block without being the butt of several jokes, but he listens to them all with an amiability surprising to other types. And this good nature is so apparent that even those who make sport of him are thinking to themselves: "I believe I'd like that man."

The Fat Man's Habits

¶ "Never hurry and never worry" are the unconscious standards underlying many of the reactions of this type. If you will compile a list of the habits of any fat person you will find that they are mostly the outgrowths of one or both of these motives.

Won't Speed Up

¶ You would have a hard time getting an Alimentive to follow out any protracted line of action calling for strenuosity, speed or high tension. He will get as much done as the strenuous man when their mentalities are equal—and often more. The fat person keeps going in a straight line, with uniform and uninterrupted effort, and does not have the blow-outs common to more fidgety people. But hard, fast labor is not in his line.

Loves Comedy

¶ All forms of mental depression are foreign to fat people as long as they are in normal health. We have known a fat husband and wife to be ejected for rent and spend the evening at the movies laughing like four-year-olds at Charlie Chaplin or a Mack Sennett comedy. You have sometimes seen fat people whose financial condition was pretty serious and wondered how they could be so cheerful.

Inclined to Indolence

¶ Fat people's habits, being built around their points of strength and weakness, are necessarily of two kinds—the desirable and the undesirable.

The worst habits of this type are those inevitable to the ease-loving and the immature-minded.

Indolence is one of his most undesirable traits and costs the Alimentive dear.

In this country where energy, push and lightning-like efficiency are at a premium only the fat man of brains can hope to keep up.

The inertia caused by his digestive processes is so great that it is almost insurmountable. The heavy, lazy feeling you have after a large meal is with the fat man interminably because his organism is constantly in the process of digesting large amounts of food.

Likes Warm Rooms

¶ Love of comfort—especially such things as warm rooms and soft beds—is so deeply imbedded in the fiber of this type that he has ever to face a fight with himself which the rest of us do not encounter. This sometimes leads the excessively corpulent person to relax into laziness and slovenliness. An obese individual sometimes surprises us, however, by his ambition and immaculateness.

But such a man or woman almost always combines decided mental tendencies with his alimentiveness.

Enjoys Doing Favors

¶ The habits which endear the fat person to everyone and make us forget his faults are his never-failing hospitality, kindness when you are in trouble, his calming air of contentment, his tact, good nature and the real pleasure he seems to experience when doing you a favor.

His worst faults wreak upon him far greater penalties than fall upon those who associate with him, something that can not be said of the faults of some other types.

Likes Melody

¶ Simple, natural music is a favorite with fat people. Love songs, rollicking tunes and those full of melody are most popular with them. An easy-to-learn, easy-to-sing song is the one a fat man chooses when he names the next selection.

They like ragtime, jazz and music with a swing to it. Music the world over is most popular with fat races. The world's greatest singers and most of its famous musicians have been fat or at least decidedly plump.

Goes to the Cabaret

¶ The fat person will wiggle his toes, tap his fingers, swing his fork and nod his head by the hour with a rumbling jazz orchestra.

When the Alimentive is combined with some other type he will also enjoy other kinds of music but the pure Alimentive cares most for primal tunes and melodies.

Likes a Girly-Show

¶ A pretty-girl show makes a hit with fat women as well as with fat men. Drop into the "Passing Show" and note how many fat people are in the audience. Drop into a theater the next night where a tragedy is being enacted and see how few fat ones are there.

The One Made Sport Of

¶ Fat people enjoy helping out the players, if the opportunity offers. All show people know this.

When one of those tricks is to be played from the foot-lights upon a member of the audience the girl who does it is always careful to select that circular gentleman down front. Let her try to mix up confetti or a toy balloon with a tall skinny man and the police would get a hurry call!

When we describe the bony type you will note how very different he is from our friend the fat man.

A Movie Fan

¶ "The fat man's theater" would be a fitting name for the movie houses of the country. Not that the fat man is the only type patronizing the cinema. The movies cover in one evening so many different kinds of human interests—news, cartoons, features and comedy—that every type finds upon the screen something to interest him.

But if you will do what we have done—stand at the doorway of the leading movie theaters of your city any evening and keep a record of the types that enter you will find the plump are as numerous as all the others combined.

Easy Entertainment

¶ The reason for this is plain to all who are acquainted with Human Analysis: the fat man wants everything the easiest possible way and the movie fulfils this requirement more fully than any other theatrical entertainment. He can drop in when he feels like it and there is no waiting for the show to start, for one thing.

This is a decided advantage to him, for fat people do not like to depend upon themselves for entertainment.

The Babies of the Race

¶ The first stage in biological evolution was the stage in which the alimentary apparatus was developed. To assimilate nutriment was the first function of all life and is so still, since it is the principal requirement for self-preservation.

Being the first and most elemental of our five physiological systems the Alimentive—when it overtops the others—produces a more elemental, infantile nature.