I made a challenge to myself that I’d lose weight this holiday break, sort of a thing never before achieved by me. I’d have been better off challenging myself to eat two carrot cakes, three pies, and eight full chickens. I could’ve pinned a finisher’s medal on before the new year. It isn’t my first failure. I was really fat as a kid, and the winter break was always that time when I’d make the leap from chubby to morbidly obese.

I don’t bring this up because I think you are interested in my childhood or what I did over the break. It is more to set the tone for what I am about to say: People in America are ugly. Most aren’t cover your eyes ugly, just slightly unpleasant to look at. This has been hidden from us because television, movies, and the Internet allow people who are very attractive to be seen in two dimensional form by the millions of us who disprove the notion of intelligent, or at least aesthetic, design (or at least aesthetic design). Sometimes it seems that there are a lot of pretty people around, but I am convinced that it only seems that way because good-looking individuals stand out in a crowd. Why do my eyes follow the hot Brazilian grad student when she walks by? And why can my girlfriend sense the exact moment my pupils refocus? It’s because there aren’t many hot Brazilian grad students. They are a rarity; by nature of its scarcity, beauty is something we notice.

It’s extra harsh in upstate New York during the winter because the climate causes the few attractive people to wear so many layers they could sneak into a leper colony. I don’t claim to be one of the few good-looking people in town. In fact, I find myself visually disappointing. No big deal. I accepted this after the 30th or so time it was explained to me. So what I am asking is unfair, but here goes anyway. How about we try not to be so freakishly fat?

New York isn’t so bad in the overweight department, but I recently took a cross country road trip and I can say for certain that fat is the new black, only it’s popular during the summer too. Ugly is ugly, aside from surgery there isn’t much to be done about it, but no scalpel is needed to pry that spoonful of Crisco out of your hand.

I have friends who claim that good fashion can make up for a lot in the looks department. Well, it cuts both ways. Have you ever said to yourself, “He’d be pretty good-looking if he managed to gain 20 pounds of lard around the middle?”

I work out often; I run, lift, swim, and wrestle. I do it for myself, but I also consider it a public service. I consider it my civic duty to not cause people to retch when I walk into a restaurant. The phrase “eye candy” came into vogue about 10 years ago, but it is far from apt. Beautiful people are fun to look at, so they are like candy in that respect, but they are also good for the soul. It’s nice to experience something lovely in any form. In fact, I think that may be the secret to finding happiness in life. Seen in such a manner, shouldn’t we use a term like “eye oxygen”? Well that sounds pretty lame, but you get the idea.

As 2006 rolls through, lose some weight for your happiness, your health, but mostly for me.