Light and shade of abstract nouns

Tubby or not tubby, that is the hefty question. At what point exactly does a person qualify as being overweight? Is it when the double chin begins to emerge, like a wobbly twin beside the other?

Or is tubbiness more a stomach than a face thing? Is it when the spare tyre begins to inflate alarmingly and can no longer remain hidden? Is it when you can no longer see your metatarsals?

Is it when you tell a circle of friends how you once used to bend neatly in half and touch your toes, and their laughter goes from sniggering to hilarious in five flat seconds? Is it when you've gone from being 29 around the waist to "two axe handles across the beam"?

Whatever, the opinions on tubbiness, or the terrors of the flesh, appear to be as diverse as those on terrorism itself. When is a terrorist a terrorist and when is he merely a freedom fighter?

Man has been splitting hairs with nouns ever since he discovered grammar. So it is that virtually every noun can now carry within it a series of genres.

The Miss World/Universe pageants have long since evolved into a search for a more homogenous form of beauty, no longer focusing merely on the apparently physically stunning features.

Beauty, we are now being ordered to understand, is more than ice-berg surface-like, the major part of it lying beneath: sub-dermal, subterranean, subcutaneous, whatever the term.

Beauty is also in the mind, we're told, and so several recent winners have been very highly qualified women, although I disagree with the notion that mental beauty has to be one with a Master's Degree.

One can be beautiful and simple-minded (simply beautiful). A vivid scene from the film American Beauty showed how an ordinary, dull plastic supermarket shopping bag, caught up in an eddying gust of wind can put on a delightfully engaging dance. And so, back to "tubby", the physical kind.

General shapelessness

Most of us would recognise it by the bulges and general shapelessness of form. But how do you react when a svelte, long-legged beauty walks into your apartment, accompanied by your son, whose friend she is, and you, in your desire to be hospitable, bring out some finger wafers and cheese dip, and your son who is lean as a rake tucks into it merrily, and his female companion, who is leaner than a rake shakes her head when the bowl is proffered in her direction. How about a nice Subway-like sandwich then with some meatballs that can be rustled up in seconds and some horseradish sauce, you ask, figuring that the wafer-like scraps in the bowl before her represent an insult to her leanness and you ought to be putting more on the plate.

That would be a great idea, dad, says your son, whom you haven't addressed in the first place. His friend just demurs, but you put that down to the politeness of a first meeting. Still, you hasten kitchen-wards and, as promised, conjure up two sandwiches that instantly let loose the salivary glands yours and your son's. He tucks into his sandwich; his demurring friend gnaws the inside edge of her lower lip. You flow with the saliva.

Finally you cannot bear it any longer.

Won't you have something to eat, you ask. Goodness, Mr Martin, she replies, I couldn't possibly. I am absolutely stuffed and, besides, I am tonnes overweight. Your head spins, adjusting to this new notion of wraith-like fatness, when your son chimes in, speaking through a mouthful of her sandwich, "Hannah's a model, dad, and her bosses have told her she cannot afford to put on one more gramme of fat."

You smile with understanding, but think to yourself that it won't be too long before the catwalks will be taken over by stalking skeletons. Nobody's closet will be safe after that. Your son punctures the silence saying, "I could eat a horse but you'd never guess that looking at me."

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.