blogs of size

I agonized quite a while over what to name this blog.

My other blog was named on a whim, and I still regret it, inasmuch as saying the name out loud makes me squirm: it's pretentious, I don't really know how to pronounce it correctly, and I usually mumble it like an embarrassed teenager, less and less coherently (invariably people don't hear it on the first pass) when people ask me what it's called. It's not catchy at all, except to call it "tha ki-YAY" sometimes. I like it well enough in print, but that's different. All this I hoped to avoid here.

I also wanted to avoid the absolute sea of puns that exist for fat clothing stores and fat social groups and dating sites: More to Love, Big [Whatever]s, Large and in Charge, etc. Any good or thought-provoking punnery in amongst the cheese (and there's a lot) there has long since been exhausted, and I just didn't feel like those kinds of names would strike the right tone. They are too focused, ultimately, anyhow. I love names like Big Fat Blog, but I didn't want to go that kind of route anymore either.

I ended up with a few runner-ups. After speaking with my friend Hanne, I was seriously pondering two somewhat similar ones:

LIPOFILIA
or
LESSONS IN LIPO-LITERACY

...the latter being a nod to sociologist Mark Graham's brilliant term. Another contender was something my friend Damian used to say when he wanted to win an argument (I think it's already a blog name):

IPSO FATSO

The winner, though, came from Martha Bayne, tossed off from behind the bar, no less, in a fit of brainstorming while she served drinks. It's still working for me, and I really like the definite article. Let's meet at The Extender, shall we?

Thanks, Martha.