ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: One F-word that should never have been banned

There’s no escaping it. Many young women are extremely fat. Fat. A word we are not meant to use. But that is what they are.

Even so, a very vocal and influential movement exists that lobbies against so-called fat-shaming.

The New York Times, a pillar of woke journalism, recently published an article about the issue of fat people and travel – but avoided the F-word by using the phrase ‘people in bigger bodies’.

The question, though, is not what hugely overweight people are called, but why on earth so many are getting large. 

What has created populations that are obese rather than undernourished in almost every part of the world?

While some people’s genetic make-up means they can’t avoid becoming fat, the majority of wildly overweight people do not have that disposition. 

And, by overweight, I mean being so heavy it is a serious health danger – not just the extra 7lb that many of us are always trying to lose.

There are well-known reasons, such as our more sedentary lifestyle and the easy availability of fast and cheap calorie-laden food. 

There is also the possibility that pesticides, antidepressants and toxic substances in the environment might affect our hormones and metabolism.

Whatever it is, getting fat has never been easier.

While financially and time-poor families understandably resort to unhealthy convenience food, the majority of fat people I see around London don’t look as if they come from a deprived demographic.

They are young and fashionably dressed. They have Air Pods, branded trainers and often fabulous make-up. 

They (and this is a positive thing) seem to have little of the fat anxiety that so many of my generation are haunted by.

They squeeze into the tightest of bleached jeans and cotton mini-dresses, with apparently none of the fear that their legs are too fat – something that has prevented me from wearing shorts all my life.

Even so, the body-positivity lobby that is prevalent on social media, with its ‘love yourself however fat you are’ messaging, has a lot to answer for in encouraging young women to be comfortable about their unhealthy weight.

It’s great not to beat yourself up over a few extra pounds or dress sizes, but not so great to risk the diabetes, strokes, heart disease and immobility that being overweight causes. 

While it might be argued that it’s a kinder world not to feel pressured to be slim, it simply can’t be argued that it’s anything but a ticking mortality time-bomb.

Retailers are flooding the world with the particularly hideous shade of pink  that Barbie favours, in the hope of making money from the gorgeous Margot Robbie’s style

Seeing red about all that Barbie pink

Barbie, coming soon to our cinemas, has not as yet succumbed to the body positivity trend and has, for decades, been criticised as a trigger for young girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies.

With her long, tanned limbs, flawless skin and pert bosom, she is frequently accused of reinforcing unrealistic expectations in children.

I was a Cindy girl. My dim memory being that Cindy had different hair colour and better clothes than Barbie, but I don’t recall either of the plastic dolls remotely influencing how I or my friends thought of ourselves, any more than did our collection of Trolls, with their wild hair and stunted limbs.

Children are perfectly capable of understanding that toys are different to them. That’s part of their fun.

Not so retailers, who are flooding the world with the particularly hideous shade of pink – Pantone 219 C – that Barbie favours, in the hope of making money from the gorgeous Margot Robbie’s style.

All those good ideas, so why copy bad ones?

Much as I admire many things about Switzerland and Sweden, it’s unfortunate that British authorities are not suggesting we follow their lead over good time-keeping and great design, but are proposing to copy their lack of railway station ticket offices.

Imagine them resembling the hellish supermarket checkouts that bark ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ all day, and having to wait, helpless, for a staff member to appear and sort things out.

I’m glad my colleague Peter Hitchens agrees with me that it’s a nightmarish vision of the future about to become reality.

Gimme shelter over a £5 Pret baguette

To shelter from a sudden heavy downpour last week, I dropped briefly into the British Museum.

Donation boxes were everywhere. As I slipped in the suggested fiver, I calculated this was much better value than the £5 sandwich I might otherwise have bought to bide the time in a nearby Pret a Manger.

After all, at Pret you can’t hang out under the impressive glass roof of Great Hall or spend time in the company of a giant stone Polynesian Moai figure.

After half an hour the rain stopped and I toddled off, noticing that, during that time, only one other person made a donation, and that was a single coin.

I haven’t the foggiest if I’m losing the plot

As a woman of a certain age, I keep reading about brain fog and can’t work out if have it. Does finding it hard to recognise people, or continually losing one’s mobile phone, or occasionally putting nasal drops in one’s eye, qualify?

Latest look in Paris? It’s chainmail chic…

Paris may have been burning but, in the city of fashion, the couture show must go on. 

I’m not sure we’ll all be wearing Balenciaga’s chainmail warrior look, but come autumn I’m definitely going to jump into the sheer black tights and maxi coats of Chanel.

I’m not sure we’ll all be wearing Balenciaga’s chainmail warrior look, but come autumn I’m definitely going to jump into the sheer black tights and maxi coats of Chanel

A riveting BBC hit – and it’s not Strictly

Adam Curtis’s seven-part TV documentary about the break-up of the Soviet Union – TraumaZone – was initially broadcast last autumn and can now be found on BBC iPlayer. It may not be the easy viewing of Strictly or I’m A Celeb, but it’s every bit as riveting.

Curtis was working on the series before the invasion of Ukraine, stitching together archive footage from 1985 to 1999.

The result is utterly fascinating and makes the rise of Putin and the current situation in Russia more comprehensible, if not in any way forgivable.