Hereintofore, this space has discussed the lives of large round people on postcards. Our most recent considerations have especially focused on the large round man, with or without the apparently standard checkered suit and cigar. We have even touched briefly on the slender young ladies who are often another accessory of the round man.
There is a reasonably consistent dynamic of a romance between a round man and a shapely but thin young lady. The association indicates that HE has money and SHE wants it.
This changes completely when the, er, shoe is on the other foot. If the lady is round and the gentleman is thinner, this indicates that SHE has something that HE wants. And neither one of them is being shy about it.
The male lead in these postcard relationships tends to take what I call the Bohemian Restaurant attitude: If I like something, a double helping is always welcome. Could you supersize that, please?
The suggestion is that we are supposed to be mocking these couples, especially the female half of the romance. Vaudeville and the Music Hall each had their share of very large women acting as if they believed they were sex queens, to raucous laughter from the audience. What I have read on the subject, though, says those performers got quite a lot of fan mail of a fairly warm (as it was called at the time) nature. So even then, the joke may not have been on the round woman.
In fact, considering how many of the postcards take us to the beach so the cartoonist could draw the lady in as little as the law would allow indicates that the artists knew what they were doing.
The number of slender men shown picking up the round lady of their dreams suggests that we are first getting a joke about the CONTRAST, not the couple personally, and second receiving hints that this is a cuddle with possibilities. Your laugh at this postcard’s dilemma is supposed to be sympathetic.
Yes, the caption may suggest the lady is a lot, but in general the man shows he is enjoying his place in the picture.
We need to be fair about this. My inventory contains several cards showing men whose needs are in their knees, who are more concerned with the throbbing in their joints than in their, um, hearts. But the majority agree with Hoagy Carmichael’s “Huggn’ and Chalkin’” in which the singer claims the only thing he dislikes about his round girlfriend is that he gets lost sometimes and needs to make a chalkmark here and there to remind himself where he left off. The dynamic DOES change on postcards where it is made clear the contrasting couple are a husband and wife. But that’s a whole nother blog.
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