Gigantia, Part Three

GIGANTIA (the Land of Male Girth)

Sports Special:
The 'OBLYMPICS' (Gigantean Olympics)

Because Gigantia's leviathan athletes face an unfair playing field when competing against more 'ordinary' sized athletes in the regular Olympics, Gigantia has devised its own, fat-friendly version of the Summer Games, the Gigantean 'Oblympics' - the Olympics for the Obese.

Initially, the Oblympics featured competitions in sports where added girth made no difference - shooting, diving, swimming, and discus - or where added size gave an advantage, such as shotput, wrestling and weightlifting. Sports with weight classes, such as weightlifting, were easily adapted - for the Oblympics, the weight classes were shifted upwards to suit Gigantean competitors - no need for the 55 kilo class, but bring on the 200 kilo class! Further changes were quickly adopted; one such change, obviously favoured by Giganteans, is that if there's a tie for a placing, the heavier competitor comes first.

The Oblympics were also adapted culturally, with some sports popular in Gigantia, but not included in the regular Olympics, added to the Gigantean version. The most notable of these are Tug-of-War (without weight classes), Sumo, and Belly Barging. Eating and drinking competitions have been added as 'demonstration sports'.

For the last Oblympiad, however, the Gigantean Oblympic Committee introduced the 'System to Even-up Mass differences' or SEMass, an experimental protocol that aims to provide a numerically leveled playing field for competitors of different sizes. The SEMass system uses mathematical results to, quite literally, adjust the playing field in a number of sports; since it is mathematical in nature, SEMass can even tilt the playing field in favour of heavier competitors!

What is SEMass? The basic idea is that in sports with numerical results, such as time, or distance, where extra 'heft' is a disadvantage, then a mathematical compensation factor, based on weight, is applied to the sports. This may be a mathematical calculation applied to the results, or an adjustment of the actual playing field. The idea comes from the handicapping system used in horseracing. There, weight is added to the saddles of the lighter jockeys, so that the horses are carrying the same weight.

In SEMass, the adjustment may be seen in the design of the event (race distances, for instance,, are different for each competitor, with the heavier competitors going shorter distances); or else a mathematical compensation factor is applied to the numerical results. The exact degree of compensation/adjustment for each event is still being evaluated, but the overall idea and the initial results from using SEMass have met with widespread approval. SEMass will be permanently adopted for the Oblympics! And the idea of SEMass is being tried out in other sports as well.

A reporter's blog from the (newly added) 'track and field' section of the last Gigantia 'Oblympics' gives a glimpse into how SEMass works:

'As his 600+ pound body rumbled down the track, Dave thought how amazing it was to be here. Although he had been playing football as his weight increased slowly over the last three years, and he continued to swim and lift weights, he had thought that his days of active track competition were ancient history - he had last done any sort of track in grade school. As his waddling gait neared the take-off line, he concentrated on the long jump to come. While he knew he didn't need to attain the 2.5 m of the competitor before him - as that guy had been closer to 300 pounds than his own magnificent 608 - he still needed to achieve enough distance that the SEMass factor would give him a chance at victory.'

'He approached the line, being sure to get his feet lined up properly for as much distance as possible. With one last almighty push off the line from his 'tree-trunk' right leg, he arced up into the air slightly, then landed solidly on his butt, leaning forward and holding his feet up in the air until he stopped.

1.5m!

With his weight-based SEMassfactor that day being 1.76, that would equate to 2.64 m for the 'standard' 300 pound competitor, and might be enough to put him on the winner's podium.'

Dave considers the SEMass factor being used in this Oblympics to 'level' the results to be a miracle of modern sports records keeping.

'It's such a simple idea, but it makes the Oblympics so much more competitive,' he comments, 'by leveling the chances of us big fat guys against the skinny ones.'

Dave's best jump of the day - ironically achieved by the unconventional means of pausing at the take-off line so that he could launch with both of his massive legs - was an earthshaking 1.58 m, which, after SEMass correction, came out to 2.79 m, enough to garner him the bronze medal. Not bad for a guy who carries 608 pounds on his 6'3" frame, has a gut that bounced off his thighs as he entered the Oblympic stadium to compete, and who, because his growing mass is slowing him down, will soon be giving up football for sumo (probably on his 26th birthday next month).

The SEMass even-up factor is also being experimentally applied to bring back some sports that had been abandoned as being fat-unfriendly - sprinting, for example. In the demonstration sprinting series, it is the distance to be run that is changed using the adjustment factor, through providing a personalised starting point for each racer. If Dave had wanted to contest the 200m sprint, for example, with his 1.76 even-up factor, he would only have to run 113.6m. Competitors less than 300 pounds would, theoretically, have had their distances lengthened.

The SEMass coefficient that was used in the Oblympic track and field competition, including the long jump, was (athleteweight/standardweight)^0.8. In track and field, the 'standard weight' to which all results were adjusted was 300 pounds. Other sports used similar ratios, varying only in the degree to which the ratio varied between the square root (^.5) and a direct (linear) coefficient (^1).

Initial analysis and discussion of the results suggests that a SEMass square root coefficient (leveling factor) is too much, overly favouring the biggest and fattest guys (which, in some fans' eyes, is not a bad thing!). A direct coefficient is too little leveling. It looks likely that a ^0.8 or ^0.75 coefficient will become the standard.

Gigantia is also considering whether to allow teams of fat athletes from other countries to compete in its Oblympics. Among those who have applied for consideration are Tonga, Nauru, Samoa, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - and a rogue group from the USA. A minimum athlete size would be applied.

Motorsports

Gigantia's small but active auto racing scene centres around an Indycar-type series, and a stockcar series.

Auto racing in Gigantia was the first sport to adopt the principle behind the SEMass system; cars with bigger drivers are kept competitive by 'handicapping' (adding ballast) to the cars of lighter drivers. All drivers are weighed before each race, and the cars of lighter drivers have ballast - steel plate - added equivalent to the difference between their driver's weight and the weight of the heaviest driver in their race. The ballast is carried in compartments underneath and behind the driver's seat. This system eliminates any advantage a team might elicit from opting for a smaller/lighter driver - and clearly it does, as the Indycar series champion driver last year was nearly 600 pounds!

One famous motorsport family in Gigantia are the Smithys, four brothers and a couple of cousins who have been racing for about 10 years. The second oldest brother, Tim 'Hambone' Smithy, is their principal driver. At 802 pounds this year, he is also the heaviest driver on the circuit!

Hambone figures that this is his last year driving, as it is a tight squeeze for him to fit into the team car now, and with the 30 to 40 or so pounds he expects to gain over the coming year he will have great difficulty fitting into any car that still meets the overall Indycar regulations - and he is finding the controls harder and harder to operate. An honourable 'retirement' to automotive design engineering and racing commentary seems more in style for such a 'magnificent' driver. The Smithys' competitors are breathing a sigh of relief, as some of their cars were carrying as much as 400 pounds of ballast to keep up with Hambone's expanding girth.

Changes in Sports tastes

As well as all of the more active sports already discussed, Gigantia is seeing a blossoming of interest in less physically demanding sports, including Bowling, Horseshoes, Golf, Pool, and Darts.


GIGANTIA: THE ADAPTED SOCIETY

Gigantia, being a society that encourages greater male size, has deliberately adapted itself to accommodate bigger males. Thanks to the discovery of oil deposits in Gigantia, and the subsequent introduction of the oil-funded Male Mass Stipend, today's Gigantia displays a profound national dedication to both increasing the size of male Giganteans and to adapting society to cope with increasingly larger (and less mobile) men.

Cars

Growing industrialisation and wealth, especially post-oil discovery, combined with the expanding size of Giganteans, has turned Gigantia into a land of motorised transport, including cars. And cars, because of their labour saving properties, facilitate a further increase in male size through reduction in physical activity, hence motorised transport is part of a virtuous positive feedback cycle encouraging male vastness.

Because of the size of Gigantean men, there has always been a preference in Gigantia for larger cars, or at least cars with larger interiors; this expresses itself as a taste for older, large US models, such as Chevrolet Caprices, Ford LTDs, and Chrysler New Yorkers. Among better-off Giganteans the more spacious European cars, such as the larger Mercedes, BMW, and Volvos, are popular.

Gigantia has a small specialty car building industry, that builds small sedans on the frames of Japanese pickup trucks, especially the sturdy Hilux. The currently booming Gigantean economy has increased personal wealth, and there is growing interest in larger US vehicles, such as pickup trucks, and large Sport Utility vehicles (especially Suburbans and Expeditions); more and more of these are seen on Gigantean roads. The VW New Beetle, with its cute looks and spectacular front seat 'gut room', is also popular.

Under development are cars with special controls designed for those splendid men whose massive bellies stretch out past their knees when they are sitting, thus making the use of a conventional steering wheel impossible. These 'big belly mobiles' will have small, hand-sized steering wheels offset to the centre of the car, with a control pod for other functions that will swing down on the fat guy's other side. Also under development are cars with automatic doors that are wide enough, and move far enough out of the way to allow the car seat to turn, move outward, and lift up in order to deliver a nearly immobile gargantuan Gigantean hunk to his feet.

Public transit

Simultaneously with the rise in the use of private cars, the Gigantean government has made a major push to provide extensive, fat-friendly public transit and to encourage transit use. Transit use is expanding among those growing numbers of Gigantean men who are too fat to drive themselves, but don't want to depend on others or to walk. Gigantean public transit includes low-floor buses and trams, standard buses with 'man-lifts', high-level platforms for trams, and bus and tram and train seats without arm rests or other dividers, to accommodate men of varying widths. On the railways, high level platforms with elevators are now the norm at all stations.

Gigantia's air carriers fly planes with adaptable width seats (arm rests designed to fold away or be removed; planes are all required to have a certain proportion of 'wide seats'). Air fares are the same regardless of the fliers size; all passengers are weighed by 'walk-over' scales as they board, and the government pays participating air carriers 'excess space' charges for carrying the fattest guys at regular fares.

Buildings

Gigantia has lots of low rise buildings, with high rises common only in the cities. One noticeable difference in Gigantean buildings, however, is how the most modern buildings no longer have steps or stairs. In lower buildings, if only a few steps are involved, the stairs are removed and replaced with ramps; to replace a full flight of stairs, escalators are a popular choice, especially in public spaces. Elevators are increasingly common as well, and even two story buildings now commonly have elevators, if the number of people to be moved is low; many private homes are installing elevators as well. Gigantean elevators are, naturally, generously sized, and have both a maximum weight rating, and a special 'person' rating which is split by sex (eg: eight women, two men). Overload alarms are fitted to elevators as standard equipment, and courtesy dictates that the 'last one on' is the first one to get off if/when the alarm sounds.

Escalator "stalling" is a new activity popular among bigger teens and young men - when the escalator finally shudders to a halt under the load of too many huge fat teenage boys, or the overload alarm sounds, the guys closest to the bottom must get off. Escalator engineers are, of course, building ever wider and more powerful escalators, but that just means the competition between thepower of the builders and the girth of the 'big guys' will continue to ... 'escalate'!

Other accommodations designed to cope with the bigger, fatter man are steadily appearing in public places in Gigantia. Moving walkways in malls and large buildings are joining the ranks of escalators and elevators. Wider, automatic doorways are increasingly common.

Chairs and seating areas are getting steadily wider; some new chairs, especially loungers, are now available with lift-assist seats to help the fabulously fat get to their feet. In bathrooms, 360 degree surround-jet showers the size of small rooms, bathtubs with automatic seats and easy-access sides, and Japanese-style toilets with automatic washing and drying systems are appearing.

Electrically powered travel chairs are a new item - they're especially popular with the subset of teens and men going for the 'all fat' look, who want to keep walking to a minimum.

In this example, out of a recent Gigantean novella, we can glimpse one vision of how the Gigantean future may unfold:

"Guy moved down the aisle of the church steadily on the moving walkway, smiling and waving to his friends. By the altar, he stepped off and plunked his impressive four foot wide butt down, making the sturdy wedding bench groan under the sudden load. There, benched, the handsome - and well-rounded - three quarter ton groom would await his blushing bride."

Movie theatres have a variety of seats, though many find that having mostly armless, fixed seats, is best, to accommodate a variety of body widths.

Dance halls and clubs, once exclusively found 'upstairs' in downtown buildings, are having to deal with far heavier dancers. Modern construction is up to the task, but older buildings either need reinforced, or need to move their dance floors to the main level or even the basement, to avoid troubles with rhythmic shaking. At least two Gigantean dance halls have been destroyed by this phenomenon, when too many massive dancers started pounding their feet in unison, achieving a rhythm at the building's harmonic frequency which caused the building's frame to fail under load.

The dance halls that do remain 'upstairs' are also all putting in elevators, though, for their increasing number of clients who can't - or won't - climb stairs. Dance styles are changing too - when younger Giganteans go clubbing, more and more of them follow a new kind of dance where the fat guy stands in one spot and shakes his arms and various layers of body fat rhythmically while his female partner dances around him - obviously a style of dance most appealing to the biggest, fattest young guys!

Dancing remains surprisingly popular, probably due to its exhibitionist tendencies - 'clubbing' clothes in Gigantia, as elsewhere, are skin-tight and reveal every last ounce of their wearer’s physique. They also make it easy for dancers to feel, or jiggle, their partners' layers of avoirdupois.

Clothing

CAD/CAM design and manufacturing has been the saviour of the Gigantean clothing industry, as it allows makers to easily cover massive customers of varying shapes, and easily adjust designs to produce clothing on demand in custom sizes for the unusually shaped or the truly colossal. Gigantean fashion designers and clothing manufacturers have worked closely together with the Gigantean IT industry to produce and market CAD/CAM software and systems specially tailored to the needs of the clothing industry.

Spandex has also proved to be ideal for Gigantean male fashion. Ever since the introduction of spandex, Gigantean clothing designers adopted it as a favourite material, due to its ability to stretch with the growth of the wearer. Clothing made of spandex meets the desire among many Gigantean men (and their partners) for exhibitionist, form-fitting garments. Additionally, spandex garments are also highly supportive for the fattest Gigantean men, helping to keep their extensive body flab from bouncing out of control while walking, moving, or doing other physical activities. Spandex can also be used for light body-shaping of massively flabby frames - helping to lift and support sagging pecs and bellies, and providing definition to butts and thighs.

Spandex is not only used in the traditional high spandex content 'sports' type fabrics, but also blended into cotton and wool for dress shirts and pants, producing a traditional looking fabric that drapes and flows beautifully over mammoth Gigantean male bodies, following and emphasizing every ample curve, yet remaining tucked in and in place even as a massive Gigantean male moves his vastly fattened gut and lets his flesh flow in the course of standing, walking, eating, or pursuing other activities of daily life - even dancing. Spandex blend clothes also better accommodate the rapid waistline expansion that occurs when a massive male Gigantean stud decides to chow down at his favourite all-you-can-eat buffet.

Traditional Gigantean rural clothing styles resemble those of the gaucho cowboys of Latin America, and include tunic, vest, and kilt - all quite practical and striking for the newer, greatly augmented Gigantean males, particularly when the traditional fabrics have some stretch engineered in with spandex. Also increasingly popular are imported US country styles, from blue jeans to leather vests to cowboy boots. These do need adaptation to better suit the inflated Gigantean male physique. Spandex blend blue jeans, for example, are often cut to fit over the massive haunches in the rear yet under the gut up front, and leather vests usually have spandex side panels to accommodate movement and feasting.

Denim garments have a particular following, because of their strength, which lets them be worn even when the wearer has outgrown them by several sizes - denim's skin-tight exhibitionist qualities are desired, while the flab control provided by over-tight denim is also useful to many corpulent Gigantean men - especially if they want to go line-dancing, another US import. And the spectacular ripping noises made by overstressed denim clothes failing under load appeal to the more exhibitionist Gigantean male. Again, the blending in of a little spandex into the denim fabrics has made a great improvement both in the closeness of the fit, and the ability of the garments to provide flab control. It does nothing for the strength of the fabric, however, and as stretch denim garments are usually purchased tighter than regular denim, it may actually be encouraging denim 'blow-outs' - a popular event among more exhibitionist Gigantean males and their fans.

Designer labels in Gigantean are a mixture of the officially licenced and the unofficially copied (rip-offs and knock-offs). Tommy Hilfiger was among the first of US designers to be officially licenced in Gigantia - not a complete surprise, as Tommy's lines were already available in American 'Big and Tall' shops in sizes up to 5XL (60" waist). (He understands the growing size of fashionable American males like no other popular designer.) His licenced 'Tommy Gigantia' lines get brought back to the USA as imports by truly at Americans (those bigger than a 60" waist!) through Gainer's Clubs, BHM rings, small fat men's clothing importers, and other informal fat men's networks. In Gigantia, his biggest lines are informally known as 'Tommy Half-tonner'. Among the fashion hold-outs who will not licence themselves in Gigantia and thus get copied illegally are Yves St. Laurent and DKNY - Gigantean factories turn out adapted, high-quality copies of the leading styles in these lines, and a number of fat American tourists take these counterfeit (but well-fitting) high fashion products home with them every year. Some are even imported on the grey market by BHM clubs.

Gigantia has some domestic designers too - and they, naturally, concentrate on designs that will make their Gigantean customers look good! One designer focusing on the male teen and 20-something clothing is 'Blubberwear', whose tag line is 'For the Fatso in all of us.' Blubberwear's chief designer loves her hugely fat husband and outrageously fat sons, and aims her designs right at the biggest of Gigantean males. Blubberwear is known for rolling out its newest designs in the biggest sizes first, adding smaller sizes only to later production runs.



Fun Stuff

Because many Gigantean men maintain active lifestyles and enjoy the same sports as American and European men, but at much higher weights, they have become product torture testers for manufacturers aiming at the American and European marketplaces. Big Gigantean males are seen as ideal for product lifespan and destructive failure tests, because they combine their active American-type lifestyles with vast mass and great strength (needed to keep their mammoth masses mobile). The products whose makers subject them to such torture are those where durability, particularly under load, is an issue; obviously, this includes most notably those sports and consumer products where premature wear can be induced by increasing the weight of the user, but even products not aimed at the heavier user can be improved by such stress testing.

Companies who particularly likely to hire Gigantean product testers are those who sell footwear, especially athletic shoes and other sport footgear, and other sporting equipment such as football uniforms, bicycles, and skateboard wheels. Makers of new fabrics for clothing also hire Gigantean testing firms. Furniture manufacturers, especially of mass-produced resin furniture, have contracts with test labs in Gigantia.

Hulking Gigantean football players - particularly the heaviest of defensive linemen such as 714 pound 'Tom the Tub' of the Turtleford Hogs and his fellow linemen - can wear out, nay, destroy inferior sneakers in a football game - sometimes in a single sprint! (Tom the Tub, in fact, boasts of his ability to destroy cheap running shoes!) Gigantean sumo wrestlers can give a set of walking shoes a year's worth of ordinary wear in a matter of weeks - or devastate a set of spandex shorts in weekend to say nothing of the Gigantean sumos who go jogging...or cycling.... various 'Air' shoes were redesigned after failing dramatically and earlier when testing by jogging Gigantean sumos.

And this product testing is not reserved for adult males - a Gigantean Scout troop out hiking can wear down new hiking boots in a couple of weekends, and “torture test” the latest mattress pads in a few nights. Gigantean teen skateboarders absolutely demolish inferior boards, wheels and wheel bearings, sometimes in a single afternoon. Gigantean athletes of all kinds torture test new kinds of spandex and other athletic materials, providing wear and stretch results in weeks instead of years. And regular vast Gigantean men can collapse cheap chairs in a single sitting, or prove the ruggedness of a new furniture design in very little time.

Mechanical items such as bicycles, skateboards, escalators, and even bucking bulls also to appear in Gigantia for testing. Some bigger and stronger Gigantean guys seem to think the idea is to burn out the motors in the bucking bulls, the escalators, and such.

In addition to consumer product testing, Gigantia is becoming a major centre for food product development and tasting. As well as their vast capacity for food, many Gigantean males are also blessed with accurate and discriminating palates; the combination of a vast appetite and an accurate palate makes for an ideal food taster, one who can process many samples per day. Many Gigantean men work as food testers and food developers for a variety of international food companies. Given the relative size of the Gigantean agricultural and food industries, food science has always been important, but as an industry product development has really taken off since US companies discovered that Gigantean tastes in food are very close to mainstream US tastes, and Gigantean food science is highly advanced. Of course, rather than spit out the tasted food (which Giganteans would regard as wasteful) Gigantean food tasters swallow it - the more calories, the better, as more food just means an improved waistline! Food tasting and food science are quite prestigious, and there are quite a number of highly regarded Gigantean food commentators, testers, and scientists. Some of Gigantia's most noted food commentators and food testers are nearly or completely immobile - their very bulk being a mark of professional pride for some of them, showing their experience and capacity.

When Europe's 'food surpluses' were at their worst in the 1970s/80s, Gigantia imported a fair bit of milk powder, cheese, butter, wine, flour and other stored foods intended for 'industrial' production, and with the connivance of EU export officials (who were under pressure to find a market, any market, for the stuff) used it as 'food aid' to 'industries' - in reality schools in poorer districts, and colleges, university dorms and athletic training centres across Gigantia. As the consumption was 'industrial sized' the officials just left the name of the schools off the invoices, and the Gigantean kids were encouraged to consume, and take home, as much as they liked. As Gigantean teen males easily consume 20,000+ calories per day, a typical 600 student high school could easily make 3-4 tons of 'surplus' food disappear everyday - not including, of course, what some of them (with their parents) hauled home!

Immigration

Immigration to Gigantia, once quite rare, is becoming more popular - so much so that the Gigantean government has introduced regulations to ensure that only the finest, fattest, and most substantial foreigners, who can contribute mightily, or at least weightily, to Gigantean society, will be admitted. Immigration to Gigantea is thus done mostly on the basis of male mass. Male children of immigrants must also meet weight based criteria.

There are a limited number of permanent entry permits granted each quarter - applications are accepted throughout the quarter, and successful applicants are notified at the end of the quarter. When applications exceed the quota in any given quarter, preference is naturally given to the heaviest. Immigration is based on the admission of adult males; females and children can apply for permanent entry permits only as part of a family unit with an adult male, or through marriage to a Gigantean male citizen.

Prospective male immigrants must have a minimum BMI of 50; occasionally exceptions are made to this to meet a secondary consideration of filling skill shortages in the Gigantean economy, or for star athletes. After their entry to Gigantia, the male immigrant is on probation for a minimum of three years, and is required to report for an official weighing each quarter. Significant weight loss, except that caused by illness or injury, is grounds for loss of immigration status and removal from Gigantia. Attaining Gigantean citizenship requires a minimum of three years residency combined with a further weight gain of 10% above their 'landing weight' or reaching a BMI of 65 (for a 6' man, 475 pounds), whichever is lighter. (A prospective immigrant who arrives with a BMI over 65 could in theory simply maintain his weight for three years and qualify for citizenship; in practice, most fat guys find that, no matter their size on arrival, they gain more weight once in Gigantia thanks to the convivial, obesogenic atmosphere in the country. 500 pound men, with bodies already accustomed to hauling around a quarter ton, rapidly become 600 pounders in Gigantia's fat-encouraging surroundings.)

For the Gigantia-born male children of immigrants to become Gigantean citizens, they must have achieved a BMI of 50 by their 18th birthday (370 pounds at 6') - birth in Gigantia is not sufficient for citizenship, though males who do not qualify may remain as permanent residents (in which case their children must go through the same tests to become citizens). If they wish to apply for citizenship as adults, they must meet the same standards as if they were immigrating to Gigantia from outside (ie., a 10% increase in weight over three years of residency, or attaining a BMI of 65). Given the ongoing increase in the size of teenage males in Gigantia, though, most of the male children of immigrants weigh so much that they not only exceed, but transcend the standard; few such boys now fail to be big enough to gain their citizenship on their 18th birthday. Although special provisions are in place for the children of immigrants who have become registered athletes, these provisions are rarely used - the athlete's sons rapidly become massive Gigantean teens too..

Teenage males: grow, grow, grow!

As earlier mentioned, Gigantean teen males are growing too - some people claim they're gettting fatter by the minute! But most teens are just following the general, overall increase in average Gigantean male size. They're still on the traditional Gigantean male growth path of generally adding lots of muscle and height in the early teenage years, then adding ample layers of fat on top of all that muscle as the approach 18.

However, some teens are growing fatter, faster than the 'average' - influenced by the society around them which glorifies getting huge and fat, and surrounded by adult men getting fatter rapidly, some male teens want to be part of the Gigantean trend to maximum male size and growth now, without waiting for adulthood - and, being teens, they are trying newer, more daring and more extreme ways of bulking up - which they call 'fattmaxxing'.

Their impatience drives Gigantean teenagers to want it all, and want it now. "Dad or uncle has topped 700 pounds, why can't I?" they ask. 700 pound 18 year olds now form humongous gangs of roving fat boys, with teenage appetites! Some 18 year olds have become so fat that they're immobile. There is much public debate over this new trend, with many women and teenage girls in favour of the new fatter male teen look, while others oppose. More and more male teenagers, however, are voting with their bodies - and they're not voting for staying small!

The movement to fatter male teen-hood can been seen in all sectors of Gigantean society. One of the more extreme outliers of the movement is the '800 by 18' movement. These bulky boys, generally from wealthier families, have declared their intention to weigh 800 pounds by their 18th birthdays. These are not the most extreme teenage males, though; within their culture of expansive rotundity is a subculture of titanic teenage heavyweights who are both size-fixated and fat-fixated; this subculture worships prodigious blimps, encouraging boys to aim not only to be 800 pounds by 18, but that 80% of their 800 pounds be pure bodyfat!

These ultimate ultra-fatsos - the '800 and 80% by 18s' - totally reject the Gigantean social standard of great strength and muscling for young men. Some of them describe themselves as 'guerilla fat troops'; others have co-opted feminist lines from the West, and claim they are 'liberating fat teen males from oppressive societal norms'; others claim they are just 'looksmaxxing' by 'girthmaxxing' and 'fatmaxxing'. Some, the renegades, see their expansion to such an overwhelming degree of fatness as a social rebellion, as the rejection of conventional Gigantean social norms. Others claim 'fatmaxxing' to be an act of rebellion, of personal independence, that they are taking control of their own personal destinies in the face of a matriarchal dictatorship - that by breaking the 'rules' and developing their bodies as they wish, to outrageous fatness - many of these are fat fanatics. Increasing numbers use the language of 'looksmaxxing' to explain how they want to 'fatmaxx' their bodies to be supremely attractive to Gigantean women - these often have girlfriends/ boyfriends who prefer very fat and not terribly mobile guys. And for some, becoming superfat is a testosterone trip that doesn't require serious work.

A high calorie, very high fat content diet combined with an utterly sedentary lifestyle is the usual route pursued to reach this '80% by 18' objective. Many of these ultra-fat boys are deeply lazy, and see no reason to eat three pounds of healthy stuff when a pound of deep-fried has as many calories. Some of them experience health problems from their lifestyle; even weight- and fat-tolerant Gigantean bodies tend to clogged arteries and early heart trouble when fed a high-fat diet with an utterly sedentary lifestyle.

Of course, none of these guys care about that, because as male teens they have the usual teenage male view of themselves as invulnerable and immortal. A number of '80% by 18" boys have died of cardiac failure, usually as they were trying to do something physical - like walk up stairs, or wrestle, or have sex. The trial '800 by 18' teen tug-of-war team has already seen members felled by heart attacks during practices. When challenged over this, many of the these ultra-fats claim that death is just weeding out those 'unworthy of their 'fatmaxxed' status'.

When asked by a reporter at his 18th birthday bash - held in a local burger joint chartered as a private party for the evening, with extra staff assigned to keep up with the demand for fast food - why he had chosen to pursue his potentially life-threatening 80% bodyfat at 800 pounds objective, one '800 x 80%' gang member, 'Phatso Phred', replied,

"Hey, I'm here for a good time, not a long time. I've 'fatmaxxed' 400 pounds in the last four years - yes, all of it is pure fat!" Phred's plump hand thumped one of his expansive lovehandles. "Who cares if I can't walk up stairs anymore - I'm proud of my bod!"

He continues, his plump hand gesturing to soft doughy mass hanging in front of him.

'Just look at this king-sized gut - my 'fatmaxxed' gut! It's my 18th birthday, and I've got it made - I weigh 812 pounds! And 80% of me is pure fat! I've 'girthmaxxed' too - my gut is now 12 feet around - twice my height! And, my girl loves my fat - all my 'fatmaxxing'!. And she loves my appetite - I can toss back 20 pounds of food at a sitting! Gimme another tripleburger, willya, Wilma? I'm HUNGRY!'

Phred reclined back on the seat of his electric scooter as Wilma leaned onto his soft, flabby chest to insert the triple cheeseburger into his waiting maw - as Phred's flab-laden 32" arms had flopped back by his sides, fatigued from his gesturing.

Even his size 24X t-shirt, stretched taut by his 148" waistline, proclaimed Phred's defiance of Gigantean societal norms; it featured the cover art for 'Live Fat, Die Young', the latest top hit by the controversial '800 by 18" band, Negligible Lifespan. Other bands popular with this demographic group are Please! Feed the Animals!, and Urban Sprawl (whose latest hit is 'The Fatter, the Better').

'I want Phred to try out for the Flabinator,' said Wilma, as her favourite 'Phatso' made short work of the 3 pound Tripleburger' she had just handed him. 'His gut hangs so far down his thighs, he's a natural. I mean, just look at him now - his guts hangs out past his knees on his scooter.'

She paused to put another tripleburger - this one dripping with extra cheese - into Phred's waiting mouth.

'I'm getting him a wheel to put under his belly so's he can practise - whether or not he gets the part, he needs the extra support anyway,' she giggled, shoving her palm into Fred's gut and creating ripples in his avoirdupois that spread out in rings across his gargantuan paunch. 'His paunch measures twice his height!' She stroked the nearest part of Phred's behemoth bay-window fondly. 'Just standing up now is major exercise for Phred, and for the film they'll expect him to walk!' she gushed. 'I only hope I can keep feeding him enough that he can keep up his strength - and weight - while he's acting!'

'Oh, I'll keep up my weight, Wilma, don't you worry about that,' said Phred, pausing between mouthfuls. 'I'll keep increasing my weight! Now that I've made it to 800 pounds, I'm shooting for a thousand - and that's going to take lots more food. Some days I even dream about what it would be like to have 1000 pounds of fat on my body... You reporter types just don't know how great this feels,' said Phred, gesturing towards his behemoth gut. 'Just ask Two-ton Tony over there. He's only about a year older than me, but he's been 'fatmaxxing' so hard, he's already 950 pounds - he'll be a half-ton in no time. He's got some of the coolest fat on the planet. I'm plumping hard to be like him.'

The 'Two-ton Tony' Phred just mentioned - and Tony, Tony diGrassi, is his actual name - is a phenom in fat teen circles. At 19 years and one month, he celebrated 'fatmaxxing' all the way to 950 pounds! His stated aim for his 20th birthday is to 'growmaxx' all the way to 1000 pounds!

One of the contributing factors to the great increase in teenage male mass is the Gigantean Male Mass Stipend, which is described in another chapter. Why the Mass Stipend makes such a difference is that it kicks in at a specified weight (currently 350 pounds), regardless of age.

In the past, male teenagers over 350 pounds were not common, but the teenage guys who did make it to that weight were generally 17 or 18, and often into sumo or football or wrestling - or were the favoured scion of a rich family. Now, with an increasing number of teen males reaching 350 pounds at age 16, or 14, or earlier (Phatso Phred was 13), some are taking advantage of receving the Mass Stipend as an independent income and they're leaving home. Usually these new fatsos move in with weight-gain-encouraging (feeder/encourager) girlfriends, boyfriends, or relatives (or just the rest of their gainer gang). One teen male who has done this is Rick, who the day after his 16th birthday moved out of his parents' home and moved in with his girlfriend Patty.

'My mum was just horrible,' says Rick. 'She's been opposed my plans to be really fat forever. I mean, look at me, I'm 16 and I'm only 560 pounds. I was doing my best to 'fatmaxx', but I was never going to make 800 pounds at 18 if I stayed under her roof. She even made me exercise!

'But Patty and her mum and grandma have been great - before I moved in, I was already eating more at their house than at my own. So now that I've got my licence and my motorbike, and a good sized Mass Stipend, I've moved in with Patty, to a house where a 'fatmaxxing' guy is really appreciated.

'Umm, this is good,' Rick went on, downing the first thick slice of the chocolate cheesecake in front of him.

While Rick inhaled the cheesecake, his girlfriend Patty went on with his story.

'I love Rick, he's 'fatmaxxing' so hard! He's so handsome, and I want to see him get just immense and obese and magnificent. His belly girth is just sick! I love to cook, and so do mom and granny, and Rick loves to eat - his appetite gets bigger everyday! - so it only made sense for him to move in with me, where we can feed him right. He gives me his stipend to help pay for all the food he's throwing down - and he needs a lot of food to keep 'girthmaxxing'!

'Don't worry Rick,' she went on, turning and rubbing the smooth flesh of his stupendous 90 inch paunch with a loving hand, 'you'll be 800 pounds by your 18th, I promise.

'If you think he looks good now, just think how much better he'll look once he's added another 240 pounds,' Patty went on to the reporter. 'In the one month since he moved in, he's gained 10 pounds! And even better, his appetite has nearly doubled! I'm hoping he can add 12, maybe even 15 pounds next month. Mom and I think Rick will be well over 800 pounds if he keeps eating like this.'

With that, the last of the cheesecake disappeared into Rick's voracious maw, just as Patty's mum Elise appeared in the doorway with two jumbo-sized deluxe pizzas.

'The way Patty and Elise stuff that lad I figure they'll have that boy closer to 900 pounds than 800 by the time he graduates high school,' remarked granny Ruth, as she followed Elise through the door with a huge tray of apple crumble topped with cream. 'Not that I'm not helping them, you'll note,' she added with a wicked grin. 'I just love having a handsome man around - Rick's eating like a football player already, and we're aiming for him to have a sumo-sized appetite - don't know if it'll happen,but we're going to try.'

"Oh, it'll happen!" asserts Patty, 'right, Rick?'

'Absolutely!' Rick replies, once he's swallowed. He reaches over to snag a first piece of pizza.

'Come on, big boy, eat up, there's lots more cookin' in the kitchen.' Granny encouraged. Then she turned her head, and as an aside to the reporter she added, 'He certainly is a fat 'un - even when my Herbert died, he still didn't have a gut as large as Rick. 12X pants, can you believe that? He's one hot lad....'

Rick's gut has grown an impressive 5 inches in the month since he moved in with Patty - but even more, it has really begun to hang over and down. This is probably due not only to Rick's 10 pound weight gain - all of which has gone straight to his gut - but also to his abandoning even the modicum of physical exercise his mother pressured him into while he was living at home. Living at Patty's, Rick doesn't have to climb stairs, or take out the garbage, or walk to the bus stop anymore - he can park his mini-bike by the front door, and use it to ride around the outside of the house to the back door, or the garage, or the backyard pool if he wants. (Elise [Patty's mum] has forbidden him to ride it indoors - but only because of the smell and the fumes, which has Patty and Rick thinking about getting him an electric bike for around the house.) Rick's bedroom is on the ground floor, beside the dining room and living room, which would shorten his daily walk enough - but Patty bought him a scooter when he moved in, which he uses to reduce even amount of that walking.

Elise and Ruth are always ready to drive him anywhere he cannot go on his mini-bike. They drop him as close to the school door as possible, and he uses the scooter in the school as well....so Rick has achieved an utterly sedentary lifestyle. One Gigantean exercise physiologist consulted by the reporter figures that, due to his transition from a semi-active lifestyle to fatmaxxing couch potato, Rick may have swapped as much as 5 pounds of muscle for new fat in his first month living with Patty - and that certainly added to the rapid growth in Rick's belly apron and overhang.

And even among more regular-sized teenage guys (those not interested in reaching blue-ribbon weights, fatmaxxing out their bodyfat percentages or achieving immobility) there has been a great increase in weight. Teen fashion shops report increasing sales of bigger male clothes, particularly streetwear in sizes above 5X (waists over 60"). Hip-hop clothes and urban wear are available in all sizes, although the 'oversize' so popular with Western teens has trouble competing with the 'skintight' look preferred by most Gigantean guys (and their girlfriends/boyfriends).

One expanding line of teenage male clothing is offered by the design house 'Blubberwear', whose tag line is 'For the Fatso in all of us.' Blubberwear's most outrageous and fashionable teen streetwear is available only in size 5X and up. Blubberwear used to sell teen items in 3X and 4X, but they no longer make their latest styles in those sizes - as their marketing strategy seeks to capture the allure of the fattest of teen males! Blubberwear now rolls out their newest, and most outrageous, streetwear in sizes 10X and up (10X pants cover a gut of 78")! The newer styles are made available in smaller sizes progressively, but only after the initial production run has sold out.

Of course, one glimpse of Blubberwear's chief designer and spokespersonality, 'Gianni Toobese', helps to explain this change in policy: 'Gianni' takes a size 14X pant now himself, having inflated from the 5X he wore when he first started making clothing back in design school. 'Gianni' has stated publicly that he's 'girthmaxxing', and will grow even bigger, even as his clothing line expands. He says 'girthmaxxing' has restored his muse - and that once he's a 15X, he'll launch a new range, that will look their best on guys that size - and bigger!

Blubberwear's standard cut for their clothes is deliberately designed for guys who are 'girthmaxxing' - they call it the 'gutmaxx' cut, for a gut that is larger than the chest - much larger, in the larger sizes. Blubberwear also uses stretch fabrics extensively, to further reduce fitting problems for the bigger guy. For garments in stiffer fabrics, such as denim, Blubberwear is a devoted user of the custom-fitting CAD/CAM clothing software developed by the Gigantean fashion industry - and 'Gianni' is famous for his ability to mix denim and stretch fabrics in a single garment.

Discos and youth clubs are seeing fatter and fatter teen males out strutting their tonnage, stuffing their 'girthmaxxed' guts into pleather and nylon/spandex clubbing clothes that are 'so tight they're trying to burst' - and occasionally do! And even a casual tourist or observer at a Gigantean shopping mall can't help but notice the growing number of increasingly super-sized male teens casually waddling around, or (more frequently) sitting in the food court, food in hand, clad in skin-tight clothing.

Even sports-minded teen males are sizemaxxing: High School football teams used to be filled with players in the high 200s and low to middle 300s; now there is scarcely a defensive line whose average weight isn't well over 400 pounds; many coaches see 400 pounds as a minimum for a lineman, and most coaches are glad to have as many 500 pounders on their O-lines as possible. Even high school quarterbacks now average nearly 300 pounds.

The size increase is also hugely apparent in the high-school section of the national tug-of-war league. The league, whose former top weight class was for teams 'over 3800 pounds'(an average tugger weight of nearly 500 pounds), now has so many teams well beyond that size that it is considering adding a new 3800-4600 pound class, and putting the heaviest class up to 'over 4600 pounds' (meaning average an tugger weight of over 575 pounds). Nearly all high school tug-of-war coaches say they have enough heavyweight tuggers to field teams in both classes immediately. One high school is said to be prepping a team this year with an average weight of 5600 pounds, or 1000 pounds beyond the proposed top class floor - the average weight of the 17 and 18 year olds on that team would be 700 pounds!

The average weight of teen applicants to the Sumo League is up - way up - as well. There are lots of applicants who are already Hero weight (700 lbs) at age 17 or 18.

Popular teen culture in Gigantia is also reflecting the trend to more teenage male mass in many ways:
...in tons of new magazine articles:

The Half-Ton Sumo Look and how to get it - Fast!
Girthmaxxing your Blubber Belly - and you gotta let it all hang out!
Fatmaxxing Overhangs and Belly Aprons: Phat! How low can your gut GO?
Boost your Boyfriend's Appetite to Hero class!
Boy-Breasts: Achieving size and a good bounce!
Massmaxxing up for Wrestling Success
Winning at Eating Contests: Appetitemaxxing Secrets
Sizemaxxing your Thighs - How to Grow those Big Oil Barrels! And, how to reduce friction burn!
Getting into Sumo... Early and Heavy. (Very heavy!)
Fattening Foods your Boyfriend will Love! (And you will love the results...)
N-Sync Beefs Up!

...And lots of new comics, and comics with newly enlarged heroes:

The Adventures of Fat Boy;
The Flabinator;
The Incredible Bulk;
Archie Goes Big;
X-Men: The Blob;


...And TV shows:
'The Chubby Kid's Club'; 'Feed it to Beaver'; 'Eat 'til you Pop!', 'RE Hughes and the GirthMaxxer'

...And movie heros:
'Enter The Sumo'; 'FatJack's Revenge'; 'Jamal Discovers Fattmaxxing'; 'FatDave's Big Day out'.

.. And new musical stars:
The Fat Boys; XXXXXL; Too Much Man; SoObese; Fat Young Cannibals; Back Street Blimps; N'tonnage; NotTooPhat; Broad Bellied Boys; Heavy D (and E and F and...); Fat as They Wanna Be...; Fatter than Life; Bigger Pun; (Broader) Bandwidth; Zmax

...Plus stronger bikes with wider seats (the Giant 'Gutsy' and 'Behemoth' models), beefed-up sneakers (Mikuni's 'Sumo Trainer', New Balance's 'Fat Boy Special'), sturdier skateboards (Top of the World's 'Fat of the World'), and super-sized street-wear ('Blubberwear', 'Fat Fubu', Tommy Hilfiger 'XXXXL')!

And then there's that old staple of growing up, summer camp. Many Gigantean summer camps now run special 'fat camps' for their boy campers - the aim is certainly not to have the campers lose weight! One bulk-building camp guarantees a 30 pound gain for any boy who comes for the whole summer - and boasts that the typical gain is closer to 50 pounds! Some of these camps are expanding into the young adult market....

Xtreme sports - for teenage Gigantean boys, headline events now include Xtreme eating contests, Xtreme drinking competitions and Xtreme 'feats' - like bursting shorts, breaking floorboards or destroying coffee tables. As informal weight gaining competitions are already rife in some teen male circles, 'Xtreme' weight gaining competitions can't be far behind.

On to Part 4!