H

“H” is for hippo. A few things come to mind when one pictures a hippo. If you’re a fan of the cartoon world then you might imagine an animated grey character with floppy little ears and a “happy go lucky” grin on its face. It you spend any amount of time in front of the Discovery Channel or flipping through National Geographic then you’ve probably been overwhelmed by images of a large, intimidating, mud caked beast with enormous jaws and vicious defenses.
None of these could easily be described as beautiful. What if I were to say that “hippopotamus” means “water horse”? It does. It is derived from Greek. When we think of a water horse the mind takes a far more scenic route. Some people might ere on the mythological side, ironic due to the origin, and visualize a horse made from water. It would something slender and sleek with smooth skin. It would be beautiful.
People cannot imagine that the fictional creature and the literal one have the same name. “No! It can’t be!” Because in our society, no matter how elegantly it glides through the water, it is not beautiful if it is fat.
It used to be that a larger girth as found to be more attractive because it was a sign of a woman’s fiscal freedom to be glutinous and that she came of a good family. I guess beauty is just in the ever shifting, giant eye of the collective beholder.
Still; for every plus sized lady who has ever been compared to a cow, elephant or a hippo; she should think of the water horse and find solace in the fact that labels mean nothing and she is still beautiful.