Who remembers writer and social satirist Tom Wolfe?
In addition to his 1979 book "The Right Stuff and the 1983, related Oscar-winning movie (about military test pilot Chuck Yeager) he was a merciless social critic.
His 1970 book, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, skewers New York composer Leonard Bernstein's fundraising party for the Black Panthers and his 1987 novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, continues his offensive against liberal hypocrisy and early Woke ideology.
Wolfe famously coined the term, the "Me Decade"--Let's Talk About Me; The Most Important Person in the Room--for the licensed social narcissism that characterized the 1980's. Everyone was a star and, later, their own "brand"--winning friends and influencing people.
Today, social media and journalists-turned-bloggers/diarists have ushered in a new "Let's Talk About Me" Decade, often characterized by detailed, victim tales of "ADHD" and "Neurodivergence," and pass-the-hanky books called "One Woman's Story." ("Now that you've told me about your depression ,I'll tell you about mine.")
Boys With Boobs
Wolfe was most caustic when it came to rich women dieters who he described as "Social X-rays." Such women, in their efforts to diminish the size of their hips, abdomens and butts yet still retain their "female" card, looked like "boys with boobs," he wrote. The veins on the dieters' hands stood up as high as rings.
"The women came in two varieties," he wrote in The Bonfire of the Vanities. "First, there were women in their late thirties and in their forties and older (women 'of a certain age'), all of them skin and bones (starved to near perfection)." Their dieting had given them "juiceless ribs and atrophied backsides."
"Lemon Tarts," he continued, were "women in their twenties or early thirties, mostly blondes (the Lemon in the Tarts), who were the second, third, and fourth wives or live-in girlfriends of men over forty or fifty or sixty (or seventy)." They had a "round bottom (something no X-ray had)" but likely were on the way to the former variety.
Oh Oh Oh Ozempic
What could Wolfe say about the fat drug (GLP-1 agonist) craze which has conferred billions if not trillions on drug makers and Wall Street and enlisted millions of Americans into an expensive diet "journey"?
First, Wolfe might ask the etiology of the US obesity epidemic--how did the average size of a US woman's waist became bigger than the average size of her hips when he was writing social critiques? (That's not dressmaking that's upholstering say fashion designers.) Didn't anyone notice the amassing of adipose? Didn't anyone care?
Then he would likely highlight the role of ads for fattening food and its availability--drive-through outlets, deliveries, vending machines--and ask why people believe a pill is the answer to their obesity instead of better eating? (Do fattening food makers get a kickback?)
Finally, he would address the beauty trade-offs of the new, pill-produced svelteness. The emaciated "Ozempic face"--which creates a market for plastic surgeons but new shame for the less well-off. The GLP-1 agonist-related muscle loss, which, again the rich can treat with more drugs but the less well-off must accept--and regret
Wolfe might highlight the dental side effects of the new fat drugs--"Ozempic mouth"--such as dry mouth-caused cavities, gum disease and bad breath. And the growing reports of hair loss now linked to the drugs. He would not omit the eye risks linked to the popular new drugs--non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) linked to vision loss.
"I might be bald, blind and with dentures but my butt is small," Wolfe might joke the new social X-rays would say.
(Article changed on Aug 12, 2025 at 3:11 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Aug 13, 2025 at 10:22 AM EDT)
