I enjoyed roller skating (滑旱冰). When I was a young boy, I enjoyed ice skating on rivers during the winter months. Since river ice was free and I couldn’t afford to enter a special skating area, I never started roller skating until I was about 20. However, once I started roller skating, I knew that I would be able to go skating all the year, not just during the winter months.

As my years of roller skating began to increase, I often discovered that I would be the oldest skater on the skating rink (旱冰场). Many times I asked the parents watching their children skate why they weren’t skating. They would tell me they skated when they were younger, but they were too old to do it now.

Through my 40s and 50s I continued to go skating with the kids. About a year ago I skated with a group of students. However, this time it was different. I was having trouble keeping my balance and almost fell several times. I thought it must be because of the skates. After skating with in-line skates for many years, perhaps I needed to return to the traditional roller skates with the toe-stop. Sadly, even with the change of skates, the result was the same. Fun on the skating rink was being replaced with fear.

Having reached the age of 60, I realized that my fears of skating were finally over. My new task is to help children enjoy skating as much as possible. If they are having a difficult time trying to skate, I will comfort and encourage them. This all has made me smile and laugh a lot more now. I now get to see the joy that I once had of roller skating on the faces of others.

The French are getting fatter, but a campaign against fat-shaming is under way. France has only a few fat heroes, real or imagined. There was King Louis the Fat, who ruled from 1108 to 1137, and won several wars. And Gargantua, a big guy created by Francois Rabelais, drank the milk of 17,913 cows each day.

In fact the French are thinner than people in most other rich countries: only 15.3% of them are very fat, compared with an OECD average of 19.5%. But nowadays the number of Frenchmen who are overweight has risen from 30% to over 46%. A growing desire for processed food and more sedentary (久坐不动的) lives are leading to overweight.

For officials, this is a problem. Being overweight leads to sickness. The state says that the overweight population already needs extra health and other spending of $20 billion a year. And weight is closely related to poverty: a French study suggested that children whose parents are “non-professional” are four times likelier to be fat than those of professionals. To reduce overeating, France taxes sugary drinks, bans junk food in schools.

At the same time, officials want people to be kinder to their plus- sized people. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, hosted a conference on fat-shaming, including a fashion show with larger models. The event was partly inspired by the success of a book written by a trainee teacher, Gabrielle Deydier, a fat person in France.

However, it is difficult for officials to go on the campaign. Although fashion industry promises not to use slim models when selling their goods, billboards and magazines remain using skinny figures. And that may cause both dieting problems among the thin and pain among the fat.