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As far as I'm concerned, the most awkward way to greet someone is to ask, "Have you lost weight?" Right up there with, "Are you pregnant?" it's the type of observation that's best left unshared.

But perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, because increasingly it seems that each person's private reckoning with their own little marker on the bathroom scale has become a matter for public debate.

Call it the Fat Follies or the Obesity Opera: How big anyone is, or looks to be, seems to be the most compelling topic for public conversation. I lay the blame for this unwelcome phenomenon at the feet of Oprah Winfrey, who, this week, shared with us her recent discovery that her size is not her fault: The reason that she has chunked up once again is that she suffers from a thyroid problem. (One cynical friend swears the queen of daytime television - whose lifelong battle with the bulge has truly reached Homeric proportions - might lack motivation, given that if she finally lost those extra pounds, she might also lose her similarly sized audience.)

Why blame Oprah? When she celebrated her first radical weight loss by wheeling onstage a red child's wagon loaded with 67 pounds of actual blubber, fat itself became the headliner in a new form of "weightertainment."

As North America struggles with its ever-expanding waistline, attention-seekers such as Bachelorette Trista Sutter are eager to share with us the exciting news that - guess what - they're fat. ("Thin by new year!" she vows on the current Us Weekly cover.) On the cover of this week's People, Queen Latifah is a "bodylicious" 200 pounds and "loving it!" And as with our oral addiction to supersized junk laced with corn syrup, we can't get enough.

The more intimate, the better: The money shot on makeover shows is the close-up of the liquefied fat being sucked through the cannula during liposuction, its slow drip into a see-through canister the poetic denouement. In this new world of weightertainment, fat Britney Spears is more fascinating than her younger, slimmer persona. She's clearly a media savant: The reveal of her chunky middle at the MTV Video Music Awards is what now qualifies as great TV.

So collectively fixated are we on our own flopping love handles that the tabloids have bulked up with up-to-the-minute reporting on the relative upper-arm width of Kate Bosworth, Kate Hudson and Mary-Kate Olsen (no word yet on the wrist circumference of Cate Blanchett). Whether it's up, down, or holding steady, the weight of "yo-yo dieter" Jessica Simpson is the stock ticker of US Weekly. The most recent news from the fat front is a sort of vicarious public chow-down, with the paparazzi lens focused on the pregnant, formerly "scary skinny" Nicole Richie "eating healthy," i.e. either chewing or swallowing. Whether I care to be so informed or not, a long wait in the checkout aisle has me fully up-to-date on each morsel that has passed Angelina Jolie's lips.

As if that weren't sufficiently obsessive, there are fatcoms and fat reality shows such as Celebrity Fit Club and The Biggest Loser, where fatties wrestle with the scale and one another to be thin - and rich. The pie-loving Kirstie Alley seized the moment as a spokesmodel for Jenny Craig and with the series Fat Actress. The newest forgotten star to claim her plus-sized moment in the spotlight is 1980s soap star and former Van Halen spouse Valerie Bertinelli, who has just belly-flopped from Jenny Craig right into a new gig as "celebrity content buddy" to Rachael Ray. (Just keep away from the show kitchen, Val.)

There is even a fat blogger: Steve Vaught, also known as "Fat Man Walking," strolled from San Diego to New York in an effort to lose weight. By the end of his year-long walk of 4,575 kilometres, he had lost 115 pounds - and gained a book deal, sneaker sponsorships and media fame.

And that's hardly an exhaustive list of those who have seized on using their pudge as a meal ticket. Fergie, the former "Duchess of Pork," became a bestselling author after publicly losing 50 pounds with Weight Watchers. Model-turned-TV host Tyra Banks made the cover of People only after she gained 30 pounds and unsightly pics of her lumpy thighs hit the Internet.

Time was, there were some matters that were inappropriate for public consumption. But now that consumption itself is public entertainment, not only is appropriateness irrelevant, but this new theatre is increasingly one of the absurd.

kvonhahn@globeandmail.com