Walk . . . Or Risk Getting Fat

The Times notices the new walk/don’t walk signs that feature an emaciated, hunched over pedestrian:

Could they have been subliminal harbingers of the city’s slenderizing campaign?

Is it just coincidence that in the summer that New York City went to war against trans fats, a new generation of “Walk/Don’t Walk” icons began appearing around Columbus Circle with a noticeably skinnier walking man and an almost emaciated red hand?

Your typical walking man – a familiar silhouette around town in the five years since the first new light-emitting diode pedestrian signal was installed at 35th Street and Queens Boulevard – is a pretty robust, smooth-shouldered, round-headed fellow who steps off confidently into traffic, as bubbly as a Keith Haring figure.

This new guy, by contrast, seems a bit rickety. There isn’t a curve to his body. His head – is this too cruel to say? – is pentagonal. His arms and legs are mere sticks. Indeed, he looks as though he’s stooped over with a bad back. (Maybe from waiting so long for the light to change.)

About that upraised hand. The one that New Yorkers have grown accustomed to – not that they pay it any mind – is as smooth and solid as a porcelain glove mold. The new hand is so skeletally thin it might be the crypt keeper’s.

But they say you can never be too thin. After all, the skinny man is formed of 45 light-emitting diodes, where the older version tips the scales at 60. The new hand has 64 diodes, the old one 120. So maybe this was an energy conservation step.