By CYNTHIA CROSSEN

Considering that more than a third of Americans are considered to be obese, why are there so few modern novels with overweight heroes or heroines?

—O.E., Los Angeles

Last fall, on a discussion board at the National Novel Writing Month’s website, an aspiring novelist asked her cohort, “Does anyone out there have a fat or chubby character who isn’t meant to be seen as lazy, gluttonous, awkward or evil, and who doesn’t lose weight over the course of the story? Or in other words, a character whose weight is simply another character trait?”

“Arrrgggh!!” another writer retorted. “Weight is NOT a character trait! It may be a PHYSICAL trait of a character in a book, or a PHYSICAL trait of a person in real life, but it is NOT a character trait!”

Yes and no. If anatomy isn’t strictly destiny in these nip-and-tuck times, it is nonetheless an important part of a person’s identity—just ask a woman with large breasts or a man of very short stature. People react to what makes others exceptional, and despite the rising rates of obesity in many countries, in television, movies, magazines, billboards, even videogames, we see almost exclusively images of thin people. Fat is still exceptional.

Traditionally, fat men and women in fiction were buffoons or bullies. Sancho Panza was fat—and comic, simple and gluttonous. Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff was a fat, cowardly drunk. Friar Tuck was fat and unquenchably thirsty. More recently, Ignatius Reilly in John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces” was fat, a “slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy” in Walker Percy’s words. Misha Vainberg, the hapless 325-pound hero of Gary Shteyngart’s novel “Absurdistan,” is nicknamed “Snack Daddy.” Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout’s detective novels is an exception to the general role of fat man as foil or antihero. Although his weight makes leaving his house impractical, he does solve the crimes.

In fiction for children and young adults, fat characters don’t fare much better. Piggy in “Lord of the Flies” is asthmatic, dull, lazy, an outsider. Harry Potter’s cousin, Dudley Dursley, is an obese, overbearing brat. Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is “enormously fat” with “great flabby folds of fat [bulging] out from every part of his body.” And this is the plot summary of James Marshall’s picture book, “Yummers”: “Eugene Turtle takes Emily Pig on a long walk so she’ll lose weight, but the two end up stopping every few minutes for a snack.”

Two novels with fat heroines that I read years ago but remember admiring are “Lady Oracle” by Margaret Atwood and “She’s Come Undone” by Wally Lamb. Ms. Atwood’s narrator, Joan Foster, has a love/hate relationship with her own flesh, but she has a possible explanation for the dearth of overweight characters in modern fiction: “Fat women are not more noticeable than thin women; they’re less noticeable, because people find them distressing and look away.”

Mr. Lamb’s heroine, 257-pound Dolores Price, also had the feeling she couldn’t be seen. She once overheard one of her teachers say to another, “‘I can’t say she’s easy to deal with, but there’s a bright girl hiding inside there.’ She meant inside my fat.”

Chick-lit writers have introduced heavier heroines in their novels in recent years, the most popular perhaps being Jennifer Weiner’s “Good in Bed,” in which Cannie Shapiro’s ex-boyfriend writes a column for a national women’s magazine on “Loving a Larger Woman”: “At five foot ten inches, with a linebacker’s build and a weight that would have put her right at home on a pro football team’s roster, C. couldn’t make herself invisible,” the caddish columnist writes. “But I know that if it were possible, if all the slouching and slumping and shapeless black jumpers could have erased her from the physical world, she would have gone in an instant.”

In this subgenre of chick-lit, known as “Bigger Girl Lit,” “the fat girl is the leading lady and the thin girl plays the best friend,” writes Lara Frater in an essay, “Fat Heroines in Chick-Lit.” Interestingly, “size 16 is the magical number,” Ms. Frater writes. “It is the maximum socially permitted size of a fat character…. This appears to be yet another example of size prejudice at work, even in Bigger Girl Lit.”

Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang spent two years searching for literature about fat people and in 2003 published an anthology of “fat fiction” called “What Are You Looking At?” It includes Andre Dubus’s short story “The Fat Girl” and Peter Carey’s “The Fat Man in History,” among many others.

In an interview (with Rian Montgomery), Liza Palmer, author of “Conversations With the Fat Girl,” explained her impulse to write it. “I was sick of reading and seeing this archetypical fat person. The sad, donut-in-hand virgin who decides she’s going to lose weight and then in three months takes off like a thousand pounds and finds herself in a relationship with Ben Affleck or somebody. It was just so false to me.”

—Send your questions about books and reading to Cynthia Crossen at booklover@wsj.com.

By CRAIG KARMIN

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The Empire State Building, shown aglow on a recent April night, would be the most valuable single property in the planned real-estate investment trust. It was appraised at $2.52 billion

The family that controls the Empire State Building has agreed to change the terms of the skyscraper’s public offering, making the tax treatment less punitive to small investors who have been fighting with the family over their potential tax bill arising from the sale.

Under the initial terms of the offering, the 2,800 investors were limited to cashing out no more than 15% of their stake in the new public company during the first six months following the IPO. That raised the prospect they could face a tax bill on gains that could more than wipe out the cash investors received from the offering.

An amended Securities and Exchange Commission filing made by the Malkin family on Tuesday gives the current owners more flexibility. If the IPO occurs in 2012, then the investors will be able to receive in cash or sell shares for up to about a third of their stake in the new public company, according to the filing.

A Malkin spokeswoman said “we are presently in a quiet period and are therefore unable to comment” on why the tax treatment was changed.

But the changes may have reflected the reaction by many of the Empire State Building investors, who were concerned that they would have to dip into their savings to pay their tax bill from the sale.

The Malkins, who control the building and are spearheading the IPO, would receive a different tax treatment, according to the filings. They would be allowed to defer some taxes and could be reimbursed about $83 million for other tax liabilities.

The different tax treatment sparked rebukes from some investors. But it was only the latest criticism from some of the Empire State Building investors of this closely watched proposed public offering.

At least five lawsuits have been filed in New York State Supreme Court attempting to block the sale or challenge the terms by alleging it isn’t fair or equitable to investors. A spokeswoman for the Malkins has called the lawsuits” baseless.”

While many investors are likely to welcome the amended tax treatment, it may be not be enough to persuade skeptics to throw support behind the offering. The plan requires approval from 80% of the partnership units held by investors. The Malkins control voting rights for about 8% of the units.

“Certainly these changes show they are listening,” said Peter Benjamin, an investor with a small stake who retired near Greenville, S.C. He said he spoke with Peter Malkin, chairman of Malkin Holdings, about the issue a few weeks ago.

But Mr. Benjamin added that he felt the IPO process still rewarded the Malkins with fees and compensation that he thought were too high. “It’s still too one-sided toward the Malkins,” he said.

The proposed IPO has no timetable but is expected to be months away. The new company, to be known as the Empire State Realty Trust Inc., will include the Manhattan skyscraper and 17 other properties in New York and Connecticut. The real-estate investment trust is valued at $4 billion, and the Empire State Building was appraised at $2.52 billion.

The Malkins would get a stake valued at $642 million, while a nonprofit foundation named for Leona and Harry Helmsley would receive the largest stake in the REIT, valued at about $1 billion, according to the filings.

Harry Helmsley and Lawrence Wien, the grandfather of Anthony Malkin, who is Malkin Holdings LLC’s president, took control of the Empire State Building in 1961.

The IPO proposal limits investors to receiving 12% to 15% of their stake in the new company in cash. That restriction was applied so that the new company could qualify for favorable tax treatment from New York.

Under the old IPO structure, investors had to wait six months before they could sell any stock in the company, which raised fears that federal and state taxes on the full amount of their gains could hit them faster. Tax attorneys estimate that the bill could come to 25% to 35% of those gains.

Under the amended terms, investors would still be limited to cashing out no more than 12% to 15% of the stake. But if the offering prices by the end of 2012, then investors would be able to sell between 17% to 19.5% of their stock starting April, 1, 2013 “to provide liquidity for income tax payments due on April 15, 2013,” the filings say.

Since the cash allocation remains the same under the new filing, the REIT will still enjoy favorable tax treatment, according to Tuesday’s filing.

Write to Craig Karmin at craig.karmin@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 9, 2012, on page C8 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Tax Terms Amended in Empire State IPO.

As I grow older, something bizarre is happening to me. I’m not talking about the suddenly routine morning aches, or the maddening gray hair discoveries, or how much I’ve come to enjoy oatmeal. I’m not even talking about the mortifying, involuntary way I bounce in the Honda CR-V when Alanis Morissette comes on the radio.

I’m talking about sports. I am rooting for the geezers.

I have become unabashedly pro-geezer. The more aged an athlete is—the craggier, the creakier, the more he or she looks as if they know what it means to feel 3,000 years old at 6:30 a.m., the more Scorsese movies he or she saw in the theater—the more I pull for their success.

Kansas City Star/Associated Press

Yankees closer Mariano Rivera (age 42)

Youth, we all know, is wasted on the young, but youth is also incomprehensible—I look at that 19-year-old baseball phenom in Washington, Bryce Harper, and he may as well be a magical talking dolphin.

Best of luck to Bryce. May he have a spectacular 20 years, and outgrow his haircut, which makes him look like groundhog has expired atop his head. But right now I want to see the old goats win.

And the old goats are having a moment. The best team in the NBA could possibly be the San Antonio Spurs, an efficient throwback outfit with a few players (Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili) who can remember riding horses to games. Then there’s the Boston Celtics, who may be propelled by the sprightly point guard Rajon Rondo, but know their heart lies with seniors Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.

Were the Celtics and Spurs to meet in the NBA Finals, the games should start at 10:30 a.m. and come with a complimentary bowl of soup.

In baseball, there’s Colorado pitcher Jamie Moyer, an astonishing 49 years old. Let that settle in for a moment. Forty-nine! When Moyer began in the major leagues, pitchers didn’t wear gloves, and fielders registered an out by rolling a ball into a tweed satchel, and singing a few lines from “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

Associated Press

Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer (49)

Moyer isn’t shutting down the National League (five earned runs in five innings Saturday), but anyone competing against players less than half his age is impressive to me. That is why I pull for Freddie Couples and Tom Watson, and why I’m astounded by Martin Brodeur, Nick Lidstrom, Dara Torres, Jens Voigt. I see that racer in the Castrol commercials—Funny Car icon John Force—and want to be him.

John Force is 63. That is old enough to be in Aerosmith.

I know there are others out there. Sports is changing. The customary sell-by dates are being pushed back. Look at the frenzy last week after Mariano Rivera wrecked his knee shagging fly balls in Kansas City. The premature tributes began rolling in—Congratulations on a Hall of Fame career, Mariano. You are the best closer ever. You will be forever missed, blah, blah, blah.

To which Rivera basically responded: Aw, hell no. “I’m coming back,” he said the next day. “Write it down in big letters. I can’t go out this way.”

Motivation like this doesn’t seem strange anymore. In the amateur ranks, the middle-agers are often lifeblood of the sport. Go to a 10K road race or an amateur bike event some time; the parking lot will be teeming with minivans that will soon be rerouted to drive kids to soccer. These folks aren’t doing it for PARTICIPANT ribbons, they’re trying to crush.

But these athletes have perspective. Not long ago in New York, I met up with Janet Evans, the legendary swimmer who is attempting, at 40, to make the U.S. Olympic team for London. Evans won three gold medals as a teenager in Seoul in 1988, and another gold in Barcelona in 1992. When Evans makes a reference to “Beverly Hills 90210,” she means the first “Beverly Hills 90210.”

“Isn’t that depressing?” she said, laughing. “I totally dated myself.”

Evans was in town with Olympic partner BMW, and here she was, a mother of two, more than two decades removed from captivating the country, talking excitedly of a return. And though her making the U.S. team isn’t assured, though she still contends with occasional curled-eyebrow skeptic, like the woman who asked Evans if her London ambitions were too “lofty,” it has been worth it.

“For the longest time in my career, swimming was my life,” she said. “It was what defined me, what I took home every day, what I thought about and fretted about.”

“Now it’s like, I might swim fast one day, then slow the next day, and it doesn’t matter. I have two healthy kids at home and a good husband—I feel very blessed. My life outside of the pool is what defines me. Swimming is kind of this bonus.”

Does Evans want to make it to London at 40? Of course she does. I don’t know if you can call her a geezer. But I know she’s going be impossible to root against.

A version of this article appeared May 7, 2012, on page B14 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Revenge of the Sports Geezers.

Amid the economy’s many ailments, some good news has remained mostly off the radar: The at-home work force is growing, and it is encompassing new occupations ranging from radiology and nursing to auditing and teaching.

The bad news: Fierce competition means your odds of landing one of these jobs are poor. And if you succeed, you will probably take a pay cut.

For companies, home-based employees, independent contractors and freelancers are helping cut costs and improve customer service. Full-time, home-based freelancers and independent contractors in the U.S. are expected to increase by 200,000 workers to 11 million by the end of 2009, says Ray Boggs, a vice president of IDC, Framingham, Mass., a market-research firm; he sees another 200,000-worker increase in 2010.

While that is a mere blip on the radar in an economy that has been losing nearly that many jobs in a month, the trend means a lot to the individuals who are benefiting from it. They are avoiding dreaded commutes, doing volunteer work, pursuing college degrees or caring for family. And they are performing increasingly complex tasks from home, from reading MRIs to helping clients search for Bigfoot, the mythic wilderness monster.

“We are seeing a general broadening of the work-at-home landscape,” says Christine Durst, chief executive of a work-at-home Web site and co-author of a new guidebook on the topic.

Applicants are stacking up by the hundreds of thousands, however. Based on my survey of a dozen companies that use home workers, your odds of actually landing one of these positions range from about 25-to-1 to 300-to-1.

ARO Contact Center, Kansas City, Mo., which employs just 200 home auditors and sales and customer-service workers, gets 1,000 resumes a week, says Michael Amigoni, chief operating officer. West Corp., Omaha, with 14,000 active agents handling customer-service and other calls, hires only 0.5% to 1% of its 4,500 weekly applicants. And Alpine Access, Denver, with 2,800 home customer-service, sales and tech-support agents, hires about only 2% of the 100,000 people who apply each year.

“It takes a lot of luck to get these positions,” says Tammie Deweever, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a home customer-service agent for LiveOps, Santa Clara, Calif. “You have to be good at what you do.” Ms. Deweever has a college degree in marketing and worked as a mortgage broker before joining LiveOps last January. For her, job flexibility means being able to be home for her children, 17, 15 and 8; she often works split shifts around their needs, answering calls from TV viewers wanting to buy products from juicers to jeans.

Many skilled at-home professionals and managers earn less than a corporate salary. Less-skilled customer-service or sales work usually pays about $8 to $15 an hour, ranging as high as $25 or more with incentives or premiums. Some companies pay by the minute or hour spent on the phone, while others pay by the shift. The jobs vary by company from full-time employee positions with benefits to part-time independent contractor positions.

And applicants must be wary of scam artists. Ms. Durst, Woodstock, Conn., who screens work-at-home pitches for her Web site, RatRaceRebellion.com, says she is finding only one legitimate job among every 60 pitches she examines. In 2006, the odds weren’t quite as bad: She was finding one legitimate job for every 31 pitches vetted.

Many victims of work-at-home fraud have sent money, only to receive worthless products or leads, or nothing at all, in return; others who disclose too much personal information have fallen victim to theft from credit-card or checking accounts.

But those who win the work-at-home lottery reap diverse benefits. Intent on avoiding a long commute, Heather Hedden, a Raleigh, N.C., marketing specialist, spent a year looking for her current spot, as a home-based concierge for VIPdesk, Alexandria, Va. The position was worth the wait, she says. She enjoys using her research skills to help clients find theater or sports tickets, vintage wines or travel services. When a client asked for help looking for Bigfoot, she found an outfitter with a track record of taking like-minded customers on hikes through areas of reported sightings, she says.

After 19 years in private practice, radiologist Steven Brick, Potomac, Md., began working from home for Virtual Radiologic,

Eden Prairie, Minn. The setup confers both the freedom to focus on his work, without distractions, and the flexibility to serve as a volunteer at the National Zoo answering visitors’ questions, he says. Virtual Radiologic’s radiologists, who work as independent contractors reading X-rays and other images for hospitals and other medical clients, have increased to 140 from 34 in 2004, a spokeswoman says.

Home-based work enables newlywed Stacey Anderson, 30, Ballston Spa, N.Y., to tackle numerous roles. Since landing a customer-service post last summer as a contractor for VIPdesk, Ms. Anderson has been able to bend her work hours around her husband’s rotating shifts on his job. In addition, she squeezes in a full-time course load as a college student.

Such intangible incentives are drawing skilled, experienced people. Mark Frei, a senior vice president of West, says 80% of West’s home agents have some college education, compared with 30% of those who work in office-based call centers.

Vanessa Torres, 35, San Antonio, Texas, had a bachelor’s degree in business and 16 years’ management experience before signing on last January as a home agent for West. She likes controlling her hours, and works only when her two young children are in school, she says.

Expansion of home-based work is likely to continue. Among the 12 companies I contacted, all were planning to recruit more home workers. Lionbridge Technologies,

Waltham, Mass., a provider of multilingual services including translation and product testing, is taking on new freelancers to assess “search relevance”—that is, to ensure Internet searches yield items suitable to particular locales, a spokeswoman says.

Alpine Access, Denver, is recruiting 500 more home agents and expects to add 2,000 in 2010, says Chief Executive Christopher Carrington. LiveOps, with 20,000 home agents for retailing, insurance and other companies, added about 4,000 agents in the past two months. Arise Virtual Solutions, Miramar, Fla., with a home-agent pool of 9,800, is seeking 3,000 agents for the peak holiday and cruise seasons, a spokeswoman says. Michael DeSalles, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan, a research and consulting firm, sees home agents growing by at least 30% a year.

Sites which link clients with skilled freelancers also are seeing a surge in demand for virtual workers with a widening range of professional and technical skills; oDesk.com‘s monthly postings, including graphic design, software, administrative and other projects, rose to 28,000 in the past 30 days, three times year-earlier levels. Monthly hiring on Elance.com is up more than 40% from a year ago.

As more companies allow people to work from anywhere via the Internet, says a spokeswoman for Lionbridge, “we are convinced that this is the new model of work.”

—E-mail sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com.