Writes Adwoa Darko (in Metro).
The policing of "fatphobia" has reached the point where joking about your own struggle with weight gain is becoming unacceptable.
ADDED: Reader JPS emails, "I think Adwoa Darko would spontaneously combust if she saw KD French’s 'She’s At The Fridge Again,' from last August. I think it’s hilarious, and beautifully done" and links to this:
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David writes:
And stop complaining about your lost job - it just reeks of privilege to those of us who didn't have a job anyway.
Stop complaining about having gotten Covid, too. It bothers those of us who have chronic illnesses.
And depression, your lockdown depression. It demeans those who had depression before. Same with loneliness - it's a kick in the teeth to those of us who already didn't have any friends. Not seeing your children and grandchildren? Why not brag about how much family you've got to people who don't, huh?
In fact, stop complaining about anything at all. Listen to me complain instead. There, that's better.
Gregg writes:
Ann- I’m someone who has struggled with my weight my whole life- I’m at a point now, at almost 67 where, while I wish I could lose a few, no one seeing me would think “hey! One man to a pair of pants! “
I’m mostly not too unhappy with my current poundage, , but when I’m fatter than I am now , I’m the one who doesn’t like it- it’s harder to tie my skates, I’m slower, and I hate looking at my chubby face in the mirror. I don’t think it’s societal, it’s me. There may be different pressures on women, I dunno.
In addition, I know that being fat is not good for me and the only time that I hear comments about my weight is when I’ve lost a few- I think these anti- anti- fat screeds are nuts- I’ve never experienced, nor witnessed anyone saying, “hey, you’re too fat.” Even though I think our society is way less polite than when we were kids.
Here’s an amusing take on fatness from a gem of a book from the 70s the Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubblegum Book, by Brendan Boyd and Fred C. Harris:
“ “Smoky Burgess was fat. Not baseball fat like Mickey Lolich or Early Wynn. But FAT fat. Like the mailman or your Uncle Dwight. Putsy Fat. Slobby Fat. Just Plain Fat. In fact I would venture to say that Smoky Burgess was probably the fattest man ever to play professional baseball.”
I googled "fatphobia" this morning mainly to find something like what's in this post.
I found other things that I liked and that were on specific subjecst, so I made them separate posts rather than collecting them in one post.
But that's giving me the problem of where to put posts on fatphobia generally. One way to deal with this is to presume against comments that don't fit one of the specific topics. One thing that I'm not publishing is anything that says little or nothing more than that it's unhealthy to be fat. I wouldn't put up a post just to tell you that, and everyone knows it, so there's not enough value to a comment that says that.
Does this show the value or the problem of letting comments flow in? While I am, to some extent, trying to save my own time by not cutting and pasting everything, I think it shows the value of not permitting the free flow of comments. I've taken the trouble to do multiple posts on specific things, all of which are new to this blog, so I want to see comments that respond to that, not generic statements of things we all know and that have been written many times before.
Brian McKim writes:
"... has reached the point where joking about your own struggle with weight gain is becoming unacceptable."
We passed that point long ago.
In 2016, my lovely wife was opening for Puppetry of the Penis, a show here in Vegas. She was doing 20 minutes of standup in front of a show where two men twist their penises into various shapes, to the delight of sold-out audiences. (The show, which originated in Australia, has been an international smash for two decades or more.)
The producers of the show received a nasty (and, I do mean, nasty) letter condemning my wife and urging the producers to fire her. Their complaint? She was engaging in fat-shaming. Of course, she was doing nothing of the kind, as she was merely talking-- in a humorous way, or "joking"-- about her own struggles with weight gain and her frustration at not losing enough weight.
We wrote three chapters of a book about how standup (and humor in general) was under assault from the woke crowd (although, at the time-- 2014-- we didn't call it "woke"). In one of the chapters, we wrote in some detail, providing a handful of examples, about how self-deprecating humor was being denounced as cruel. So, at least seven years ago, the point was reached and passed.
We're professional comedians, so we're kind of attuned to what's going on "out there," where artists interface (and often interact) with the consumers of art. We're canaries in the cultural coal mine. We've been shouting for 20+ years-- in private conversation, on our podcast, on our blog-- that the assault on free expression isn't going to end well. And here we are.
ALP writes:
Sigh. I have long maintained that men are not as picky about the beauty of their partners as the media would have us believe. I've met men that admitted to preferring heavier women, women with small breasts, very short women, very tall women. For the love of god - this beauty standard shit is being pushed by ...other women...in concert with advertising. It is a power play coming from women that conform to the current standards. The problem for these heavier women? Many of them yearn for lean, beautiful, male partners. They will not consider the average, nice guy with as much extra weight as they carry. They reject the male versions of themselves.
Don't believe me? Get out there and start asking overweight women the following: would you date a man as overweight as you are?
Seattle's own Dan Savage had a series of columns on the whole male vs. female way of handling obesity. He pointed out how society expects a male partner with an overweight female partner to be accepting, kind, and supportive of the woman's struggles. Flip the roles, and women will gang up on the poor overweight male partner: "How DARE you let yourself go? How DARE you expect your girlfriend/wife to be attracted to you!"
LA_Bob writes:
The sad reality is that for all too many people, losing weight is incredibly difficult. Those of us on the slender side often don't appreciate the colossal challenge that fat folks face. I sensed it when I was younger, but it took me years of reading the low-carb-diet literature to understand the profound physiology underlying obesity. Fat people are hungry when it seems they simply shouldn't be.
Imagine struggling with a diet regimen that is just tolerable. And an exercise regimen that is unwanted and unpleasant. Imagine wearing all the time what appears to be a refrigerator on your back and wondering "when are we going to dinner." And then spending the rest of your activities and social life with an invisible twin of nagging hunger tagging along everywhere you go. Forget dining with people who can eat real meals. You can only sit and suffer in silence. And worst of all there may never be much payoff for all that work. The scale might move but not nearly enough.
I follow the dietary thinking that low-carb and minimal seed oils (soy, corn, safflower, peanut, etc) is the best way to maintain healthy weight. Conventional dietary wisdom argues against it (meat and saturated fat will kill you) even though Atkins proved it works for so many. Yet even that diet doesn't work for everyone.
And we haven't even started on "big-boned" people (particularly women) who aren't necessarily overweight. They're just big, and nothing will ever make them look like a young Brooke Shields (to date myself), never mind Twiggy (to date myself even more).
I understand why a "body positivity" movement evolved. But let's not elevate the personal tragedy of many to a social philosophy that says society owes people satisfaction of their emotional needs. I suppose it's one thing to write about the plight of the helplessly overfed. It's another thing to concoct a screwball theory of "fat-fobia" to demonize everyone else.
Robert Cook writes:
"I was speaking to a work colleague just today about this. (Currently, and throughout the shutdown, I have worked in my office twice a week, and from home the other three days). Contrary to such complaints, I have LOST weight over this period. I wasn't trying to lose weight, particularly, though I did want to shed a few pounds. However, eating more meals each week at home with my wife has kept me away from so many portions-too-big, high-calory meals I had been eating for lunch most days. These were meals I was buying from the restaurants and food-trucks nearby that serve the people working in the area. For the past year, I have been eating smaller portions and healthier meals, simply by adapting to what my wife prefers and to what she often prepares for us."
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