How about we refrain from juvenile jokes altogether? Btw. Oprah and Adele not so fat? Sorry buddy both of them are severely overweight. There is nothing normal nor acceptable about it. Their body weight is way above healthy
I think it would be better if people stopped making jokes about weight in general. You want to talk double-standards, I find it absurd that the same people who resent jokes about their weight will make jokes about someone else's. Recently I was in a shopping center and paused at a coffee shop deli to see what they had on offer. I didn't like the choices so I walked away. As I did so two overweight women said loudly enough to intend me to hear it: "Looks like that skinny bitch passes up food way too often!" ಠ_ಠ I very nearly spun round and said "Looks like you don't!" but stopped myself. It isn't fair to be judgemental whatever side of the spectrum you are. A lot of people, like Joan Rivers, just can't resist the low hanging fruit, as it were.
Reading all of this, I'm struck by how - in recent times - it has become acceptable to make comments - and along with that, pass judgement - on people who are overweight, or fat. Sure, it is not healthy, and doubtless, elegant, fit, slim, young people look better to our jaundiced eye than older, poorer, stressed people. But so what? Sometimes, we are far too swift to judge, especially about the poor, and especially about women.
Historically, with food often in short supply, an amply endowed person would have been viewed with approval (the old, if you can feed yourself, you can probably work out a way to feed the community way of thinking), and seen as possible leadership material as a consequence. Indeed, only the rich could afford to be fat. This was not a luxury allowed most of the population.
Fat - as in excess fat - has only become damned in a world where food is no longer a scarce resource. It is not considered distasteful (although it might be infuriating) in a world where food shortages occur. Indeed, looking at pictures of the female ideal in the late Middle Ages, or in Renaissance times, as depicted in portraits, suggests that our current obsession with size zero was not always the case.
However, it does have other dimensions. Some of these are to do with (subjective and intolerant) aesthetics: slim is better, and to be uncomfortably slim, as in a permanent state of dissatisfaction with yourself and your body is a state of mind much desired by the wider fashion industry as it makes it easier for them to sell clothes, and 'lifestyle choices' to us, especially to women.
Yet other dimensions of any serious discussion of this topic are to do with social class and poverty. Simply put, it costs more, in both time and money to eat well. If we are serious about inculcating knowledge and awareness of good food, and educating people about eating properly and about basic but good cooking, rather than simply condemning the feckless poor yet again, why not educate them, and show them what needs to be done. (Hint: closing down school canteens, reducing Government regulation on what may be served there, and withdrawing Government subsidies is not the answer).
And, of course, yet other aspects of this question are to do with gender politics: (look at that woman, how dare she 'let herself go' and lack the discipline and self-denial to try to be slim, and ape what is deemed attractive, because that is how she will be judged).
Until recently, burly men, (unless they were poor, in which case they were simply seen as slobs, and losers), were seen as men 'with a belly', men of power, men to be deferred to, whereas stocky women were simply deemed unattractive and fat, a word which was no longer used as a simple adjective, but as a profound - and contemptuous - insult instead. Only in gay circles did male appearance assume the judgemental importance more traditionally associated with discussions pertaining to women.
In her recently published, quite terrific book, 'How To Be A Woman', the splendid writer Caitlin Moran writes about fat as a feminist (and class) issue. In essence, her argument is that over-eating is the drug of choice of the poor, and, above all, of carers, because, and this is a key point, carers must remain competent, in a way that you cannot be if you are totally wasted on narcotics or alcohol. She has a wonderful line, where she asks rhetorically what the reaction would be to someone staggering into an office, on a Monday morning, saying, 'oh man, I really got wasted on the Shepherd's Pie on Saturday night, I really overdid it, like'.....would it be envy at the glittering lifestyle? Hardly. Sympathy? Not likely. Even tolerance? No.
Over-eating, as comfort, allows you to still function, as you must, if you are the person whose job it is to prop up children, elderly relatives, and juggle endless bills on minimal resources and it is a cheap, easy shot, to sneer at the 'losers' for whom this is described as a lifestyle choice, rather than a consequence of inescapable stress and unendurable conditions because you are at the bottom of life's pile.
