The Obstreperous Ms. J
Omniscient Minority
Just saw this on another blog. Thought I'd share with y'all....
Why fat jokes aren't funny
Posted 6/20/2006 9:03 PM ET
By Barbara D'Souza
Our wedding had gone surprisingly well. In spite of my incessant worries about how my dress would make me look and what other people would think of me, the day went off without a hitch. Our honeymoon, too, was simple but fun.
Throughout most of it, I was able to forget that I was morbidly obese until we got home and we were suddenly confronted with an unexpected obstacle. Traditionally, the husband is supposed to carry the bride into the house, but this was very unlikely, since I was twice as large as my husband.
For a moment, this caused me great turmoil. But then I arrived at the perfect solution. I gathered my husband into my arms and carried him across the threshold.
If only other problems caused by being overweight were so easily solved. Unfortunately, being obese can be a horrible ordeal, a fact easily proven by simply turning on a television set. Strangely, many fat actors and actresses are willing to degrade themselves in order to get themselves on television.
The examples of anti-fat story lines are so numerous that they seem inevitable, yet a closer inspection shows their terrible results. For instance a very fat woman on CSI recently suffocated her lover by passing out on him; this might have been a copycat of a Picket Fences story in which a 500-pound woman similarly squashed the breath out of her husband by rolling onto him in her sleep.
Thin actors are only too willing to don fat suits to get cheap laughs. The movies Shallow Hal and The Nutty Professor, while not entirely anti-fat, largely consisted of two-hour-long fat jokes. And fat prejudice can show up in unlikely places, as in Nickel and Dimed, a book by Barbara Ehrenreich meant to illustrate the deplorable state of the working poor in America.
No one immune
Despite the fact that low-income people are the same group more likely to be obese, Ehrenreich manages to get in a couple of subtle, yet damaging, fat jokes. Apparently assuming that her audience is more upscale and therefore thinner than her subjects, she expects her readers to laugh at her ill-placed humor.
Since fatness is seen as a lifestyle choice rather than a genetic condition, many people tell themselves that it is OK to laugh at the overweight. In spite of the extreme difficulty obese people face when trying to lose weight (I have lost more than 60 pounds three times), our condition is assumed to be self-inflicted.
Yet if obesity were seen as a disability rather than gluttony, fat jokes would arguably be seen as hate speech.
It is unclear whether the media cause anti-fat bias, or whether it merely reflects our culture's views. Perhaps each reinforces the other, as evidenced by the pervasive prejudice similarly felt in an overweight American's everyday life.
I have felt this oppression when strangers yelled insults at me. For example, one woman asked me, "Are you going to get something to eat?"
At my many jobs, I have faced jokes and bullying; many of my heavy friends have had similar experiences. Fat harassment, in general, might be as prevalent as sexual harassment, but perhaps because we are too ashamed we obese do not speak out.
Playing along
Since the overweight, too, think of fatness as a transient condition, we tell ourselves that this treatment will stop when we lose weight. When we hear our co-workers or friends speak derisively about other heavy people, we say nothing. Or we laugh with them.
The self-loathing of the fat is much like the "double consciousness" the sociologist W.E.B. DuBois described many years ago as a dual awareness of himself as a human being but also as a black man.
Likewise, we obese are constantly conscious of ourselves not only as mothers, sisters, brothers or lovers, but also as fat objects. The way others might look at us is constantly with us. We diminish our expectations for a good life in order to have some semblance of happiness.
This must stop. People who are aware of fat prejudice need to make others see what is invisible. I did this at a recent dinner party. While waiting to be served, a couple of my companions spoke of overweight people disparagingly.
One man said the overweight people he knows "don't know when to leave the table" and so have diabetes and heart conditions; he also described how the women are very skinny as young women but then balloon to astronomical proportions after getting married.
Though I'd normally ignore these comments, this time I ranted that losing weight is not an easy thing to do. Unfortunately, my argument was inelegant, and I suppose I might have made a fool out of myself.
Yet, my angry statements felt good. Perhaps, in the future, I will be able to educate such people, rather than merely irritate them. Perhaps other fat people will be able to do so, as well. It might take many years, but perhaps eventually the problems caused by being overweight will be less insurmountable.
Perhaps, in time, we will be able to find social solutions as carefree as when instead of crying at our threshold I merely laughed with my husband and picked him up, happy that I could squeeze him through the doorway.
Barbara D'Souza lives near Pittsburgh and recently graduated with a degree in accounting.
Why fat jokes aren't funny
Posted 6/20/2006 9:03 PM ET
By Barbara D'Souza
Our wedding had gone surprisingly well. In spite of my incessant worries about how my dress would make me look and what other people would think of me, the day went off without a hitch. Our honeymoon, too, was simple but fun.
Throughout most of it, I was able to forget that I was morbidly obese until we got home and we were suddenly confronted with an unexpected obstacle. Traditionally, the husband is supposed to carry the bride into the house, but this was very unlikely, since I was twice as large as my husband.
For a moment, this caused me great turmoil. But then I arrived at the perfect solution. I gathered my husband into my arms and carried him across the threshold.
If only other problems caused by being overweight were so easily solved. Unfortunately, being obese can be a horrible ordeal, a fact easily proven by simply turning on a television set. Strangely, many fat actors and actresses are willing to degrade themselves in order to get themselves on television.
The examples of anti-fat story lines are so numerous that they seem inevitable, yet a closer inspection shows their terrible results. For instance a very fat woman on CSI recently suffocated her lover by passing out on him; this might have been a copycat of a Picket Fences story in which a 500-pound woman similarly squashed the breath out of her husband by rolling onto him in her sleep.
Thin actors are only too willing to don fat suits to get cheap laughs. The movies Shallow Hal and The Nutty Professor, while not entirely anti-fat, largely consisted of two-hour-long fat jokes. And fat prejudice can show up in unlikely places, as in Nickel and Dimed, a book by Barbara Ehrenreich meant to illustrate the deplorable state of the working poor in America.
No one immune
Despite the fact that low-income people are the same group more likely to be obese, Ehrenreich manages to get in a couple of subtle, yet damaging, fat jokes. Apparently assuming that her audience is more upscale and therefore thinner than her subjects, she expects her readers to laugh at her ill-placed humor.
Since fatness is seen as a lifestyle choice rather than a genetic condition, many people tell themselves that it is OK to laugh at the overweight. In spite of the extreme difficulty obese people face when trying to lose weight (I have lost more than 60 pounds three times), our condition is assumed to be self-inflicted.
Yet if obesity were seen as a disability rather than gluttony, fat jokes would arguably be seen as hate speech.
It is unclear whether the media cause anti-fat bias, or whether it merely reflects our culture's views. Perhaps each reinforces the other, as evidenced by the pervasive prejudice similarly felt in an overweight American's everyday life.
I have felt this oppression when strangers yelled insults at me. For example, one woman asked me, "Are you going to get something to eat?"
At my many jobs, I have faced jokes and bullying; many of my heavy friends have had similar experiences. Fat harassment, in general, might be as prevalent as sexual harassment, but perhaps because we are too ashamed we obese do not speak out.
Playing along
Since the overweight, too, think of fatness as a transient condition, we tell ourselves that this treatment will stop when we lose weight. When we hear our co-workers or friends speak derisively about other heavy people, we say nothing. Or we laugh with them.
The self-loathing of the fat is much like the "double consciousness" the sociologist W.E.B. DuBois described many years ago as a dual awareness of himself as a human being but also as a black man.
Likewise, we obese are constantly conscious of ourselves not only as mothers, sisters, brothers or lovers, but also as fat objects. The way others might look at us is constantly with us. We diminish our expectations for a good life in order to have some semblance of happiness.
This must stop. People who are aware of fat prejudice need to make others see what is invisible. I did this at a recent dinner party. While waiting to be served, a couple of my companions spoke of overweight people disparagingly.
One man said the overweight people he knows "don't know when to leave the table" and so have diabetes and heart conditions; he also described how the women are very skinny as young women but then balloon to astronomical proportions after getting married.
Though I'd normally ignore these comments, this time I ranted that losing weight is not an easy thing to do. Unfortunately, my argument was inelegant, and I suppose I might have made a fool out of myself.
Yet, my angry statements felt good. Perhaps, in the future, I will be able to educate such people, rather than merely irritate them. Perhaps other fat people will be able to do so, as well. It might take many years, but perhaps eventually the problems caused by being overweight will be less insurmountable.
Perhaps, in time, we will be able to find social solutions as carefree as when instead of crying at our threshold I merely laughed with my husband and picked him up, happy that I could squeeze him through the doorway.
Barbara D'Souza lives near Pittsburgh and recently graduated with a degree in accounting.
