Well, what about this:
What if the new etiquette is that everyone and everything are acceptable subjects for humour? No one and nothing too pitiful and/or sensitive to merit restraint. This way no one could be hurt or offended, feel singled out or left out. Insensitive boobs wouldn’t be able to inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings, and the truly vicious would be cut off at the knees. Sort of like a Don Rickles-ian Now Everybody is a Hockey Puck! social compact.
Okay, this would completely eliminate the concept of shock comedy as it exists, but who knows - maybe humourlessness would become the new shock sensation. Or something…
Just an idea from an occasionally insensitive joke telling boob.
But I’m fairly serious about this. Why not?
I may be mistaken, but I think Rush Limbaugh had lost a lot of weight before Franken wrote his book. Couldn’t “Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot” have been just a better title than “Rush Limbaugh Is Grossly Idiotic”? I think Franken was mimicing the child’s way of saying “you’re a big fat liar!” when obesity has nothing to do with the insult. It was, as The Ryan pointed out, just a way of chiding Limbaugh for his childish remarks about political opponents which remarks have nothing to do with their political positions.
To answer the OP directly, I don’t think mocking fat people is any more stylish than mocking crippled people. People do both, to be sure, but I couldn’t agree that it’s “in style.”
I don’t think joking about obesity in general is necessarily mocking, however. If you point at an obese person and laugh, I think that’s hurtful. But joking about obesity itself may be no more disparaging than making fun in a general way of many of humankind’s conditions and foibles. I say this as an obese man who has laughed at many a fat joke and written a few. I can laugh at myself and at the condition of obesity, but I would never point out an individual and deride him or her for being obese. I know it sounds contradictory, but it makes sense to me.
Make all the jokes you want. Americans are the fattest people on earth. We eat crap and teach our kids that it’s OK to eat crap. While metabolism and such is a problem for some the overwhelming majority of obesity in America can be attribitted to gluttony. Despite what you saw on the TV commercial, Big Macs, Ice Cream and Potato chips will make you fat. Especially if sit on your ass in front of the TV which is real important for advertisers to convince you to go buy more twinkies. Get off you ass, take a hike and eat some trail mix.
And yet, nowhere on earth will you find so many people proclaiming with total sincerity that they can’t help it… that it’s a glandular problem they suffer from which causes them to gain weight - even if they fast for 6 months… and we should trust them - they did try fasting for six months and they gained 45 pounds!
Nope… flame me till the cows come home… but it’s my considered opinion that the number of fat jokes floating around American society these days are in direct proportion to the number of lame assed jokes of excuses for the institutional gluttony which exists within American society.
To back up my position with some empirical data…
I’m pretty sure Time Magazine quoted a figure earlier this year which stated that fully 18% of the US adult population qualifies as “morbidly obese” - that is, a body fat ratio of over 50%. There’s simply no excuse for that. Maybe 0.25% of the population suffer from some freakish metabolic problem, but man… 18% of the US population is over 50% body fat? Man… that in itself is a total joke… and it’s a really, really bad one.
Consider also the number of US citizens who fall between 35-50% body fat? That would easily be another 10-15% of the US population. The rest of the world looks on at such trends and can’t help but snigger if truth be known.
I purposely left out “I wish God had given you my skinny body and given me your fat one .” because no one would ever say that. And you’re exactly right… who aspires to be overweight? No one except sumo wrestlers maybe. That’s not the point though. The point is, why is it acceptable for her to comment on my weight and my body but it’s not acceptable for me to comment on her weight and her body. Just because I’m underweight as opposed to overweight doesn’t mean I’m 100% comfortable with my body and yes, I do get offended and my feelings do get hurt whenever someone says something rude like that to me about my weight with such loathing in their voice. Almost every woman who’s ever commented to me about my weight has said it with pure disgust in her voice. They weren’t just “joking around.” :mad:
It’s more acceptable for the same reason that it’s more acceptable to make fun of rich people than it is poor, pretty people instead of ugly, and celebrities instead of commoners. She may not know that you are dissatisfied with your underweight body; all she sees is someone who typifies the skinniest of skinny. And this is something she wants to be! Hence is why she wishes God had given her your body.
I know I wasn’t there to hear how she said it and all, but just by going off the words on the screen it seems like she was expressing more self-loathing than Kiki-loathing. Maybe you interpreted her envy as a expression of hate? As in “I hate you because you can eat whatever you want and still wear a size 0” kind of hate.
I could see how disparaging comments about your body would hurt your feelings. “Damn, you ain’t got no butt!” is not a nice thing to say to anyone. But for some reason it is more acceptable to say that than “Damn, your ass is so big you need to go ‘beep, beep,beep’ whenever you walk backwards”. In our society, the two things are not equivalent insults.
It was clearly a jab at Hilary. A bad one. It would have been better to say that she didn’t see Hilary’s book as competition because Ann’s book is non-fiction;) Before you flame me I haven’t read either book, but that at least would have been a decent attempt at humor.
I suspect that any attempts to blame morbid obesity on any one factor like glandular problems, genetics, laziness, psychological problems, or poor nutrition alone may by overly simplistic. It’s like the false dichotomy of nature vs. nurture in some ways; certainly morbidly obese people tend to consume more calories than people of a normal weight, but what is the underlying problem that causes them to overeat to such an extent? Currently there does not seem to be agreement among experts, except that there appears to be many aspects involved, and there may not be a single common underlying cause for the overeating and deficient exercise levels that lead to morbid obesity. It may not be out of the realm of possiblity that some people suffer from a kind of food addiction, some may have something wrong with the way their body stores fat or absorbs nutrients, some may have psychological or neurological problems that contribute to the problem.
My point being that to write off morbidly obese people as simply needing to ‘get off your ass, go take a hike, and eat some trail mix’ is very likely overly simplistic and an incomplete solution; if it were that easy to overcome obesity, don’t you think that we would have less of a problem with obesity anyway? Without identifying and treating the underlying causes of the overeating / overabsorption of food / lack of exercise, I doubt that a lasting solution would result.
Let me tell you about my sister. Beautiful girl through high school. Active. Volley ball, swimming, softball, etc. After school she gained a few pounds, “filled out”, so to speak. But, when she got married, stopped exercising and traded in any and all physically strenuous activity for a bag of Doritos, a Mountain Dew, the sofa and General Hospital, KABOOM !! She became twice the person she ever was, literally.
Fast Forward five years… divorce, period of mourning, OK time to find another man. She took up her old good habits of three balanced meals, exercising daily and staying away from unhealthy foods. In just a few months she was back to her 20 year old figure. Sure enough, she gets a man. Been dating him for about seven months now. Guess what ? She is swelling up like a sow. Sitting on the sofa night after night watching movies and eating junk.
Damn right I make jokes about her wieght. She can lead a healthy life style to help snare a man but hasn’t enough respect for herself or her boyfriend to keep up the effort. I have little sympathy.
In short, let me identify the cause of over eating / over absorbtion / lack of exercise for you. No self discipline. Laziness. You think these nice healthy looking people you see playing tennis just wished themselves into shape ? No they didn’t. They took up tennis. Duh. I’m afraid, in many, many, cases it is as simple as “get off your ass, take a hike and eat some trail mix.”
[hijack]
In response to Hank’s post, I swear I do NOT understand women who let themselves go when married/in a serious relationship. What the fark is the mentalilty behind such a stupid decision?
[/hijack]
JuanitaTech , it is just plain laziness. It is just sooo much easier to eat ice cream than it is to play a game of softball. My drummer, who is a little overwieght and knows it and offers no excuses and makes jokes about himself (I can’t get that bridge right. Well, do you know why you can’t get that bridge right ? Sir, because I’m a disgusting fat body sir ! ) sums it up pretty well, I think. “Hard work pays off in the future but laziness pays off right now !” Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins also.
And it’s soooo much easier to make gross generalizations and cast opinion as fact than to actually learn anything about what makes people obese. I could follow your entire body of posting in this thread, apart from the story about your sister, with a big “Cite?”
And this has what to do with the topic at hand?
Actually… thanks, Hank. You prove my original point in this thread that, contrary to what the OP believes, fat-bashing and prejudice against overweight people has never gone out of style. You are a shining example of what I was talking about. Well done.
Ava, Hank and I were talking about fat people who let themselves go, like the woman described in his post. He answered my question about women who let themselves to. He wasn’t talking about fat people in general.
For her and people like her, his statements are justified.
Sometimes fat people are fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. Sheesh.
