Last week I was on a radio program to discuss Skinny Bitch, the vegan/animal rights manifesto wrapped in chick-lit veneer that became a bestseller after Posh Spice was photographed holding it.
BeckyAll names have been changed. has been active in the fat acceptance movement for a good half-dozen years. She attends and organizes awareness-raising events, takes part in her local fat social scene, and fights to end discrimination against fat people with a powerful combination of weary sadness and righteous anger. She wears her weight like well-adorned armor, betraying no sense of regret or shame in her 480-pound body.
“Obesity,” declares Charlotte Cooper, author of 1998’s Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size, “is just a word used by people to medicalize fat.” Extra weight, once considered a genetic short straw, is increasingly characterized as a crisis threatening the physical, political, and moral health of our nation—even as large bodies are becoming increasingly visible in popular culture.
“Analysis is hard, it’s complicated, and it disturbs the comfortable simplicity of familiar worldviews.” So writes Susan Bordo, professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky. And she should know: Her incisive writings on a wide variety of topics cut through thickets of controversy and rhetoric to produce a fine, elegant, and, above all, resonant analysis.
“So now you can eat like one of the boys, but still look like one of the girls,” says the male voice-over touting Baked Lays potato chips while supermodels stuff their faces on screen...
Oh, boys, did you know—Twix bars are the new way to get rid of those pesky, materialistic, shallow, shopping-obsessed females in your life...
Eating is a masculine activity, part two: Wendy’s Big Eaters ads. Chunky men eat while the announcer talks about how big the meals are...
On Caroline in the City, four men discuss post-break-up ettiquette. Dell, Caroline’s ex-boyfriend, is pissed because she has a date with another man...
Eating is a masculine activity, part three: On Wings, Helen and Joe are babysitting for a little girl. Joe offers her ice cream...
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body
Have you found that all the books you read on eating disorders and body image advance theories that don’t mesh with your own experience? Do the authors of said books make statements that make you feel like they live in an alternate universe?
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