Comments on: Fatsploitation

By: Simone

Simone — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:00:46 +0000

Maybe this fat-positive critique of Hollywood in a major Canadian newspaper will cheer your up:
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/251764

By: Withheld

Withheld — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:12:31 +0000

I’m reading this article as someone on a loooong waiting list to adopt a child internationally. I could not adopt from Korea or China, due to their BMI restrictions. This is happening internationally.

By: mshell67

mshell67 — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:25:33 +0000

This whole issue bugs me to no end!!!! I don’t want to have children, but am all for people who are willing to step up to the plate and take charge! How dare a governmental agency decided who is “fit” to be a parent (well, I mean child abusers and addicts and such shouldn’t be able to adopt), where does it end? And it is true that men get treated differently than women when it comes to fat…. I’m 260 at 5″3′ and my fiancee is 500 lbs. at 6’4″ and they treat him with far more respect than they do me. When is this madness ever going to end?????

By: sweetmachine

sweetmachine — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:51:37 +0000

Meowser, that’s an interesting point about the different “rules” for showing fatties of different genders–yet another way that women’s bodies are held to untenable standards in our culture.

By: lauredhel

lauredhel — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:09:33 +0000

OhPlease, if we followed this logic, we’d have to shut down the whole damn blogosphere.

And then the terrists would have…

No, my heart’s not in it.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:22:34 +0000

They’ll do this crap as long as they’re being rewarded for it. By things like, um, links from widely-read blogs. Yeah, that's right, Laura. Nobody would EVER read Slate if you didn't link to it. Critically. Also, we should stop writing letters to the editor. It just tells them that someone is reading. In fact, we shouldn't even read. All this stuff goes away if you just ignore it!

By: sweetmachine

sweetmachine — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:08:02 +0000

They’ll do this crap as long as they’re being rewarded for it. By things like, um, links from widely-read blogs.

OhPlease, if we followed this logic, we’d have to shut down the whole damn blogosphere.

By: Dutchy

Dutchy — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:41:31 +0000

O sorry, got the English mixed up, the child would be in a single parent home with his cousin’s wife, not his aunt.

By: Dutchy

Dutchy — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:38:48 +0000

Meowser said: “But goddess forbid, in either case, you illustrate with the actual person you’re writing about.”
So right! I think it has to do with this: with non-celebs – so your average every day real-life person who hasn’t asked for media attention, in this particular case even with a vulnerable child – if the “funny” writer did portray the actual person he was making fun about, he would get something that’s utterly annoying to him: his jokes wouldn’t be so funny anymore, they would just be hurtful non-jokes.

Slightly off topic, something I still don’t understand in this whole story: this man has a wife, yes? So even *if* he were to fall dead tomorrow (and I don’t believe he will; in the kmbc-tv link you provide, he looks healthy and very cute with the baby that should be his!), the baby would still have a single parent home with his aunt. Wouldn’t that be much better than getting this child into the foster care system, with all its possible problems?
That question just keeps bugging me. And don’t say it would be traumatic for a child to lose a parent that early (as is of course the underlying argument of the court, although they’d never admit it), of course it would be, but *any* parent can walk under a bus any day, so I don’t think that’s a valid argument anyway.
I do think it’s very traumatic for a child to hear some time in his life that someone loved him very much, but was denied taking care of him because of some arbitrary figure (the wretched BMI again…)

By: OhPlease

OhPlease — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:42:05 +0000

I quit Slate after Saletan’s hateful piece on the “fat is contagious” study. Quit them, emailed them to tell them, and haven’t been back. They’ll do this crap as long as they’re being rewarded for it. By things like, um, links from widely-read blogs.