Comments on: A Whole New Kind of Headless Fatty

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:01:17 +0000

An advertisement like this just validates that the whole “oh, in Europe they LOVE big women, like LOVE them, and FOOD CONNECTS PEOPLE!” myth is just that- A MYTH.

By: Lori

Lori — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:30:46 +0000

“Oh, Twilight is such a feminist failure on every level. I started wanting to throw the book across the room when I got to Edward secretly following Bella around to “keep her safe.” Hello, that’s not romance, it’s STALKING.”
Thnaks for this — I couldn’r make it halfway through the first book. I couldn’t get through the part where is acting rotten to her, so naturally she is infatuated. Ugh, no.

By: atiton

atiton — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:35:03 +0000

@LilahMorgan: Couldn’t agree with you more. That’s why I’m on Team Jacob. *ahem*kidding*ahem*

@libbyblue: And your points are very well taken which is why the last scene in the whole quadrilogy really bugged the living shit out of me. I mean–no overt spoilers here–she works so hard for the community and it serves to give him the only thing that he didn’t have before?

By: atiton

atiton — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:30:40 +0000

I respectfully disagree about people letting Babe Ruth off the hook for being “oh, so fat.” He’s made a “Fat Slob” list thanks to ESPN (http://tinyurl.com/6p5fnh scroll down to the charming words “Fat Slob”) and this thing from the NYT a while back is weird (http://tinyurl.com/5ch5yj).

No big deal, but The Babe has gotten no free pass.

By: LilahMorgan

LilahMorgan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:22:37 +0000

Oh, Twilight is such a feminist failure on every level. I started wanting to throw the book across the room when I got to Edward secretly following Bella around to “keep her safe.” Hello, that’s not romance, it’s STALKING.

By: PurpleGirl

PurpleGirl — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:17:04 +0000

Kate and Stephanie: K.H. has sounded off on vampire mythos (thought not Twilight specifically) in general on Salon.com, if you're interested. Here

By: libbyblue

libbyblue — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:07:16 +0000

twilight could sort-of be a fat issue, though. while i don’t remember any fat characters off the top of my head, meyer’s writing demonstrates an insane obsession with prettiness justifying all. her descriptions of the vampire-making process pretty much say straight-out that when you become a vampire, you become heart-stoppingly beautiful to make you irresistible to your prey (see twilight for the predator bit — around the time edward dazzles bella with his sparkly vampire-in-sunlight skin, and breaking dawn for an explicit mention of the newly-turned bella being a knockout supermodelesque figure on top of all the other subtler references). BUT! the evil vampires? the vampire who tries to kill her in twilight? the eeevil volturi who precipitates the fretfulness leading to the non-climax of breaking dawn? they’re ugly! they aren’t hot at all! seriously! unattractiveness = evil, attractiveness = good in her world. and since edward and bella don’t freaking know each other before bella is “irrevocably” in love with him and they pledge their undying love, their relationship is also based on appearances: edward loves her (and thus breaks into her home to watch her sleep???) because she smells good and he’s intrigued that he is unable to read her mind and her mind alone, and bella loves him because he’s teh hawtness with an air of bad-boy mystery. arrrrgh. just arrrrgh.

for anyone here who is unfamiliar with the twilight series, a good, not-overlong sporking of all four books can be found at tamathy.com (click “my” website link above to go straight to the right page). i disagree with her caricature of feminism, but her analysis of the books themselves is fantastic. normally i can just walk away from a bad book, but the twihards and twilight moms freak me out, with their death threats to anyone who dares criticize meyer and their desperate desire to get into “ooh, the perfect man!” edward’s pants, respectively. *sigh*

By: car

car — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:59:45 +0000

Even if you accept the premise of the ad, (which of course no one should), the focus is all wrong. The guy peering over the body should be in the foreground, the head receeding into the background as it “runs” away. I have been looking at this all week and unable to comment because I get so immediately revulsed by the head front and center. The ad isn’t even carried out properly with their own approach. (and why does the kid have a bag of candy that’s half as large as himself???)

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:27:04 +0000

Kate above talking about Twilight: I did read the first book, because I usually dislike trashing books unless I’ve actually read them (that and, uh, I review books in my spare time) and I wrote about it here:

http://www.readalready.com/2008/01/08/twilight-by-stephenie-meyer/

Although I think it’s more of a feminist issue than a fat issue, so KH may not discuss it. I’m sure someone else has eviscerated it on a feminist site before.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:57:26 +0000

Linda: As someone who has been anorexic, who knew conceptually speaking that not everyone was obsessed with food but found it hard to believe, I can confirm that.

Even then, I didn’t assume that fat people were fat because they obsess over food, but I think that the vast majority of people who are thin by obsession wouldn’t hesitate to make that small jump, especially with regards to fat people.

The tendency gets more marked when the thin person is surrounded by thin people almost exclusively, viz. Hollywood, my secondary school (I knew a lot of girls who thought in exactly that way).

So, ladies and gentlemen! Those of you who are of a larger size, expose your lovely selves to those who might be saved! Let me tell you, with the kind of thin person who is a good person in all other regards except their asshole-y assumption about your lifestyle, you can make a big difference. What douche-y-ness I had in my character with regards to fat people melted away with exposure to Shapely Prose and Joy Nash.

Meme is beyond help, I assume.