In case you've been away from the Internet for the last few days--or if you don't read the ladymags--controversy has been a-brewin' regarding the piece that Marie Claire blogger Maura Kelly wrote about obese characters on television. Responding to a CNN article asking if viewers have negative reactions to fat TV protagonists (notably, the eponymous couple on CBS' Mike & Molly), Kelly confessed that, yes, that body type makes her uncomfortable. Here's the paragraph that seems to be getting the most backlash:
So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.
Mike & Molly creator Mark Roberts has weighed in (don't even accuse me of intending that pun), saying that he's not angry, only hurt for stars Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell, "who had to read horrible things that some woman said about them." But Kelly never calls out the actors, nor even mentions them by name.
There's a misunderstanding here: while the characters of Mike and Molly are overweight, they are not obese; so they weren't the appropriate subjects for an article about obesity. For the sake of argument, I'm going to move past these sitcom characters and on to what has become the main debate: body image and obesity.
Yes, Kelly technically says that she would be "grossed out" by watching two obese people kiss--but she doesn't linger on that statement the way that later commenters have. It's a point of comparison to her real issue, a relevant one: The disturbing examples of obesity in culture. Let me repeat that: I'm not talking about overweight/fat people, I'm talking about those who are morbidly obese.
The media's take on unhealthy body types has become a double standard: Articles, photos, and video segments will shame women for starving themselves to skin and bones (or profile them with saccharine condescension), but when confronted with the issue of the other end of the spectrum, of a body equally unhealthy because of too much fat, suddenly we have to tiptoe around the issue, or leave it be.
I will always remember sitting in a restaurant and seeing a man's stomach enter the room at least five steps before his head. It was jarring and unnatural, and in my mind the same as the discomfort I felt years later when I saw a man who was so drunk that he collapsed in the middle of happy hour on a rooftop bar. The human body can hold up to a lot of stress, but it's not indestructible; there are things it simply can't and shouldn't do.
Bodies have a shape--not one shape, certainly not the coveted Beyoncé hourglass figure--but a distinct structure that can fluctuate according to factors like genetics, race, and food and exercise choices. But it's still a shape. While BMI is the best way to accurately calculate obesity, there is a visual red flag, as well: When people no longer resemble humans. I used to work at the Bodies exhibition in NYC; one gallery includes a female body that, if you look closely, shows her natural frame and the fat packed on around her muscles and bones.
Look at the second segment from the right: The salmon-colored part is muscles, and the paler material bordering it is fat. Of course this woman is not obese--it could even be argued that she's hardly overweight--but you get the picture. Imagine much more fat piled on to muscles and the fat that you do need for insulation, health, etc. Obesity is unnatural, yet it's complacently accepted by American culture.
Kelly's mistake is in sounding too chipper and oblivious in parts: when defending her argument by saying that she has "plump" friends, and by offering breezy weight-loss advice that seemed unaware that for obese people, losing weight is not as easy as a quick jog on the treadmill. But the fact that she was a self-confessed former anorexic was going to sabotage her position from the beginning, which is incredibly ironic--who better to understand body disorders than someone who has suffered?
This, of course, led me to a debate with a male friend who suggested that a person suffering with anorexia nervosa makes the choice to not eat, whereas his/her obese counterpart could have a thyroid imbalance and therefore has no control over food intake. But they're more alike than we realize: Both are issues of compulsion. Both require their sufferers to acknowledge their disadvantage and to adjust their lives around this obstacle.
In many ways, weight has become a cause of defensive celebration--as evidenced by the Big Fat Kiss-In protest at Marie Claire's offices today (October 29). Fat proponents lash out at people like Kelly, becoming the bullies they accuse these writers of being; they stamp their feet and boom about nontraditional beauty, but remove themselves from the discussion of what it means to maintain a body (of any type). I gained 15 pounds in the past year, and if someone mocked my bigger hips I would certainly call upon the argument of multiple body types... but at the same time I've admitted that I gained that weight because I didn't go to the gym and ate unhealthy foods late at night. It goes both ways.
Jezebel had perhaps (but not surprisingly) the most shocking response, not only to Kelly but also to commenters who dared to stand on her side of the line. A reader said that Jezebel glorifies obesity. The site's reply?
You know what? Maura and that reader are bigots. BIGOTS.
big•ot(noun): A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
If you think that watching a fat person walk across the room is "gross," and if you think not allowing readers to comment on a woman's weight is "glorifying" obesity, you are a bigot.You are treating a group — people who weigh more than "normal" (whatever that is) — with hatred and intolerance.
...When you're judging someone by weight and not moral compass, intelligence, empathy, creativity, talent or sense of humor, what kind of person are you? If you see two people — one fat and one thin — and say that the fat one disgusts you, what happens if you find out that the fat one is a loving mother and vet and the thin one is a serial killer?
...Then you find out that you can't solve a case based on body type. Kelly never suggested that you could. Kelly doesn't pretend to have any right to judge obese people's morals; she simply admits something that takes a lot of guts, that she doesn't jibe with the norm of blindly accepting a patently unhealthy lifestyle.
