Friday, July 3, 2020

Fat Friday: Your Stupid Fat Joke Is Still Not Funny



While I'm being that asshole, you'd think that with this current situation where more than 100,000 people have died that folks would realize that there are more important things than having a certain arbitrarily determined "perfect" body type and that maybe it's, you know, rude to target people who have certain bodies for cruel jabs because you think we "deserve it." 

It may be true that a larger body type is correlated with certain health issues. However, having a slender body type tends to be correlated with health issues such as osteoporosis. You don't see me ridiculing people with slim physiques for not bulking up in order to avoid osteoporosis. That would be mean-spirited as well as stupid.

The whole "manipulate your body type to correct X health issue" is as foolish as saying that men with pattern baldness can reduce their risk for prostate cancer by using Rogaine or getting hair plugs. (Men with pattern baldness run a somewhat elevated risk of developing prostate cancer.)

Also, how does it "own" the racists to make fat jokes about them? Do you believe that all fat people are racist, or do you hold the underlying belief that being fat is actually the worst thing that a person can possibly be--even worse than being racist? Because that seems like a pretty damn stupid belief to me.

I think that during this time when people of every body type are at elevated risk from dying of a really shitty disease it might be nice to consider that making jokes about people whom we've been conditioned to think of as less than human might be a really shitty thing to do, and so is thinking of people who look a certain way as being less than human. Check yourself.

I'm fat, not stupid. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I have to do is stop the hateful voice that refers to me as a "fat pig," "disgusting," "unlovable," "land whale," "ugly bitch," "pig-faced slob," and many more such hateful terms. I am very, very aware that I am "other." I am very, very aware that people don't think it's okay to look like me and that people would rather die than look like me. 

The answer is not for me to go to extremes in order to make my body conform to socially acceptable standards. In any case, I tried that for literal decades. It came to the point where I needed to accept myself or die. However, this does not mean that I have some sort of "I love myself in spite of what other people say about me" Pollyanna relationship, and I never will. 

My first inclination will always be to loathe myself and think of myself as lesser. It is a struggle for me to see myself as human at all, and the inclination to self-loathing is reinforced every time I see some shitty dig at big bodies, whether it be in the name of "humor" or "health."

I'm not alone in this. Even though I'm a mean old bitch who pretty much thinks that everyone can go fuck themselves, I still struggle with a massively dysfunctional relationship with food. My psyche loves to praise me for starving myself. These days, people like to call what I struggle against "intermittent fasting." I call it an eating disorder and it doesn't work anyway. Still fat.

Think how you would feel if you saw the attribute you were most insecure about scorned and ridiculed on a daily basis. Then think about whether posting that stupid "COVID-15" joke is really all that funny or necessary.

That Fat Asshole has spoken.


Fat and Ornery
Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay