No bagel is worth $95

Okay, so I haven’t done straight rant in quite awhile. I almost re-tackled the American Idol phenom last week, but couldn’t really get it up for it (probably this week, though).

But I invaded my sister’s blog yesterday, and she suggested I take it back to my own freaking blog (she said this much more nicely).

I was talking to a ‘friend’ in a bar last week. He is a bar buddy only; a nice enough guy and very good looking, but I’ve found out that really he is Archie Bunker in a deceptively pretty package. We’re talking, and he begins making fun of the guy in the band – the guy is morbidly obese.

Now, check this. Morbid Obesity is a medical term, and you would be amazed how not fat you have to be to qualify. I haven’t looked at the numbers in a while, but I’m pretty sure that I am considered medically Obese, (not Morbidly, but still…), which is, I’m sorry, visually ridiculous.

And so when I say that this guy is morbidly obese, it’s because… obese, the adjective, not the medical condition, is what applies here. He must be 400 + pounds. And he is vital, and adorable, and a hell of a musician. But he can barely dress himself with any decency, and there’s this… air. about him. And I was watching him at one point, and he was playing his guitar so fast that I could not see his hand, it was all a blur, and I thought

what people say is that this guy is a slob who has no self-discipline? NO SELF-DISCIPLINE? Look at those fingers go! People cannot begin to comprehend the complexity that makes a fat person a fat person…

… and I’m not going to write today about all the forces within me (physical, psychological, mental), that I believe collaborated to make the odds of my not being fat so terribly low, but believe me, I understand the prison this guy is in. And the pride he carries as he pretends he is not caged. I don’t know him well, and am always tempted to speak to him about my experience (weight loss surgery 2 ½ years ago) but, you know, not so appropriate.

Anyway, I turn to Pete (Archie Bunker with Robert Plant hair) and I look him in the eye and say, ‘You know I used to be really fat, right?’ And his answer was, ‘but you’re not now’.

so this makes it okay.

I think I tried sputtering some argument, but I’ve argued with this guy before over some gay stuff, and it’s just pointless. Of course my arguments are seamless. I’m really good at arguing, and I’m smarter than him and… you can’t penetrate someone like that. I walked away. We’re bar buddies, he knows I wasn’t thrilled, beyond that it’s not a relationship that needs stoking.

But jeez. Would he say this to a black person with Caucasian looking skin? (well, okay, maybe he would.)

I’ve ranted this before, but it’s been awhile, and it bears repeating.

Fat is the one, the single malady to which the people of this culture entitle themselves to scapegoat, with uncensored abandon.

And our culture does not acknowledge this little glitch in our pc system.

Direct from an old blog of mine:

People will freely offer unsolicited weight loss advice. But do people freely offer hygiene tips to people who are in need? Nope, they actually don’t know how to handle it. They consult with Human Resources about how to break it to a co-worker that they should wear deodorant, because no one wants to make anyone feel that badly about themselves. But no one has a problem telling fat people “you have such a pretty face, if only you would lose weight”. “Oh, you’re such a nice guy, if only you would use a little mouthwash, I’d have a hundred girls I’d fix you up with!”

And worse, fat people are willing participants in this open-fire on themselves. I remember sitting in a movie theater when a preview of Shallow Hal played, and these two fat women a couple of rows behind me were whooping it up. See, women in this country who are fat, they know they deserve to be made fun of. They know they are not doing their proper job of being beautiful women. And they know they better not get pissed off about being mistreated about something that is ultimately their shortcoming.

More from the same blog (lto be clear, I have never seen this movie):

Shallow Hal. Picture the premise… a man who sees ugly people as beautiful. Now, what if instead of fat as a representation of the ultimate not pretty girl, they had used say… black? (Albert, thanks for this one.) He sees white, but really, HAHAHA, she’s a black girl. A black girl!!! Hilarious. Instead of splashing the pool until it’s empty, [because that always happens to big women], she, what, I don’t know… steals everything in sight and can’t hold a job? dances really well? I don’t even know where to go with this…

That movie would not have been made. (the one where he finds he CAN love a black person! He’s not so shallow any more!) But it’s still acceptable to make fun of fat, to point out the wrong of it. Get it?

Let me mention that I am not a fan of fat. I was not, as a fat(ter) woman, proud of being fat. I wasn’t into being a ‘BBW’, and I super really absolutely wanted nothing to do with ‘FA’s (Fat Admirers). I am woefully ignorant of all things relating to fat activism.

But I do not find it acceptable to equate fat with disgusting, unattractive, and deserving of ridicule.

Mandisa, American Idol contestant, a big beautiful woman (genuinely big, genuinely beautiful) was told by Paula Abdul that she has a beautiful face. Let’s finish that sentence… ‘despite how fat you are’ or, the perennial favorite, ‘if only you would lose weight’. And Mandisa did not know enough, I assert, to find that comment insulting. Katharine McPhee is told every week how beautiful she looks. Not her face, but her.

(Separately I will add, entirely off-topic, that Paula Abdul is a fucking idiot, and maybe a drunk.)

Kirstie Alley. She was doing okay there for awhile. I never watched Fat Actress, so I don’t know where/if the line was drawn between holding a viewpoint of fat being something a woman can be comfortable being, and ridiculing Hollywood and the world for its reactions (like she was doing on talk shows and in articles prior to the series), and being self-deprecating.

But I do know she lost me with her Jenny Craig ads celebrating her weight loss to the tune of It’s Raining Men.

I don’t have a problem admitting that I attract more men since I’ve lost weight. And I don’t have a problem with it as a fact of life; that a woman who is more than a hundred pounds overweight is not as sought after in this society as a woman who is fifty pounds overweight.

But to celebrate, to actually promote it, speaks out against fat women, and yes

speaks out against women.

It’s a feminist issue. It fucking is. Hating fat women is hating women. And women accept this hatred, embrace it, and use it to ‘motivate’.

Not acceptable!

Direct from my comment to my sister’s blog:

Haven’t read a thing about the fat men angle, but I don’t care. Fat emasculates a man, the way it defeminizes a woman. Men get boobs. Morbid obesity messes with the hormones of both genders.

(This guy in the band the other night – he is absolutely thought of as ‘less than a man’, to some. Which of COURSE = a woman.)

(It is the same ‘patronizing’ attitude. It comes from the same mindset that men rule the world. Rich white men. And those men don’t have to be thin and pretty, as long as their women are. And a fat guy can be in their stupid club, but a fat woman can’t.)

You have to be waaay fatter as a man to fall victim of the prejudices; guess what? I don’t have a problem that people have a problem with folks who take up two seats. It’s… a problem. But a guy who is 80 pounds overweight does not suffer socially from what a woman who is 60 pounds overweight does.

Here I am, with no closer. I don’t know if this is well-ordered. Roberta needs an editor.

Oh yeah the title has nothing to do with anything. Apparantly it costs a fucking fortune to FedEx something when you’re not using your work’s corporate account. Just trying to send some Murray’s Bagels to Albert in Seattle. He can’t get a decent bagel out there.