Wow. Just wow. A blogger named Maura Kelly at Marie Claire discusses why she won’t watch the sitcom Mike & Molly. Choice quotes:
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.
and
I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It’s something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.
Blogger Maura Kelly, out-sciencing the reams of multiply-degreed scientists! Who still can’t figure out the interlocked and complex mechanisms of obesity! After years of intense research! Man, if they were only BLOGGERS FOR MARIE CLAIRE, they’d know the answer was PUTTING THEIR MINDS TO IT! (This reminds me of the endlessly awesome SNL sketch in which Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin implies that Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton didn’t win the nomination because she didn’t WANT it enough.)
Do you know why it doesn’t bother me that Maura Kelly can’t spell “heroin”? Because her brain is too full of SCIENCE! Do you know why it doesn’t bother me when Maura Kelly goes on to say “I’m not some size-ist jerk”? Because that line has to be funnier than anything in Mike & Molly! Win-win!
Look, I won’t watch Mike & Molly because my default assumption about sitcoms is that they’re stupid. (Though I love to be wrong! Hi, Modern Family, I love you!)
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: It is shameful it is that a magazine chose to publish (even online, which to magazines is the equivalent of a newsstand in Kazakhstan) a piece about how someone else’s looks are disgusting.
Hat tip to Lesley for the pointer. And I agree with Lesley that it’s actually sort of refreshing to get the bias and hate so many folks feel right out there in the open.
Perhaps this will prompt Maura Kelly to get introspective and wonder what this disgust says about her. Frankly, I often feel uncomfortable looking at very obese people, but that’s because I used to be very obese (now I’m a mere giantess) and I have a lot of fear around size, food, and the reasons why I got so fat in the first place. But by no means do I think it’s anyone’s problem but mine.
Also: I watched this show for a good 15 minutes and it is utter tripe.
Whoa. I’ve seen some fat hatred in my day, but wow. And the ignorance is equally astonishing.
Geez. The sad part is how far off base this writer is about what constitutes a morbidly obese body. Melissa McCarthy (the actress in Molly and Mike) is absolutely adorable, and looks perfectly healthy to me. I never cease to be surprised at how out of touch with reality most people are about health and weight.
Maura Kelly is entitled to her opinion, just as anyone is entitled to think she is misinformed. I might prefer to she write a little less hysterically and with, as Marjorie notes, some further self-examination (and I do mind that she cannot spell), but it’s the reaction she has. Now she can start to look into why.
I agree that comparing fat people being affectionate to drunks and addicts is bizarre, to say nothing of shallow and unimaginative.
As for the junk science it is here purported Kelly believes in: I will never accept that people cannot lose weight. They can, if they want to. It’s not easy (and also not possible, usually, on a low-fat diet; try low-carb) but it is doable. Ask Jackie Danicki.