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Earlier this week, Marie Claire published an essay about whether the TV show Mike & Molly was the grossest show because it shows two fatties who are fat kissing which is yuuuuck. The whole thing has been a real firestorm for days now, but it’s actually kind of better to read the article now, because it comes with a side of equally INTENSE comment thread. NOM NOM NOM. Everybody mad.
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The gross part is that the entire show is just fat people telling fat jokes about themselves. Cool confidence, actors who play mike and molly.
I feel so bad for that actress, because she played Sookie on Gilmore Girls, and I love love love her. But how many good leading roles could there possibly be for overweight actresses?
Especially when Tyler Perry and Martin Lawrence keep taking them all.
Right, I know! She’s cute and perky and seems quite sweet and she’s in this awful awful tv show. The leading man is a terrible actor. And the whole show revolves around fatness. They have to mention it approximately 100 times per show (he gets a ring on his butt when he sits on a normal toilet seat! lolol! what?). If it was just a show about an overweight couple with terrible jokes, that’s one thing. But this whole show is LITERALLY ONE BIG FAT JOKE.
From a foreigner’s point of view, the recent stream of shows about fat people (“Huge”, this show) kinda makes me feel like fat people (and Marketing execs aiming for them) are beginning to form a sort of ghetto, perhaps due to the constant rejection they feel and the fact that many of them nowadays don’t have the means to better their situation.
Foreigner = Non-American
Sort of. But Huge was actually a really excellent show for all people, and showed many different body types while still allowing overweight people to be visible. It wasn’t just about weight, and it brought up so many issues that are rarely portrayed on TV: asexuality, homosexuality, gender issues, body image, fat acceptance. In addition: divorce, dead parents, popularity, teen sexuality, eating disorders. It really would have been great for all teens and young adults to watch. Man, it sucks so hard that that show got canceled and fucking Mike & Molly is being defended on principle simply because it, ya know, shows that fat people exist (and that they only know how to go on unrealistic diets and make fat jokes). I mean, how sick is it that we have so few shows portraying different bodies (two shows probably does seem like a stream) that it becomes a topic of conversation as to whether the portrayal should be allowed when it does happen? Ok, Gabe’s joke is on me because I’m obviously mad. #youmad #ramblinggum
So basically its Outsourced with fat people?
Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime is doing pretty well. Terrible, terrible name but good reviews, so that’s a start.
Re-Sookie from Gilmore Girls
Did you watch the extra features on one of the seasons where the actress goes around interviewing the other cast members? She’s so funny and witty! Why is she even on this terrible show? Where’s Lauren Graham when you need her?
I hate seeing fat people walking around in their fat garb
What’s eating them?
I dunno, but the comments are really fried up! (it begins)
They expect an apology and cultural sensitivity? Fat chance.
Then again, they do seem pretty fed up.
I think the writer’s heart was in the right place butter execution was all wrong.
no lardo
Well whatever her intention was, the fat’s definitely in the fire now.
Heavy, man.
I’m really glad we can just come to Videogum and chew the fat.
Threads like this are why I think it’s just great tubby a part of a community.
Does this mean we have to pretend to like Mike and Molly now? Because I think we’re forgetting that the most stunning thing about this nightmare ladyblogger is that she found a way to be more openly demeaning to overweight people than Mike and Molly itself.
That’s 192 pages of comments, y’all. That’s like some BNPG action.
BNPG: #AngryComments
“I couldn’t make it to the end of Wall-E.” -Marie Claire
“It’s my 1984.” – Maura Kelly
Ok, I’ll stop now.
Also, you’re crazy for this one, Bing!
Pictured above: Your search results
Aw, you left out the best part!
Search terms: Fat People OR Internet Commenters.
fat people dancing and eating remix? wtf?
Yeah, I liked Mike and Molly the first time, when it was called A Bing Search for Fat People Falling.
I am fat. Let the pilling on commence.
Probably because you believe in God! YA BURNT!
What does “pilling on” mean? Is it a version of piling on but with pills? Sounds medicinal
Actually, what I meant to say was this:
I wish this would happen in my apartment every time I have a bad day…
Here in Ohio people are like, “wait I thought they were supposed to be fat”.
My friend drove through Ohio once, and claimed that the biggest people he’d ever seen live in Ohio. No offense.
No Gummo.
Why do you think I moved here? My bacon-wrapped butterball business in booming, folks.
Some woman at kruger’s told me I was “too skinny for the lord” .
ahem.. *is* booming. And yeah, I’m 6’1 180 and apparently Im the odd one.
taketh thee to the Bob Evans!
From her bio: “Though she’s in her thirties, she’s never been in love before – and has started to wonder if she ever will be. ”
I can’t imagine why she’s still single.
I like reading the comments under her bio, too. Girl will be lucky to keep her job at this rate.
all i could think about while reading the article was a 5’6″ 145-lb girl with fake blond hair, a bright-colored sweater and Tiffany’s jewelry who talks mostly with her hands shaking her head with her lip curled up typing away…and that’s gross.
Marie Claire should find something better to do with their interns than assign them to writing blog posts about absolute non-issues.
In its defense, Marie Claire doesn’t expect anyone to read its magazine, much less its BLOG.
Maura Kelly carries pictures of fat people around in her wallet…when she’s trying to stay on budget.
“I couldn’t even open my wallet, I was so disgusted! And then I saved $2,000 a month. What are your budgeting tips?” – Maura Kelly
Maura Kelly carries a mirror in her wallet.
“Now, don’t go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump.” -Maura Kelly
This sounds like a job for Michael Klump.
The most disgusting thing here is that Chuck Lorre get the green light to make a show consisting entirely of fat jokes.
Me talk real good today, too.
Aaaand, that was supposed to be a reply. I give up. You win this time, internet!
The only sitcom I can think of offhand that had two overweight people in leading roles was Roseanne and that show was awesome. But a lot of what made it awesome was the fact that they made jokes about stuff other than being fat. Like it was a part of their lives, to be sure, but it was not the only thing that made them interesting. It can be done, and it can be done well, but I think the primary issue with this show is that it’s just not good at all.
uh, Natalie and Mrs. Garrett?
I’m worried about Maura Kelly, you guys..
Marie Claire’s editors upon learning they’d offended fat people: “We’re gonna need a bigger humble pie.”
You guys are missing the point. This is a safety issue. When obese people make out, they don’t know where to stop and just end up eating each other’s faces. You know, like fatties do.
This guy is offended:
today i was trying to eat a cookie too fast and i scratched my throat. where’s my tv show? i also have a twitter feed, that frequently discusses my general fat kid attitude, if that helps anything.
Once, an herb from a piece of focaccia bread pierced my tonsil. It was uncomfortable and I had to go to an emergency care place to get it looked at.
that is a truly perfect white people’s problem.
Herbs are a global problem.
not on focaccia, they ain’t!
“Pretty sure focaccia is Italian though, and Italians aren’t white” — Us in 1880
The biggest bomb that gets dropped in the comments is that THE AUTHOR USED TO BE ANOREXIC AND SPENT 4 MONTHS IN THE HOSPITAL AND ALMOST DIED. I give up, people. I just give up….
yiiikes
yeah, she does note at some point that maybe it’s her own body image issues and it isn’t the show’s fault. like, no shit. someone else should have written this article (ie, an article about mike and molly existing, not an article about how fat people aren’t allowed to kiss on tv)
So the author compares fat people to addicts and says she doesn’t like to see comatose druggies or staggering drunks either, and then the comments blow up with fat people freaking out that she’s attacking fat people because overeating is an addiction they struggle with? Wait — where are Marie Claire’s heroin-addicted and gin-pickled readers?? Why aren’t THEY upset that THEIR addictions are under attack?
As a drunk, I find the term “gin-pickled” offensive. We prefer “differently sober”.
I;IN KNOW!!!!! IVE HAD ENOGUGH OF ALLL THJIS BIULLSHIT ELLITIST CRAPL!!!!11 SUUUUUUURERE ITS TOTTALLY FUKCIN FIFNE TO MAKSE AFUN OF OSMEONE WHO JUST LIEKS TO DRUINK BUT IOF YUOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SOMEONEWE WHO FATS THEN ITS ALL “WEHERE THE FUKC ISD MY GLASSS!!!!”
Today I’ve learned that if spellcheck suspects that you’re wasted, it just eventually gives up.
I respect spellcheck for knowing its limits.
From the comments section: “Why is this piece of elitist crap still online?” Being fit — that’s what the ELITES are! Obviously, because thinness is a sign of decadence, complacent self-satisfaction, and never getting AMERICAN DIRT on your hands because you have a cush desk job where you sit motionless for 8-12 hours a day. What/Huh??
Well, I mean… being fit isn’t really an elitist problem, but obesity does affect the poor at a much greater rate than those in higher economic brackets. Especially in the the inner city – I lived in a neighborhood in north Philly for about a year where I could walk a single block and get to a Crown Fried Chicken, a Checkers, a KFC, a McDonald’s and a gas station that sold 64 oz sodas and hot dogs, but the nearest grocery store was a Whole Foods 20 blocks away that people who lived in my vicinity straight up could not afford to shop at. The more money you have, the better an area you live in, the better your options are for making healthy choices. Not to mention watching your sodium and trans fat intake is really low on the list of daily concerns when you live in an area with more than 50% unemployment, almost no local business, and a serious crime problem. So actually, being fit kind of IS an elitist problem? Especially when it is so much cheaper and easier to eat crap.
Whine whine whine, poor people. In my 20s I had whole years of unemployment and underemployment, where I lived on couches and drove a car that appeared to be on fire whenever it idled. I was also in the best shape of my life, eating for <$4 per day and running 7 miles every other day (free, after initial purchase of $60 shoes). Was I an elite the year that I made $7,000? Or the multiple years I made $18,000? It's pretty obvious: if you don't want to be fat, you have to sweat and avoid crap food. Doing this is cheap, if you want to do it. The end.
Well, that’s fine. But your anecdotal evidence of staying heroically in shape while being poor doesn’t extend into general truth anymore than my anecdotal evidence of living in a very poor neighborhood and seeing how much more prevalent and cheap awful food was than anything of quality. The general truth is still in the statistics, which is that poor people are obese at a much higher rate than the middle class and the wealthy.
Also, I don’t know your background and so am only making a guess based on the general difference between the pop-culture-blog-reading demographic and the inner city poor I was talking about, but that whole issue of health being a local cultural value or even on the list of daily concerns is different for someone who lives a few years of poverty vs someone who has grown up in a family and community environment with a history and expectation of it. You won’t find many people in north philly who jog for their health, largely because jogging through their neighborhoods can present a direct threat to their health.
But, you know, “whine whine whine, poor people.”
So was it one of your North Philly neighbors who logged into Marie Claire to comment on Maura Kelly’s “incendiary” opinion about Mike & Molly? Or was it an elitist blog-downloader who is self-appointed policeman of what is elitist and therefore should be removed from the interweb?
I get that being from the suburbs makes me more likely to want to be in shape than someone who grew up in North Philly (no, I don’t get that; don’t we all like to be in shape?), but at some point statistics are BS. Your life is yours.
(That said, there was a really interesting feature in the NYT years ago about how different people handled the same medical condition: a rich guy changed his diet no problem but a poor woman just didn’t feel free to give up her comfort foods. It had less to do with resources, as I recall, than with flexibility of thinking. But my point is she COULD have done it, she CHOSE not to. Maybe the choice is not equally easy, for some reason. But it was still an available choice.)
Fair point about the context being a Marie Claire commenter in the overall discussion.
And yes, I think you should get that growing up (presumably middle-class) in the suburbs makes you more likely to want to be “in shape” than someone in North Philly. Not because people don’t like being fit, but because the ability to make that something you focus on and value can only exist in the absence of other, somewhat more pressing shit to worry about. It is easier to buy and cook food that is bad for you. It is easier to not exercise. It is a privilege to be able to spend money and time in an effort to make your body look and feel good because our environment and the way we live don’t naturally jibe with what makes a healthy person anymore. It doesn’t make it wrong, but it is wrong to pretend it isn’t a choice that is easier for people with resources to make. “Staying healthy” to you has probably never meant staying safe from physical violence, or having to avoid a prevalent hard drug culture, or trying not to get sick because any kind of medical care at all would break your budget for the foreseeable future. Your life is yours, but everyone’s life exists in a different context – they are handed different circumstances to work with, and it’s completely myopic to believe that it’s an equal playing field or anything approaching that.
Take your example of living on 7k a year. Yes, that’s below the poverty line, but it’s not too far off what a lot of people in a poor neighborhood might take in. You said you were living on couches, so I’ll assume you were paying very little if anything in terms of rent and utilities. I’m also going to guess you were close enough to a grocery store that there wasn’t a significant transportation expenditure associated with getting to and from it ($4 subway or bus fare to and from would have doubled your daily food expense immediately). And I’m assuming you were using those wages only for yourself and not attempting to support other members of the household.
Your 7,000 looks a lot different from 7,000 to someone with rent, utilities, and possibly other mouths to feed, which I’m sure you understand rationally but didn’t seem to think factored into your argument. Of course, government help is available for people in that kind of poverty but even THAT is more readily available to people who have a baseline of shit together that can be expected of a young person from the middle class but the importance of which may never have been communicated to an under-educated person in the inner city (or a deeply rural area, for that matter).
I can’t comment on the NYT article because I haven’t read it, but I do have a personal experience with being recently diagnosed with a medical condition that’s required me to make drastic changes to my eating habits. Aside from the fact that I would not even have had the resources to be diagnosed without the luck of my family’s financial situation and would instead have likely died of liver failure 10 years or so down the line, I know for certain that my ability to get to and buy healthy food has played a big part in my ability to put my condition into remission without serious side effects, and I also know and appreciate that people with fewer resources than I have could not have been successful. Would I have made the same choice to change things, given my diagnosis, had I had less money? Of course. Would it have been as easy? Absolutely not.
Woah. Sorry guys, realized I’m having a hand in turning a comment section about fucking Maura Kelly into seriousgum.com.
Back to topic: Who is letting their 7th grade publish articles for Marie Claire?
I see we are agreeing on key points (e.g., we agree the choice isn’t equally easy, but we both call it a choice). Also valid to mention that I didn’t grow up distracted by gangs. As for diet, my staple meal was a $1.39 can of chili on 33 cents worth of pasta, with 5 cents of grated cheese and one Budweiser. Pretty easy to buy and cook and full of protein and fiber. I did pay couch rent, but I also didn’t have kids to support on 7k — mainly because I knew on 7k I shouldn’t take on responsibilities, and also — good point — because I felt sure that one day I’d make more than 7k, and so could postpone kids/marriage.
Not to ramble, but I used to live next to a halfway house where guys who committed crimes were sent after or instead of jail, and they would sit outside my bedroom window and I got to eavesdrop. Frequently overheard phrases: But it wasn’t my fault; I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; It could have happened to anyone. Never heard phrases: All my fault; In retrospect a bad decision; I knew I was taking a risk. They were also ALWAYS forgetting simple shit and ending up in a crisis: “I had to mail form X by the 10th or I go back to jail and today’s the 12th!” — how do you forget that? These guys were all white. Currently, I live around the block from a similar house where the guys are all black, and when I walk past they sometimes yell racist shit at me. I bring this up to say that in both cases, these guys strike me as people without advantages I’ve had (the word “privileges” is accusational and I reject it; I think your use of it is why I stuck around after the bell to fight you) but more interesting to me is that their way of thinking is so, so alien to mine. Like the lady in NYT who didn’t want to give up mac n cheese even though it would kill her. It is not enough to say — and it pisses me off to hear — “You jogging proves your life is a relatively a cakewalk” (that is how I hear a lot of “social justice” stuff). To me a constructive approach does not come packaged with accusations of elitism. In fact that is a huge distraction, suggesting that somehow people who know better are at fault or are bad people; and also suggesting that people who don’t know better are being condescended to.
Sorry to hear about your health issue, cizmad. I’m glad you found out about it and were able to take steps.
I like it when things coalesce into real discussions!
I also tend to eschew the word “privilege” when I mean it in the context of race or class privilege since in my experience, framing real issues of racism and/or classism that way only leads to people being defensive and missing the point. For example, I agree that white privilege exists but I think it’s foolish to open any argument about race issues that way because it implies that the privileges that white people enjoy in this country, rather than the fact that minorities are denied those same things, is the inherent problem. The fact is, it’s easier to have an argument about elitism and snobbery than it is to actually think about and admit ambiguity in the issues, which makes me extra glad we’ve veered from sort of the former to almost the latter.
As such, when I said that having the time and resources to be focused on ones’ health is a privilege I meant it strictly in the non-social-justice sense of the word: some people just legitimately have too much else going on to blast their abs, even for just five minutes a day.
And of course, as you mention, the arguments about circumstance can go both ways – your immediate experience with those residents of halfway houses who demonstrate exactly the kind of lack of personal responsibility that leads to the “fuckit I’mma get a double down” nutritional mentality are part of the equation. So is the mother of two kids whose only viable option to feed the family on $5 at the end of a work day is a box of fried chicken, but neither is the whole story. There’s a social history and context to both of those situations and they share much of it, but there are also always individual lives and choices in play.
It’s the whole fallacy of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” that, as penny mentioned, has long been trumpeted as a compassionate conservative ideal. They tend to ignore that, even admitting everyone in this country is constitutionally equipped with metaphorical boots and straps, some of us are wearing anti-gravity money boots and some of us are wearing lead blocks. The truth for most of us is somewhere in between.
Anyway, thanks for sticking around for some debate. No one could have been this civil on the Marie Claire forums for this long.
PS. I do have to vehemently disagree with one point – canned chili over pasta with cheese and beer on a daily basis is NOT going to allow someone without a 20-something’s metabolism to live healthily for very long. Holy crap, dude.
“is NOT going to allow someone without a 20-something’s metabolism to live healthily for very long. Holy crap”
Hmm. Yeah, it might not work as good in my 30s. But now I feel like I should conduct the experiment to find out. What an inspiration this thread has been.
whoa. ok, here’s the thing. stories like this (HELLO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY) often elide the invisible factors that make them look like, “well, anyone can do it. i did. just pull yourself up by those bootstraps!” i’ve been “below the poverty line” and had to use social services, particularly for health care (HI AGAIN C.C.I.). but i came from a comfortable middle class background, i knew that i had a support system, etc., etc. obesity in low-income neighborhoods is way more complicated than this. race and class privilege – which affects every facet of one’s life – is almost entirely invisible to those who have always grown up in said privilege.
this is the equivalent of the haughty elitism that lets someone like Christine O’Donnell say, “I’m You.” Every privileged conservative white person hears that and goes, “We are all the same, aren’t we?”
‘Zactly.
I think my above post addresses some of what you say here penny. But look: you can use buzzwords like “class privilege” all day (I am assuming your drawing of an equals sign between me and Christine O’Donnell was accidental) but the fact remains: not eating fast food every day is about the easiest achievement in the universe. Exercise is also not impossible. Are you really suggesting that poor people have no idea that exercise will help them get in shape, look better and feel better? And that it is “racist and classist” for me to credit them with knowing this?
As a Molly who’s married to a Mike, I think this show is definitely something I want around for a long time. I can’t wait for the office xmas party when the 5th person in a row is like “OMG! Do you know there’s a new show [gunshot].”
She all like “fatties be fattin”, but she ain’t nuthin but a hater.
Reading her bio and description of how many successful friends she has makes me want to barf. Im sure her pretentious and foodless dinner parties are a BLAST!
I’m not weightist. I have a friend who is fat.
Does Fox News have a thing against fatties?
Just this:
“Also valid to mention that I didn’t grow up distracted by gangs.”
-Hotspur