Episode 149: How Fatness Became a Cheap Joke and Proxy for Moral Deficiency in Pop Culture
Added 2021-11-24 16:50:19 +0000 UTCA character played by an actor in a fat suit shovels food in his face, unable to restrain himself in a fit of rage. Another falls, too lazy and out-of-shape to get up without the aid of others. And yet another loses weight and avenges the anti-fat bullying she faced growing up, finally earning respect as a thin person.
We see all of these tropes ad nauseam in film, television, literature, and other forms of arts and pop culture. They’re a manifestation of a deep cultural hostility toward fat people - one that perpetuates a centuries-long stigma that both reduces them to their size and their eating habits, with little curiosity about any other facets of their lives, and equates their bodies with the sins of sloth, greed, and gluttony.
The results: degradation, dehumanization, and a constant, unrelenting message that fatness is a moral failure. Whether in 19th Century sideshows and cartoons presenting fat people as the object of humiliation and scorn, sitcoms and movies of the 1990s using fat suits for a cheap laugh, or new “dramedies” that continue to miss the mark, the characterization of fat people as sin incarnate has hardly changed, thanks to a virulent and complex nexus of racism, classism, and misogyny.
On this episode, we explore how mass media perpetuate anti-fatness in Western, and especially American, culture, examining the ways in which imperial conquest and capitalist development laid the foundation for hostility toward fat people; how even supposedly enlightened liberals use the thin patina of public health to mask routine anti-fat bullying; and the methods Hollywood and other sources of cultural products use to present fat characters as punchlines and nuisances who can only be kooky best friends or degenerate villains.
Our guest is Professor Amy Erdman Farrell, author of Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture.
***
Guest
Amy Erdman Farrell is the James Hope Caldwell Memorial Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dickinson College, and is currently a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. She is the author of the books, Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism and Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture.
****
Show Notes
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
Sabrina Strings | 2019 | New York University Press
The obesity wars and the education of a researcher: A personal account
Katherine M. Flegal | July-August 2021 | Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases
Shaping the Body Politic: Mass Media Fat-Shaming Affects Implicit Anti-Fat Attitudes
Amanda Ravary, Mark W. Baldwin and Jennifer A. Bartz | April 14, 2019 | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Fat Is Not the Problem—Fat Stigma Is
Linda Bacon and Amee Severson | July 8, 2019 | Scientific American
The World Used to Love Fat Women
December 30, 2020 | Symptoms of Living
The racial origins of fat stigma
Taylor Mooney | August 20, 2020 | CBS News
The Inextricable Link between Anti-Fatness + Anti-Blackness
Emily Cavazos | April 12, 2021
Creating Fuller Stories About Fat People
Samantha Puc | February 4, 2020 | Bitch Media
Americans Blame Obesity on Willpower, Despite Evidence It’s Genetic
Gina Kolata | November 1, 2016 | The New York Times
Media Portrayal of People Who are Obese
John Whyte, MD, MPH | April 2010 | AMA Journal of Ethics
"Fattertainment" – Obesity in the Media
Chelsea A. Heuer, MPH | Spring 2010 | Obesity Action Coalition
Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity
Rebecca Puhl and Dr. Kelly D. Brownell | December 2001 | Obesity
Viren Swamy | September 13, 2016 | The Conversation
Fatness, Pop Culture and the Need for Inclusion
Rebecca Shaw | October 4, 2016 | Kill Your Darlings
Plus Size Women Throughout History: Women In The Renaissance
Violet Glenton | December 9, 2016 | She Might Be
From the Freak Show to the Living Room: Cultural Representations of Dwarfism and Obesity
Laura Backstrom | September 2021 | Sociological Forum
Daniel Engber | July 10, 2008 | Slate
'Fat Monica' is the ghost that continues to haunt Friends 25 years later
Clarkisha Kent | September 4, 2019 | Entertainment Weekly
*****
Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here.
******
Comments
Which CDC study is the host referring to? (overweight BMI healthiest)
Lowell Bander
2022-02-14 17:42:21 +0000 UTCExcellent episode on a topic that receives too little attention. But, while I agree with the vast majority, and particularly the debunking the idea that fatness is a moral failure, I think it omits the fact that there are genuine health issues (PART of the reason for shorter life expectancy in US) and there are genuine culprits (food giants and ads). As a case in point, I recently had a twitter exchange with someone who posted that Tucker Carlson is getting fat. I replied that we should criticize Carlson for being a fascist, not a fat person. They replied that he was also getting fat, as if those to failings were remotely comparable.
Curiouser
2021-12-22 15:57:16 +0000 UTCDo you think fatness was a big problem for slaves? I don't think identifying a literary trope related to fatness is the same as fatness being an oppressed identity. Being fat has histotically been associated with being rich far more than with being poor. Also, being underweight is also viewed negatively in pretty similar ways by the dominant American culture. When I was a kid I remember my grandparents constantly harassing my sister and trying to feed her. Where is the evidence for a connection between fatness and race or gender? Being fat is seen as bad for both men and women, for white people and black people. I don't see any reason to think these these things are related.
Ligma
2021-12-10 12:54:08 +0000 UTCThe issue I have regards the health aspect of obesity. I recently saw a TED talk that claimed being obese was just as healthy as being physically fit and to say otherwise is fatohobic. Doctors who go on television and talk about the link between obesity and covid risk are labeled fat phobic and attacked. Fat shaming certainly exists and I'm not defending it. The problem I'm seeing is about the inability of health experts to talk honestly about obesity for fear of being attacked as fatohobic.
emf 303
2021-12-09 21:23:01 +0000 UTCLigma, what you’ve said above just isn’t the case. People may prefer not to date someone who is bald, or hope their kid can dunk a basketball but being bald, short, having glasses etc. is not seen as a moral failure and so these people do not receive the same vitriol in response to their situation that fat people do. Fat people are akin to drug users in the opinion of many. “Just say no to processed foods!” The connections being made between race, gender, class here are not hard to grasp when we recognize the force that food has in our lives. All the way from people starving in the US and abroad, to food desserts, agriculture subsidies and fast food, inadequate wages and two parents working full time…. The guest on this episode talked about chattel slavery and the link between fatness and promiscuity. I agree they could have spent more time diving deeper here, but the format is limiting. I’m looking forward to reading her book.
Cole Somers
2021-12-08 19:44:04 +0000 UTCI'm sure its hard being fat. Its also hard to be underweight. I just don't see any evidence or argument to support the idea that fatness is in the same category of identity as race, gender, or sexuality. "Fatphobia" exists to pretty much the same extent as bald-phobia or short-phobia or glasses wearing-phobia exists. Obviously its not good to pass judgement on others for things which are mostly beyond their control and its not productive for people to be made to feel guilty about being fat. But being overweight is bad for your health and you shouldn't use the fact that people are mean about it as an excuse to trick yourself into believing that being fat is some kind of political statement.
Ligma
2021-12-07 21:45:10 +0000 UTCOut of curiosity, which parts? Do you not believe fatphobia exists? Or that it exists but isn't a bad thing? Or that it exists and is a bad thing but doesn't have any link to racism or misogyny? The premise of the show is that a huge segment of the population is dehumanized, judged, and persecuted out of a twisted and pseudoscientific concern for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of society. Is that what you can't get on board with?
ArachnoCinnamondycalist
2021-12-07 19:26:53 +0000 UTCI agree. This episode is a rare miss for the show. I could never get on board with the premise and just ended up turning it off before I sprained my eyes from excessive rolling.
emf 303
2021-12-04 19:21:45 +0000 UTCHonestly I'm not really convinced by the idea that there's a significant relationship between fatphobia and racism or misogyny. It seems like people just sort of assume that any axes of oppression or hierarchy must fit into the general intersectional schema of oppression, but I don't see what evidence there is for a connection between the cultural tropes of fatness and blackness or femininity or masculinity.
Ligma
2021-12-04 07:21:03 +0000 UTCI am relieved you guys notice the way media and diet industry drive our views on weight and body size, not health principles or anything based in the material existence of being fat. I am not surprised you noticed - media criticism is your job - but fat phobia is so damn common place and we are so damn unreflective, I was unsure what to expect. So, I thank you again.
Jean
2021-12-01 18:19:19 +0000 UTCThanks for doing an episode on Fatness in the media. IFat folks are materially impacted by anti-fat bias and straight-sized folks have no idea. If they do have some idea, they think Fat people bring it on themselves by not losing weight. Anyone that's never had weight gain thinks they're responsible for the thinness - rather than it being mostly an accident of their genetics and class - and they hold their thinness over fat folks as some example their supposed to follow.
Jean
2021-12-01 18:16:36 +0000 UTCStill one of the only podcasts that makes me reevaluate how I see parts of the world with the guests and commentary you all take. Thanks so much for another great episode. Also, I think I speak for most of us, if Weed Lord or Computer Scare ever stop being Patrons I don’t know how I would deal with that
Patrick Flaherty
2021-12-01 18:05:05 +0000 UTCGreat episode, but hard to listen to those clips (I was dragged to America's Sweethearts many years ago and hated every minute of it). Earlier this year, someone told me she thought cancer survivors should get prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination but not obese people. This view that you are "good" for having survived cancer (unless you're a smoker, as she also said the same about smokers), but if you're overweight, you deserve to die, that infuriated me. I went off on how having had cancer in the past (not current cancer) was not a risk factor for severe COVID but obesity was, and that losing weight is not easy for most people, especially during a year with lockdowns and greater stress. I've seen this anti-fatness in other countries, too, though, some people will talk about fat people like they're not even human.
No Borders Only Podcasts
2021-12-01 11:49:00 +0000 UTCThat’s a fair criticism. They do try for some inclusion but in a fairly coastal liberal way.
Ekaterina Sedia
2021-11-28 23:46:30 +0000 UTCReally appreciate this episode. I had a wonderful aunt, she was a bigger woman, several years ago she went to her doctor about a bad pain she was having. She went to several times over the same issue and dr just kept telling her that she just needed to lose weight. Turned out she had cancer the entire time and of course it was spreading while she was being brushed off by the idiot dr. She died from cancer last year at age 60. I really think if her cancer was detected earlier she would have had a better chance of survival. I'm sorry my comment is so gloomy but this ep was great (as usual) and meant a lot to me. 👍
Neil Harris
2021-11-26 18:14:58 +0000 UTCThank you for this! I've been waiting for you to do an episode on this topic. As a fat and depressed person with an eating disorder, I can't even count the kilos I've gained just because I'm unhappy with being fat. This one really hit home. Thank you, guys 👌
Anne Martine Engebakken Grymyr
2021-11-25 21:59:01 +0000 UTChighly recommend listening to the Death Panel episode with Da'Shaun Harrison. also anything with Marquisele Mercedes. maintenance phase is good, but very white and a little Science™ fetish-y.
Rai
2021-11-25 03:07:42 +0000 UTCMaintenance Phase is a wonderful podcast dedicated to the topic of fatphobia etc. They had a bonus Patreon episode on Shallow Hal and another one on fat suits; their latest does a deep dive into Katherine Flegal’s research and a smear campaign against her by Harvard school of public health.
Ekaterina Sedia
2021-11-24 22:48:26 +0000 UTC
