A Ton of Laughs

USA Today ran an opinion piece the other day called "Why Fat Jokes Aren't Funny". This is a serious topic about discrimination, so lets sober up for a sec and take a look:

Our wedding had gone surprisingly well. In spite of my incessant worries about how my dress would make me look and what other people would think of me, the day went off without a hitch. Our honeymoon, too, was simple but fun.

Throughout most of it, I was able to forget that I was morbidly obese...

Not to be insensitive, but two paragraphs in, and I'm already squirting my Slim Fast shake out my nose.

"...until we got home and we were suddenly confronted with an unexpected obstacle. Traditionally, the husband is supposed to carry the bride into the house, but this was very unlikely, since I was twice as large as my husband.

I'm sorry, but was this piece meant for The Onion? Who starts a piece ostensibly about how it's not cool to make fun of fat people, and then proceed to describe a situation that sounds like it came straight out of "Shallow Hal"?

"Thin actors are only too willing to don fat suits to get cheap laughs. The movies Shallow Hal and The Nutty Professor, while not entirely anti-fat, largely consisted of two-hour-long fat jokes."

Did she see the same movies I did? Both of those movies had fat jokes, yes, but it was always the jerks telling them. In one, the superficial player realizes a hot body isn't everything and falls in love with a fat girl. In the other, an overweight man overcomes his insecurities and scores the hot chick. The movies aren't "anti-fat" in any way, their entire message is about accepting people for who they are.

Since fatness is seen as a lifestyle choice rather than a genetic condition, many people tell themselves that it is OK to laugh at the overweight. In spite of the extreme difficulty obese people face when trying to lose weight (I have lost more than 60 pounds three times), our condition is assumed to be self-inflicted.

I'm sure there are often genetic and glandular reasons behind some obesity cases. But in other cases, the fat person is simply unwilling to admit they have a willpower problem. I had a friend in college who was probably double what she should have weighed. She took a handful of pills everyday to help her deal with a "glandular" problem. One day I dropped by her dorm room and happened to see that space between the bed and wall was stuffed with empty 2-liter Coke and Sprite bottles. She drank one or two of those a day.

Also, I'm not sure what her point is about losing 60 lbs three times. I've lost 10 lbs several times and can't keep it off, but I recognize that's because I decide to have that extra piece of pizza, or crack open a microbrew, or skip that morning run. I haven't had the willpower to maintain the appropriate balance of calories and exercise.

I certainly agree that some of the abuse this woman has enountered seems pretty outrageous. Ranting in front of an obese friend about how you dislike fat people is
just boneheaded and rude. But claiming that being fat is an inevitable condition that precludes any kind of joke or criticism is equally wrongheaded.

Especially if you start your defense by telling a fat joke.