Pajiba

With teeth that big, the bitch must of been born on Easter.

The only thing I can say about that nose is that it comes in handy when there's cocaine in the room.

Personally, I'd fuck the fat chick from the TV show before even considering this woman.

I hear if she stands still too long, moss begins forming in the shadow cast by that nariz.

There's a protest outside of Marie Claire's offices at Hearst in New York today. Man, I wish I could be there. It's a "kiss-in," and people of all shapes and sizes are invited to join outside of the building and kiss each other, because EVERYONE deserves love, affection, respect, compassion and kisses.

Aw, Dustin, thanks for writing this. I seethed and nearly cried when I read bits of this person's editorial. Some of my relatives are Mike and Molly-sized people (and hell, I'm sure I'm well above Maura Kelly's acceptable level of "plumpness"), and they're also the friendliest, sweetest folks...and the thought of them reading this kind of hateful stuff...ugh, as if obese folks don't have enough less public bullying to put up with.

It's almost enough to make me watch Mike & Molly just to show support. Almost.

Though I feel a bit bad in learning that the author is anorexic, I stand by my previous petard-hoisting.

Gorram it. We don't need to be a protected class. Okay, maybe those of us who are limited to our beds and Rascals, because they clearly can't do anything right for themselves ever. While I won't call being overweight a "choice" it certainly is within most fat people's, myself included, ability to correct the "problem". Just like anorexia or bulimia, there are confidence issues, image issues, personal demons from the past (or just flat-out laziness -- heh, wanted to type "fat-out") that all go into making someone obese. Also, genetics and diet.

My biggest gripe with Ms. Kelly is that she says there's no way an overweight person of any size could be healthy. That's just wrong. I'm not going to say Mike, Molly, Paul Blart, or myself are shining beacons of the human physique. But that doesn't mean extra pounds equals unhealthiness. Certainly, someone who's 50 pounds overweight for their height, with a combination of muscle and fat, is healthier than someone who starves themselves and takes speed to get the energy they need that they aren't getting from protein. So, for that and that alone, she should issue an apology/correction.

She's allowed to think we're disgusting. Just like I'm allowed to think she should eat a ham sandwich.

Sinnh, I'm with you. That's what passes for a professional writer at Marie Claire? I guess all the real writers are over at Vogue.

Somebody ought to tell that stupid fuck that it's attitudes like hers that encourage eating disorders.

Yeah, I'm a fat fuck. So what of it? I have zero image issues. I accept who I am.

And I'm not a jolly fuck, either. I am who I am. Accept me for it else go fuck yourself.

If this stupid bitch is really and truly disgusted watching anything a fat person does, she couldn't leave her house. Fat people are everywhere. Does she take a barf bag with her to the grocery store? Does she have to be strapped down and rolled around on an upright gurney a'la Hannibal Lecter so she doesn't start clawing the eyes out of some 11 year old with a pituitary disorder?

Yeah, big shocker you had an eating disorder, Ms. Kelly. Replace all references to "fat people" with "Jews" and you just rewrote Mein Kampf, you biggoted cunt.

lol @ superasente

The OP was fine until "objectively gorgeous" - if you agree that some people are objectively gorgeous then by implication you believe that other people are "objectively hideous", and that would imply that it would be natural to be grossed out if you saw them making out.

Sure she fits our current western normative standards of 'beautiful' but that means less than nothing in an objective sense. Or do you think that tentacled aliens should be attracted by her 'objective' beauty?

Oh, superasente, that's not a 1:1 correlation.

Why does Mike and Molly have to be about the fat jokes? Why can't it be about two people in love and those happen to be the actors who won the parts?

Because fat people are too fat to win anything. EVER!!!!!!!

So, Maura Kelly will be pulling down $2 mil with Fox next week?

I, too, am only disgusted by the horrible writing on Mike and Molly. I don't think anyone in their right mind would look at those two characters and say "I want to be fat and unfunny just like them." People look at Marie Claire, however, and wish they could be as thin as the models featured in the publication because of the uniformity in the thin or nothing message perpetuated by that entire industry. Even Anna Wintour tosses a bone to the occasional fashionable fatty because she realizes that humans exist, live, and love outside of the emaciated bubble of the modern fashion industry.

As an overweight North American, I think there is an insidious and pervasive over-acceptance of unhealthy body weight. Obesity, and in this tempest in a teapot, morbid obesity are by their very definition unhealthy. Whether you personally are comfortable with your body is a separate issue. My body goes in and out like an accordion and not in a good way, but despite being a member of the “oppressed masses” for this issue, I just can’t get up in arms about it. Just because some obscure person expresses an opinion and there’s a 24 hour news cycle, it becomes a topic for discussion and scorn?

The ignorant comments made by this woman do not contribute to eating disorders. You are assuming, incorrectly, that people actually read Marie Claire magazine and its blog. That happens about as often as people find Mike and Molly funny.

I applaud Maura Kelly for being honest; she thinks fat people are wiggly and jiggly and icky to look at, which is what I assume skinny people, not to mention recovering anorexics, are thinking about my wobbly ass all the time! Kelly only proved she herself is an epic kind of stupid for saying it out loud. I could give up carbs and whittle my butt down to a size 4, but I find I can have my cake and orgasms, too at my current size. Opinions like Kelly's are rampant, but so far they mean approximately squat to me. Like some "no fatties" Craiglist poster, she's perfectly entitled to her opinion, and for me it's no loss at all.

There are so many weird parts to this story.

1. Marie Claire has a "big girl in a skinny world" column in addition to various stories about international women and tolerance for difference.

2. The editor should have rejected this piece for not watching the show (i.e. doing the assignment) and not writing it in English (i.e. doing the assignment on a professional level.)

The result is a wide ranging online conversation across Jezebel, Pajiba, Celebitchy, The Root and other sites driving up interest in a mediocre comedy and driving down subscriptions to a moderate fashion magazine.

I don't care what most people think about anything, I certainly don't care what some anorexic dipshit at a women's magazine thinks about fat people.

@Alex: A bit harsh in the wording there, but I agree with your underlying sentiment. I look at it like the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetics. Type 2 is almost always completely preventable and develops from years of habitual self neglect. Type 1 your born with and can do jack shit about. However, they are almost always conflated in the media due to our (American society) tolerance of obesity. To be clear, I'm referring to obese people here. Not someone who could just stand to lose 10 or 15 pounds.

Posted by: Alex at October 29, 2010 4:39 PM

Aaaaand that didn't take too long. You know, before someone eventually decided to defend the idiocy of the article with...more idiocy.

Oh well, I'll throw my own opinion in here - I don't like to watch a couple making out or whatever (on screen) unless at least one of them is an attractive female. All other combinations - don't wanna see 'em.

My two cents: I think the show is cute. I didn't care for it much the first few episodes, but it's won me over. I like the actors, they have fun chemistry, and I enjoy watching the show.

Alex, I may not have been born overweight, but I became overweight because my doctor prescribed allergy medication to make me able to breathe like a normal person with bad side effects like depression, anxiety, insomnia, and--yes--weight gain. When I go off of this medication during long periods of self-loathing caused by assholes like you, I can't breathe but I drop down to a more visually-appealing physique very quickly. Of course, I wind up having to go back on the medication when I pass out in the perfume section of a department store because someone blasts me with a bottle of nasal poison and I go down like a sleeping goat. Why don't I switch medicine? Because this is the only pill/treatment we've tried that actually works for me. About half give me migraines, and the rest of the other half make it so that I struggle to stay awake. So my choice is possibly stop breathing and be acceptably-figured or breathe better and be at the doctor less, but carry a good bit of extra weight around.

Before you go injecting that obesity is 100% a personal choice and is no way spurred by any other causes, perhaps you should learn more about why people could struggle with weight. Don't give me that "eat less, exercise more" crap, either, because that's not always the only factor in a person's weight. I heavily regulate my diet and go to the gym five days a week for cardio and resistance training. I can last through a four hour tap rehearsal with a bad knee and sing through six hour rehearsals while music directing shows without incident. I'm as healthy as I can possibly be until someone finds a 100% fool-proof cure for seasonal allergies, also known as being allergic to everything inedible that grows in nature--grass, trees, flowers, and the like. Yet, people like you look at me without knowing a damn thing about what I'm going through and make it so that I spend 90+% of my time in live theater working behind the scenes such that I might not offend more delicate dispositions with my body onstage.

Hello respected colleagues,

Firstly, I acknowledge that I may have used some offensive rhetoric in my comments, but outright personal attacks? Rude.

Secondly, @Robert, I explicitly stated that in "the overwhelmingly majority of cases" people are fat because they suck at life. In your case and other similar situations, of which I am sure there are many hundreds of thousands at least, you got a shitty deal from genetics and I find it incredibly unfortunate that society will always lump you in with people who simply don't take care of their bodies. If what you say about your condition and lifestyle is correct, then I greatly respect you and the course you've plotted through life. Carry on.

Thirdly, I'm not really concerned with anyone's feelings here. This is a social issue, and any obese person who thinks that they're only hurting themselves is selfish and ignorant. I know plenty of smokers who hate themselves, but we don't stop vilifying smoking because it hurts their feelings, as their actions affect the rest of society. Second-hand smoke and the cost of heart and lung disease alone are huge strains on non-smoking citizens. Alcoholism causes similar medical problems (and drunk driving accidents/deaths). Overeating has many of these same and similar effects. A culture that turns a blind eye to the obesity epidemic because it's distasteful to comment upon and hurts the feelings of obese people has no respect for its children, who inherit our values and our practices. We will raise a generation of fat children whose obesity takes a huge toll on society.

So I welcome people who call me an asshole for making insensitive comments. I'd rather offend people who aren't willing to accept the difficult truths than buy into a culture of apologists who are either actively or passively teaching our children that it's okay to treat their bodies like dumpsters. I don't want the next generation to think that obesity is either physically or socially acceptable, just like I don't want them to think smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction and anorexia are acceptable.

I think there are too many fat apologists. I'll give you 50 pounds overweight, but anything above that is insane to me.

That said, looking at fat people doesn't gross me out. I couldn't care less if they make out. When I see them, I think lazy and over indulgent and react the same way to them as I would a stupid person.

When I start to gain weight, I either cut back on food or run more. It's difficult to attain that ideal body, but it's SO easy to not be obese.

Look, I offered to sit on this skinny bitch but no one took me up on it.

A culture that turns a blind eye to the obesity epidemic because it's distasteful to comment upon and hurts the feelings of obese people has no respect for its children, who inherit our values and our practices. We will raise a generation of fat children whose obesity takes a huge toll on society.

Alex, if you think that children are growing up thinking that "fat is good!" based on the fact that people aren't insulting heavy people to their faces everytime the overweight person goes outside, then you are greatly underestimating children's ability to pick up nuance and judge valued characteristics.

Every hero, every princess, almost every single human or humanoid character that children are exposed to as 'possibly desireable to emulate' is on the thin side. They get it. They know that skinny is better.

You can believe what you want. I can think you sound like kind of a compassion-challenged dickhead. But please believe me: we really don't need, as a society, to further stigmatize overweight people "for the kids' sake."

"Fat people are not subject to the same level of stigma as smokers and alcoholics" - and yet, as I grew up being 25-40 lbs overweight (depending on when we're talking), and ALSO being fit enough to run faster and farther than the skinny girls in my dance classes (yes, I took dance even though I was fat), I still carry around a very healthy case of intense self-loathing, due entirely to the fact that people actually DID tell me, to my face, that I was fat and undesirable.

I happen to have a body type that gains and holds onto muscle easily. I'm currently working out 5 days a week, including cardio and strength-training. I maintain a diet that is 500 calories per day less than my daily requirement. I literally work my ass off to STAY "obese." But every test a doctor has ever given me indicates that I am perfectly healthy - low blood pressure, low cholesterol (below 120), low resting heart rate, and no sign of diabetes. And I'm over 30.

So why, exactly, do people feel they need to judge me for the way I look? I'm not a drain on anyone's money, I'm not causing anyone any harm by working my own ass off, I'm not judging them for being too skinny or too stupid or too anything.

The simple fact is, people still hate other people, and they don't care what the reason is. They'll find something else if we as a society tell them that one reason isn't acceptable anymore. We can teach our children how to eat and exercise in a healthy fashion - but even if they do end up healthy and fit, there's always the chance that their faces won't conform to society's idea of beauty and our children will still be degraded for that.

So teach acceptance. Teach that everyone is different, and going through different struggles. And to treat each other the way you wish to be treated.

But now when I teach my kids acceptance, I'm being apologist? So now I can't even teach my kids to accept others' differences without the stipulation, "But don't accept fat people, they choose to be fat"? It really scares the shit out of me to be raising my daughter in this society. A daughter who appears to have inherited my body type. So she's probably screwed too. Because godtopus knows she's not worthy of your acceptance if she's not skinny.

It's my understanding that neither the writer nor the editor of the magazine have ever watched the show. The writer also admitted to not even having proofread her article, so I think we know how seriously to take their learned opinions. Any professional instructor would scribble 'See me' in big red cursive upon coming across that little nugget. It's just another proof of the fact that beyond the reasonable, people will find ways to judge each other based on little to nothing at all. For instance, I just hammered on a woman for not proofreading her post when I'm frequently guilty of the same thing. Does the fact that I'm not submitting my posts for an international magazine where such things are taken as a given make a difference? You be the judge (some more).

I, like BWeaves, am not interested in seeing people express their affection physically. This means I also don't watch porn, and if that's the worst thing you can say about me, I'm doing incredibly well.* If you call me a prude, I will heartily not give a crap, I'm just not into public displays of affection. I can barely tolerate public displays of acknowledgement, really. You've got a wet, bumpy tongue and I congratulate you. Still, move.

Size regardless, if you're making out on a regular basis, you're doing a lot better than many of us. Count your blessings, sirrah.

*It it NOT the worst thing you can say about me, it's not even in the top 290, and I'm assuredly not doing so well. Consider my non-surprising admission as it is intended: as a benign statement of personal fact, nothing more.

Hey gang,

My point isn't that people should be judged based on their physical appearances; it's that people should be judged based on their lifestyle choices, if and when they affect others. The best comment I can offer to you, Meaux, is that you got offered a raw deal by genetics and thus are subject to unfair emotional abuse that comes along with being overweight. However, nowhere in my diatribes did I direct my criticisms of overweight people towards you and others who lead healthy lifestyles. My critique is launched at people who compare SELF-INFLICTED obesity to race and homosexuality, when it should be compared to alcoholism and smoking.

Your well-intentioned reactions against my opinion prove my point: we as a society are too sensitive to criticisms of body type (even if high schoolers and TV producers are perfectly willing to discriminate). I am unable to make a rational appeal for a healthy lifestyle without people accusing me of being an asshole--I accuse the morbidly obese of laziness and over-indulgence, and people like Meaux take offense even though they are neither lazy nor over-indulgent. Thus, people with self-inflicted obesity are lumped in with people who are simply overweight, and vice-versa. The result is apologism for the former and unfair abuse for the latter. Whenever someone makes an argument like mine, he's labeled a dickhead by people who mistake the intended trajectory of our critiques.

Our time in this discussion would be better spent if those of you who lead healthy lifestyles realized that we are in agreement. The goal here is not unchecked superficiality; it is social and personal responsibility. And, by calling me an asshole and a dickhead, you have all engaged in a personal attack--something many of you claim has traumatized you in life. Instead of attacking the person, we must attack the problem, and that is the oversensitivity to discussions of body type and the grouping together of the morbidly obese with the naturally large.

And, seriously, let's stop comparing the challenges of the obese to the historical and current challenge of homosexuals and people with color. No one was ever enslaved, disenfranchised or refused a marriage license for being fat.

@JJ McClay:

That was a fascinatingly boring mischaracterization of my argument. Not that I should have to repeat myself, but here I go...

"My point isn't that people should be judged based on their physical appearances; it's that people should be judged based on their lifestyle choices, if and when they affect others."

Alex, I do appreciate your argument, and absolutely it's impossible to deny that obesity is a serious drain on health care resources. I'm totally on board with your rational appeal for a healthy lifestyle, when it's presented as such. My main beef was with your initial comment; I really bristled at the all-caps pronunciation of the metaphorical fat person in the room as lazy and over-indulgent. That just sounded more like name-calling to me than a genuine concern for the health of our people.

I'm quite fond of my aunts and uncles, and it bugs me that some people look at them and judge them so harshly, just as it bugs me when I hear someone make homophobic remarks. I guess I can see how one would think that's being oversensitive, but it's my family--so it's kind of personal.

Okay, okay...I think we could go for weeks like this, eh? I'll just call that my final two cents. Cheers.

Alex,

"Imagine three people in a room. One gay person, one black person, and one fat person. Which one stands out? THE ONE WHO IS FUCKING LAZY AND OVERINDULGENT." --Alex

and

"But at least anorexics have the fortitude to get off their asses and COMMIT to something and the decency not to drain resources like food and medicine that could be better spent on people who aren't fat saps coasting on the excessive sensitivity of an apologist society." -- Alex

versus

"I am unable to make a rational appeal for a healthy lifestyle without people accusing me of being an asshole." --Alex

Gosh, Alex. I didn't SAY you were a dickhead. I said you SOUNDED LIKE a dickhead.

(That 'reframing the original statement so it sounds less offensive' thing isn't working for me, either, huh? Bummer)

Look, I am sure you are probably a nice person who has genuine concerns about this country and the growing epidemic of obesity. But when you wrap your initial comment in the stinking rags of mockery and vicious sarcasm, it just kind of distracts from your "rational appeal."

If you had calmly stated, as did Ms. Julien, that you have concerns about the overacceptance of obesity in America might be undermining our ability to DEAL with the issue effectively, I would have been interested in a calm conversation. Instead, you went on the attack, people responded in kind and now you seem kinda personally aggrieved about it.

Well, I am genuinely sorry if I hurt you. I don't actually think you're a dickhead; I don't know you. But please take a moment and consider this: You're probably far less hurt than every overweight person who read your comments and worried that you were saying what everyone else thinks but doesn't say.

Okay but you need to also take into account what made them do that in the first place