Posts Tagged ‘popular culture’

Shaming Customers with Clothing Sizes

November 17, 2020 — RT-Mart is a hypermarket chain in Taiwan, having a measure of success in mainland China. But last week it set off a furor about fat shaming. For reasons unknowable, the chain replaced the usual S-M-L-XL-XXL clothing sizes with a shaming scheme. Slim, beautiful, rotten, extra rotten, and rotten to the core was the chain’s not […]

Football, Obesity & COVID-19: What Could Go Wrong?

August 2, 2020 — Football has a few problems. For one thing, there’s the brain injury kerfuffle. But fewer kids are getting hurt now because fewer are playing football. So that’s a plus. But on the negative side of the ledger, we have the strong desire to get back to football this fall crashing into a tiny little virus […]

Did Lizzo Just Prove 2019 Was the Year of Body Positivity?

December 26, 2019 — While many of us hit the pause button for the Christmas holiday, others were following a body positivity drama on Twitter. Economist Boyce Watkins offered a theory about the source of fame for a singer known as Lizzo. Obesity caused it. He was dissing her because of her body size. Without missing a beat, Lizzo […]

Fitness Ad or Hostage Video? Hard to Say

December 4, 2019 —   We feel vindicated. Presently, the price for watching video streams is exposure to a troubling Peloton fitness ad. Over and over again. Sure, it’s an ad. But if you turn off the sound, it looks more like a hostage video than a sales pitch. To our sensibilities, it’s creepy. The Cultural Conversation It turns […]

When Your Body Image Becomes Your Business Card

October 13, 2019 — The fitness industry is booming. But is it promoting fitness and health? Or is it promoting an unhealthy preoccupation with body image? Writing for The Lily, Nicole Chung reflects on this dilemma. Becoming a fitness instructor, she got herself into great shape. However, she found that her body image issues grew worse than ever as […]

James Corden: A Clear Rejection of Bullying

September 15, 2019 — In response to Bill Maher’s suggestion for more fat shaming, James Corden has a simple message. “Let’s be honest, fat-shaming is just bullying and bullying only makes the problem worse.” Opening the Floodgates Corden opened the floodgates with his 8-minute response to Maher. Already, his clip has more than a million views on YouTube – […]

No Time For Hateful Public Figures

September 10, 2019 — Bill Maher has kindly reminded us that we have no time for hateful public figures. Friday he held forth with a hateful diatribe about fat people on his HBO platform. He says we need more fat shaming. According to him, the answer to obesity is to shame people into having smaller bodies. With talk about […]

The O-Word Versus the W-Word

August 13, 2019 — The o-word has long been a problem. “Obesity” is a medical term that is more than just off-putting. It’s a stigmatizing diagnosis. Even worse is labeling people as “obese.” That’s not OK. Most people with obesity will tell you that they might have some excess weight, but obesity has nothing to do with them. Thus […]

A Touching Concern for the Health of Mannequins

June 13, 2019 — This week the Telegraph published a very touching essay by Tanya Gold, describing her heartfelt concern for the health of mannequins. Specifically, she’s concerned about a Nike mannequin she’s diagnosed with obesity: She is immense, gargantuan, vast. She heaves with fat. She is, in every measure, obese, and she is not readying herself for a […]

Ranting About Gluttony Doesn’t Help with Obesity

April 27, 2019 — For reasons we cannot fathom, Jay Leno decided to deliver a rant about “this disturbing trend of gluttony” that he supposes is the root cause of obesity. Thanks, Jay. But you’re not helping. Food marketers might be pushing a lot of disgusting “innovations,” but gluttony is not the root cause of obesity. And rants about […]