so i have been wondering...
Which is more —
Politically correct these days, harrassing a smoker from a carbon monoxide spewing hummer, or mocking a fat girl?
I was wondering this because of a Kym post. Kym had been reading this Kate Harding essay about being thin or not being thin or putting life off until you are thin.
Pants posted a link to another interesting post. Someone posed the question What do guys think about dating fat girls? on New York Craigslist and wow guys had a lot to say about fat girls.
I am thin so I have to read up on the fat girl stuff to know how that works. I can pretty much guarantee though being thin does not guarantee you a nice boyfriend or easy career choices. I am thin. I have neither.
I do not have to read up on how politically correct it is to harass a smoker though. I am a smoker so am intimately familiar with that. I have been stalked down the sidewalk by two large male Jewish teenagers [those guys in the little black hats with the dreadlock thingies?] who thought it was not just okay but correct to harass and physically intimidate a small woman because she was smoking a cigarette. If “nice” Jewish boys think that is okay it is these days real okay to harrass [and stalk and physically intimidate] smokers.
[Me, I have a problem with this whole cigarettes whether you smoke them or not are THE cause of lung cancer thing. Sure, you can say every person who has ever come down with lung cancer either smokes or has at some time in their life actually known or come in contact with someone who smokes. But cars spew all kinds of poison and no one is mentioning everyone who ever came down with lung cancer either drives a car or at some point in their life has known or come in contact with someone who actually drives a car. By now though any guy coming out of a coal mine with black lung is going to be asked if he ever met a smoker and he will say yes and people will shout, Aha! The cigarettes killed him!]
I say fat girl up there too because I do not think fat guys take half the crap fat girls do. Guys can go out and get big paying jobs and that somehow validates them because okay they are fat but they have real jobs that is their social contract right? But for girls? Well I guess our
primary functionjob just is to be mainstreamfuckableattractive and if we somehow violate that social contract well we are just fair game I guess.So. Smokers? Or fat girls?
23 Responses to so i have been wondering…
Forget the big chicks and the smokers. Let’s get the idiot in the Hummer.
Yay! Hold the anti aircraft missile launcher for a sec, the ammo has gone missing in my purse.
Perhaps smokers – they get harassed to their face with lectures and all kinds of exaggerated air-waving and huffy looks. “Fat” girls – whatever “fat” is, it is more subjective – tend to get mocked more in quiet whispers and sneers behind their backs.
Heh, this is the third post this morning I’ve read about smoker harassment…
One of the things about the so-called “fat girl” thing that’s always fascinated me is the fact that being larger than average suddenly became both this horrific thing and a politically-correct bandwagon of support simultaneously.
One one side, The Fat Girl became the adopted orphan of what I call Shortwave Feminism (i.e. feminists who don’t want to better the lives of women, but who secretly just want to bitch about it ad nauseum and build cults of personality around themselves, like preachers used to do with shortwave radio), a cause celebre centered on no-good media portrayals, men’s magazines, and “the system.”
On the other, you had this rise in crude humorists who started making fun of large people in public, women’s magazines with anorexic women on their covers started making a lot of money off fad diets and lose weight quick schemes, and even who genres of porn dedicated to fetishizing larger women.
Nobody seems to be losing weight or changing what drives their own personal perceptions of attraction.But both sides sure made a hell of a lot of money off of The Fat Girl.
Max, my cousin uses the same argument about smoking. I understand what ya’ll are saying but the problem is – the smoking makes some of us visibly sick right away.
I mean, when I snuck some puffs with you in LA – I was sick as a dog the next day. When I visited my ex and his family over Thanksgiving, I was in a house full of smoke and sneezing my ass off; nose running, eyes watery – it was horrible. I’m sure my immune system went haywire because I caught a vicious cold right after.
When I went to visit my grandfather my cousin smoked 24/7 in practically every room in the house. I couldn’t workout at the high level I was at….
When I walk through the casino here in the Bahamas my eyes hurt and I start coughing.
So I see why people get really upset when smoke is near their space or vicinity. Sure, there’s no need for people to be rude about it but I know that when I inhale the second hand smoke it literally makes me ill and it affects other aspects of my life which yes, then I get a bit frustrated (and a little hostile).
Damn the computer is cutting me off in five minutes.
x2 about the hummer, Kitty lol
5 years ago, I was a fat chick who smoked. Now, neither is true. I would have to say that the fat was the bigger problem for other people. When I have the occasional cigarette now, people can forgive the skinny girl for smoking. The fat girl had no such leeway.
To me, it’s not about who gets it the most but why people think they get to put down people. Mostly, we are all doing the best we can.
Whatever the subcategories that we put people in so that we can laugh at them and feel righteous, they are just people like us.
Personally I just don’t want to breathe the smoke. Most people assume that fat people just choose to be fat and smokers can easily quit. Neither is quite true and we ought to all be more accepting of others. Unless they drive Hummers. I just don’t get that. Can’t they at least stop at the Escalade or Suburban?
That whole “choice” argument gets thrown around a lot. One group of people saying fat people could choose to be thin and smokers could choose to be non-smokers. The other side saying no they cannot choose it is genetics or it is addiction so do not pick on them it is not their fault.
The problem there is that “fault” part. That implies being overweight and smoking are wrong. And that is an assumption both sides are buying into the second the argument becomes about whether or not the “wrong doers” have a choice.
I say the smoker, because the fat girl can’t give me cancer just by standing there and being fat.
You have not seen the studies that say obesity is contagious huh?
I think the “fat girl” scenario is a lot worse than the “smokers” one.
A smoker is judged for something they choose to do, a decision they made that really is nobody else’s business unless they decide to blow a mouthful into somebody elses face.
A “fat girl” is judged for something she is. For how she looks and carries herself. In a lot of cases, sure, the fat girl made bad food choices and chose her particilur lifestyle, whatever that may vbe, but in a lot of other cases, genetics just plays a major role and the girl probably never stood a chance.
Big girls and smokers give themselves enough hell about it.
No one needs to add to it.
Fat girls are less often sneered/jeered than pitied, I think – and that might well be worse. Few people pity smokers though. I’m not sure why that is but I suspect it is to do with imputations of bad choices and blame.
Fat girls are the new pariah of society, I think. I mean, when Margaret Cho was in a television show about herself, the network told her she needed to lose weight to play herself.
People always go right to the “well, you should diet, you’re not taking care of yourself, blah blah blah” argument. Meanwhile, restaurants are serving up meals that are easily three or four portions on one plate. Fast food places are coming up with concoctions that are over 1000 calories. Everything is about supersizing, combos, additions, blah blah. I mean, how many of you are getting a free slice of pie when you get a carton of cigarettes instead of just a pack?
I realise I’m not making much sense. Coffee has yet to be ingested, as it’s still in its liquid hot magma stage.
When I was a fat girl, people treated me like I was dumb- plus guys acted like they were doing ME a favor by paying attention to me.
When I got to be a skinny girl again I remembered that- and how. I was not a friendly skinny girl.
As to the smoke thing- hey it’s your lungs and I can always move away. But what I think is funny is that most of my friends who do smoke won’t smoke around their non-smoking friends. So really smoke. Don’t smoke- it’s not my choice to make.
I had a friend who grew up small and pretty. She put on a lot of weight and she told me after she gained that weight, things happened to her like men holding doors for her and then when she started to enter the doorway dropping the doors on her.
I live in a state that has banned smoking in all public buildings, restaurants and bars. And yet, with the obesity issues choking the media these same places are up-sizing menus and the waste is gynormous (let alone the waists of those who frequent the locales). I know courteous smokers and kindly over weight men and women. I don’t force my opinions on them and expect the same from them. The guy/girl driving the Hummer, however, always gets a scoff from me because he/she is hurting the planet my kids and grand kids will ultimately have to fix.
Fat Girls and smokers are okay by me Max. It’s the damn poor people we need to do something about.
Eddie, LOL!
I think the fat girl is a bigger social outcast than the smoker. Though back in college in the early 90s, I smoked at UC Santa Cruz and I was a pariah on campus. All of my classmates smoked pot, but none smoked cigarettes and I got total hell for it. I tried to point out that what they were doing was illegal, etc. but they didn’t buy it. I ended up smoking alone in the surrounding forests, where I met other smokers who were hiding, one guy I met that way is still my friend to this day.
I live in SF and there is now a law that forbids smoking cigarettes in public parks. At the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park a few months ago, they kept reminding people that smoking was not allowed in the park unless it was 420. A bunch of hypocrisy if you ask me.
I too have been shaking my head at the car exhaust vs. cigarette smoke thing. No one seems to care that car exhaust – especially in LA – is doing the real damage.
That is a great image, all the poor little smokers shivering behind trees in the forest with their smokes.
The whole “but I am smoking pot that is cool to smoke but smoking cigs means you will rot in hell” attitude is amazingly hypocritical.