Over at Kate Harding’s site, user Daminique writes about an ad she saw in a Dutch train station:
The idea behind this ad: the fat lady gets distracted by a bag of candy, ‘loses her head’, and people could see her PIN number because she wasn’t paying attention.
I could get really analytical here, but I run the risk of vitriolic sarcasm. I’ll just say that this ad is a great illustration of the societal connection between “health” and moral goodness, not to mention a cheap-shot joke at the expense of fat people.
Comments 1
MeToo — November 21, 2008
I saw this on Shapely Prose, but it continues to sicken me more each time I see it.
I often wonder what it will take for people to stop making the (false) connection between fatness and eating patterns. In spite of all the scientific studies, all of the fat-rights activism, all of the personal accounts, there is such a deep-rooted refusal for much of the world to accept that fat people are not fat because they eat more or differently than thin people. I still find this extremely triggering for me (years ago I almost died as a result of the cumulative effects of years of continuous self-starvation, which went unnoticed by most people because I was/am a very fat person). The attribution of moral meaning to weight has to stop -- but I'm running out of hope as to how we can effectively intervene; further, I see fat-hatred being increasingly institutionalized (this ad is just one tiny example), and it scares me to death.