{"id":56011,"date":"2013-07-02T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=56011"},"modified":"2013-10-31T04:02:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T09:02:28","slug":"the-fat-joke-power-and-the-meaning-of-words-and-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/07\/02\/the-fat-joke-power-and-the-meaning-of-words-and-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fat Joke: Power and the Meaning of Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

If this PostSecret confession doesn’t break your heart, you are a bad person.<\/p>\n

\"fatjudge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week I chatted with the Canadian Broadcasting Company for a segment they’re doing on humor and power. \u00a0I used hateful jokes about fat people as an example of how patterns in comedy reveal our biases: who it is okay to revile, whose feelings we can dismiss, who we see as less-than-human.<\/p>\n

I was surprised when the host said that some argue that pointing out people’s weight isn’t offensive because it’s “just a fact.” \u00a0I responded, “Sociologists don’t believe in that kind of fact.” \u00a0Two hundreds years ago being called fat would have been a compliment: it represented power, success, wealth, and (yes) health. \u00a0Today the meaning<\/em> of fat has changed. \u00a0The word is now a weapon. \u00a0For the person who wrote this secret, fatness is not a fact; it’s a “humiliat[ion].” \u00a0This is what dehumanization feels like.<\/p>\n

Whoever you are, I wish I could give your warm, comfy body a big giant hug.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If this PostSecret confession doesn’t break your heart, you are a bad person. Last week I chatted with the Canadian Broadcasting Company for a segment they’re doing on humor and power. \u00a0I used hateful jokes about fat people as an example of how patterns in comedy reveal our biases: who it is okay to revile, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,253,256,868,283],"class_list":["post-56011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-history","tag-humor","tag-power","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56011"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58006,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56011\/revisions\/58006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}