Just Another Ugly Fat Chick Joke
Wesley Morris writes this about Eddie Murphy's latest fat-woman-bashing flick, "Norbit:"
http://tinyurl.com/2tg4xl
It's funny, it's effective. Right on, Wesley. Thanks from over here.
I did see Mo'nique's fat-girl-finds-romance film "Phat Girlz" and found it to be embarrassingly bad but also guiltily refreshing. Mo'nique's take on the tale is that African men just love heavy women and will passionately pursue them no matter how reticent or downright mean and rejecting the big girls are. Which is just replacing one stupid stereotype with another. *sigh*
Queen Latifah is large and in-charge in "Last Holiday," which was fun fluff.
Other than that, I look in vain for stories starring fat women having real lives.
And now... back to preachin' prep.
http://tinyurl.com/2tg4xl
It's funny, it's effective. Right on, Wesley. Thanks from over here.
I did see Mo'nique's fat-girl-finds-romance film "Phat Girlz" and found it to be embarrassingly bad but also guiltily refreshing. Mo'nique's take on the tale is that African men just love heavy women and will passionately pursue them no matter how reticent or downright mean and rejecting the big girls are. Which is just replacing one stupid stereotype with another. *sigh*
Queen Latifah is large and in-charge in "Last Holiday," which was fun fluff.
Other than that, I look in vain for stories starring fat women having real lives.
And now... back to preachin' prep.
posted by PeaceBang at 12:06 PM
10 Comments:
Queen Latifah is thick and sexy! :)
I was just talking to my friend, E, this morning and she mentioned this movie. Except for Dreamgirls and Shrek, I haven't bothered to watch an Eddie Murphy picture since Distinguished Gentleman in 1992. So I didn't even know about this Norbert or Norbit movie. But E was like, "You know, enough is enough!" How many movies is Murphy going to make where he's dressed up as a fat, dark skinned black woman who is supposed to be loud, ugly and gross?
I hadn't even thought about it that way; the whole thing just seems juvenile. But it is a good point. It's like that kind of role is his bread and butter. These movies make a lot of money for him.
Right now I think Queen Latifah is leading the plus size woman brigade in Hollywood. And now Jennifer Hudson is getting some recognition, as is America Ferrera of "Ugly Betty." Kathy Najimy was out there for a while, but now I think she's mostly making kids' shows.
It would also be really nice to see some shows and movies about women who aren't super skinny, that are NOT about them losing weight. Kind of like how it's nice to see a movie about a non white person that's NOT about them not being white.
I thought this was interesting.
CC
Just so you know - Kathy Najimy is still out there as a math professor on Numb3rs on CBS on Friday nights - and something of a relationship interest to Judd Hirsch's character. She looks good and has a very smart character with a great sense of humor.
Any minority: thick women, LBGT folk, people of color, is going to have its own set of complexes and crosses to bear.
But think of how long it took for there to be an openly homosexual character in film who wasn't either self-destructive, effete, or a villian.
And we still fight that temptation. Put a man in a dress and it's the easiest laugh you'll ever receive. It requires no skill whatsoever.
The fashion, unfortunately, these days is for women to be abnormally skinny. But being that I see dialogue about how unhealthy it is to put women up to unnaturally high standards of which only 1% can ever hope to accomplish---and I see these things not just on blogs like yours but on the MSM as well.
These are good signs. I feel like the pendulum is swinging and for better.
I love Dr. Miranda Bailey on "Grey's Anatomy," and I think she's a well fleshed-out (no pun intended) character that we're meant to see as the strongest natural leader and one of the best surgeons on the show, though she doesn't get the juicy love life that a lot of the skinny girls do. She's something of a poster girl on the show for issues that mothers have in returning to the workplace. Still, Dr. Callie Torres on the same show is normal sized but actually portrayed as sexy. And the show is never focused on weight as an issue for either of these characters, which is incredibly refreshing.
jinnis,
thanks for the tip on Najimy being on Numb3rs. I've never seen the show, so I didn't know she was on there. I didn't even know Judd Hirsch was on there!
Wow! I loved reading this blog ~ it felt very empowering to know I wasn't alone in my reaction to the fim. Recently I saw Dreamgirls with a number of UU women ~ a 'women's event. Prior to the screening the coming attractions were for Eddie Murphy's new comic opus. As a woman that left the realm of 'thick' years ago and I am firmly in the 'fat' of it, you can image my shame/embarrassment/outrage when I heard my fellow UU women laughing uproariously at Murphy's tasteless comedy. I realized these liberal open minded people felt comfortable humiliating a group of outsiders. Fat women are the latest version of the polish joke and can be mocked without guilt unlike those off limits minorities, gays, blacks and the handicap. I was so disappointed.
Love the blog,
late night reading.
Hey LNR,
I hope you bring up your sense of consternation with your thoughtless UU pals. People don't always realize that mockery of fat folks is the last acceptable prejudice among well-meaning people. What I've found is that when I speak up, people are startled -- like they didn't realize I was "really fat" until I said something???!!! I think they don't connect the bombastic characters they see on the screen with the actual bodies of people they know and love.
Weird but true.
Thanks for loving the blog, and for reading and commenting.
it has been quite awhile, but shirley valentine comes to mind. the brits seem to do better with their portrayals of "real people" than we do...
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