Letters to the Editor
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157 pounds seems about right to me
Buffie is 5'7" and 150 lbs? I'm calling BS on that - I'm a Black woman of the same height, 165 lbs and my legs and butt are nowhere near that big. 175-180 lbs at least...
Seriously? I'm 5'5" and I weigh 130, and I have a fairly large bum for a little girl (and I've been told that explicitly before; the words "you've got a big ass for a skinny girl" actually came out of the mouth of an acquaintance once). Even with two more inches in height, if you put 27 more pounds on me I'd have two chins.
157 sounds about right if the rest of that girl is solid muscle, which it kind of looks like she is.
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evolution
When the debate about obesity and self control rages I like to point out this little observation...
Almost never in the entire history of life on this planet has food been so plentiful and accessible as it is here in America. 1 billion years of evolution from the first eukaryotes on down to us and the need to eat and reproduce is the same. Some people will talk of self control and "just push away from the table, fatty", but we're fighting some mighty giant forces. We're hard wired to hoard, to be emergency feeders, to protect and save and keep.
I'm not saying it's the excuse, but as I stated before, the people who think there is only one cause to a problem or only one solution forget the 8 billion other factors to any given issue.
Also, for every look of scorn you give for someone smoking or being too fat or too short or too trashy has an equal number of self righteous looks coming right back at you. We need to stop telling people what's wrong with them and start asking our own selves how we can each stop being a bunch of assholes.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, there's none of us so perfect that we can cast aspersions on ANYONE. So let's focus some of this useless energy on ourselves.
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people are "hard wired" to do lots of things, but tolerance for "hard wiring" is inevitably HIGHTLY selective
deal with biological reality sure, but problems are problems and obesity, smoking and lots of other things are BIG problems and NOT just for the people who choose, (or is it a choice given the "hard wiring"?) to engage in them.
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Overweight black women
I am a heterosexual white male.
I love black women, have been married to black women, and have had many affairs with attractive black women, and am currently engaged to a beautiful, slender and shapely black woman, so let it not be said that I don't go for black women.
BUT, I work with many African American women and the African American women I work with are nearly all obese, many of them grossly so. The main reason is that they eat monstrously large meals--frequently. They love to watch religious TV and quote the Bible, but they seem to be quite unfamiliar with the sin of gluttony.
I have always felt that there must be some motive beyond just eating, because they seem to eat like they are in some kind of competition. It must be hard work to eat so much, and it must cost a lot to buy so much food. But they do it. Religiously.
I am telling the truth here. And they all have terrible health problems--diabetes, blood pressure, knee problems, shortness of breath, sleep apnoea, and so on.
Is it because they want to look sexy? I really doubt it. None of them seem to be reporting much in the way of good sex. On the other hand, the only one who is fit and lithe is full of it.
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That's an interesting point...
>Debra (who always writes bullshit like this) isn't helping black folks. And if she truly wanted to help us, why does she chose to publish in an online magazine whose readership is probably majority white?<
It's a funny thing--there are a set of AAmerican black women journalists whose stuff regularly appears in ESSENCE, VIBE, or (occasionally) NEWSWEEK or TIME. Does Dickerson write for anywhere else but SALON? If not, why not? Is her stuff so self-hating that most black or mainstream publications pass on it?
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Rob Anderson Is The LAST Person To Be Talking About Anyone's Weight or Looks
He's the fattest guy in the room:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa54ylA9V2o
Signed,
Fat Tub of Shit
Please, Salon. I thought you were moderating for seriously abusive language. A guy can go around calling fat women worthless tubs of shit and nobody except me calls him out?
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Inaccurate information and sizism
Who is Debra Dickerson to dictate to us how we should look, regardless of race? Having a large rump DOES NOT put women at risk for disease. It is the abdominal fat that doctors worry about!Being this is NO guarantee of health, especially when the thinness is brought on by either drugs or an eating disorder.
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Classic beauty has always been BIG!
Take at look through any art museum. Bottecelli, Rubens, Rembrandt, they liked their models with meat on their bones. Even the 1940s and 50s era pinups were not spindleshanks. I can remember when Jet Magazine used to run bikini clad models built like Buffie The Body. It's only now that women are expected to look like prepubescent boys to be accepted.
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Just once...
... I'd like to see Salon publish an article dissecting the body types sported by famous men and how they're setting a bad example for other men and teen boys.
Let's see some hand-wringing over how much pussy fat guy Tony Soprano gets and how his character is misleading impressionable men into thinking they can do the same without losing weight. And what kind of example is Kevin James on The King of Queens? For shame! Let's tell women to stop tolerating men with "teddy bear" bodies and insist on dating men with washboard abs.
Then in the letters section, a bunch of women can write in and regale us with detailed descriptions of their preferred male body types. Men can write in and try to justify their weight for everyone else's approval. We can all debate how much James Gandolfini or John Goodman really weigh. Much can be made of the ideal V-shaped chest-to-waist ratio. A few women can write in and tell the fat guys that no woman would ever want them and that they are simply not OK.
But of course none of that would ever happen because in our society women are the only ones whose worthiness as people depends so strongly on their appearance and weight.