Letters to the Editor
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buffy's booty is not the point
Now, there's nothing I'd love discuss more than da' butt, but some are missing the point, even if it wasn't made very clearly. Obesity is a really serious problem in the US, and self esteem issues aside, a BMI over 30 is simply not okay. Obesity cuts across demographic lines, but if Dickerson's stats are to believed, then the problem in the black community has reached a crisis stage. Frankly, i'd rather have my feelings hurt in the short term than have my legs amputated down the road because of diabetes. I have a feeling that society as a whole is going to be facing an astronomic health care bill as a result of our sedentary life style, if the bill hasn't come due already. Time for niceties may be over.
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The fat - no, I mean the poor - no, I mean the fat, are always with us
I agree with Spankerton. These people in the pictures are NOT FAT. They just don't look conspicuously skinny.
The obesity epidemic is fuelled (ha ha) by completely unregulated food and food advertising industries, a lack of safe outdoor places and activities for young people, and the rising costs of healthy food (including scarce time for preparation). Picking on individuals won't help anyone. It never has, and it never will. So why is everyone doing it? Because bullying for a lot of people is fun I guess. But for me I judge the bully, and I don't forget it, either. Not to mention which, 'fat' just starts being another word for 'poor'. It's no accident that the fattest and unhealthiest of us are the least privileged. So lay off picking on individual fat people and start picking on the glaring societal problems that are contributing to adn creating this epidemic in the first place.
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no one medically literate and rational could argue with anything DD says here
well, you can see for yourself here how far scientific literacy and rationality will get you.
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WTF?
The headline says that carrying weight in the gluteal region puts you at risk of disease. Then the article says nothing about what risk or what disease. And it's important to be specific because the allegation in the headline is directly counter to conventional wisdome that apple-shaped = bad and pear-shaped = good.
Why is Salon letting this article be run this way?
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the only reason BMI is controversial is because it doesn't take account of people who are very muscular
there is no doubt that anyone with a "fat" BMI who is NOT a body builder is unhealthy. This argument is like creationist who use disputes between biologists to claim that evolution is "only a theory" or exxon "climatologists" who claim that debate about the specific effects of global warming prove that the whole thing is a conspiracy by environemntalists. Sure belly fat is worse, but a three foot wide 100 pound ass is NOT HEALTHY even if it is twice as wide as your stomach.
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Bodies
I simply don't believe Dickerson. I don't think anyone becomes more attractive in the US to more members of the opposite sex by becoming obese. No doubt that African-American men in general like a woman with a larger frame than white Americans. But that generally means a Beyonce-type figure rather than a Keira Knightley, not a Monique (noticeably absent as a pin-up girl).
It makes no sense to lambast people for their god-given shape, and lambasting black women for having (and black men for appreciating) large booties, which in Dickerson's mind contributes to obesity makes as much sense as yelling at Asian girls for being flat-chested, thus contributing to anorexia.
Black women usually have bigger butts. What's wrong with loving that part of yourself?
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Wanna know how to take a possibily legitimate point and write an article that persuades nobody of anything?
Do minimal research on your subject.
Cite one and only one statistic.
Riddle your article with unspoken and undefended assumptions, such as that big butt fetishes are the reason for the weight statistics in African-American communities.
Pick a straw woman to serve as the focal point for your indignation.
Offer no real solutions except for advising your community to "grow up."
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"Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. ...
"Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires." -- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
I'm a 29-year-old white man who likes all forms of female beauty, from willowy sylphs to zaftig goddesses with plump rumps and thick thighs. Regardless of size, I like supple, womanly women. Is this really a "fetish," and am I guilty of forcing women to commit "slow suicide" to please me?
Why are goddesses curvy, and not scrawny-haunched, hard-body harridans? Surely there must be a reason, but maybe the entire anthropological history of humankind is wrong and Debra Dickerson is right.
My wife has proportions identical to Buffy the Body, whose shape is no less healthy than a ripe piece of fruit. That's just the way she is, no matter what she eats or how she exercises. I adore my wife's body -- it makes me happy, and I like to make her happy with my adoration. So, what's unhealthier: feeling adored and finding pleasure in the body you were blessed with, or feeling ashamed and overshadowed by a standard of beauty that is not natural for you (or, perhaps, for any woman)?
Sometimes treating a woman like a goddess elevates a man's basest desires. What could be more positive than that? Why reduce it to a fetish?
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There's a difference
Am I the only one who finds those gigantic buttocks highly unattractive? Do we all know the difference between curves and flab?
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I'm sorry, the risk for WHAT????
How about pure bad taste? At some point the issue of what men like and the risk of disease pale in comparison to the bald fact of WTF??? Pardon my mouth. Has anybody here bothered to explore Buffie the Body's web site? Good god y'all! Yeah, ample butt. And right there in your face in all it's near-naked glory. I'm thinking Buffie's problems are way bigger than her butt.
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This was a sickening article
"Buffie the Body" wasn't obese (yes, I followed your stupid link).
She has a big butt!
Some guys like big breasts. Some guys like big butts. Some guys like skinny women. Some guys like women who are overall fat.
What is your problem? Shouldn't people be allowed to enjoy a variety of body types? Do we have to hate large rear ends?
You are such an idiot! Every article you write is a piece of crap. Always wrong, and wrong in the worst possible way.
I can't really express my distress and distaste for your consistently wrong hearted and wrong headed attitudes. But I think you need help.
Aagh!