She ain't heavy, she's my...no wait, she's extremely heavy.
Mo'Nique is F.A.T. For those who don't know her, Mo'Nique is a co-star of a (like seemingly all of its programming) cultishly successful UPN show called The Parkers. She is also a published author, and it is her book, Skinny Women are Evil,that concerns me. The books main reason for existence, other than sheer publicity, seems to be as a vehicle to allow Monique to spread the gospel that being overweight is not only okay, its almost desirable. She's also very firm on the title's point. She states, several times and in so many words, that skinny women are not only evil, but also bitches who can't attract men. Let there be no misunderstanding, Mo'Nique hates skinny bitches.
Euphemisms aside, Mo'Nique is fat and probably morbidly obese, a phrase I choose carefully, not as an insult, but as a medical term that indicates an individual is dangerously overweight. It was how Carnie Wilson described herself before the stomach stapling surgery that saved her life. Wilson took a lot of heat for her action, as do many women who choose surgery to correct dangerous weight problems. They are seen as betraying their group. However, being fat and attempting to correct it is not like having light brown skin and attempting to pass for white. What bothers me most about Monique is that she stands up and shouts out: I'm fat and I'm proud!
The "I'm fat and I'm proud" message is a reaction, or more truthfully, a reactionary idea formulated after one is forced to sit through painfully thin waifs like Calista Flockhart on a daily basis. I'm willing to grant the fact that the media is out of touch with Middle America on the weight issue. Television seems to be so out of touch that in the several years that Friends has been on, Courtney Cox and Jennifer Ansiton have lost weight at about the same rate, as the rest of the country has been packing on the pounds. The media is filled with images based in a reality far, far away and one can assume it only natural that people who can't (and who can?) live up to this ideal would reject it and seek out something else. And while turning a fault on its head in order to reject criticism is certainly not new (Lincoln called himself ugly. He was) Monique goes one step further. Her message is not one of acceptance. She ridicules those who aren't overweight, attempting to create a cult out of one of the most rapidly growing demographics in this country: overweight Americans.
Like an increasing number of Americans, I myself am slightly overweight. And maybe this is an issue of degree, but I have yet to attempt to wear my fatness as a badge of honor. There is something that strikes me as decidedly un-American about Mo'Nique's efforts to aggrandize herself at the buffet of public opinion. She didn't get fat through discipline, hard work and self-denial, all traditional, albeit tenuous, American values. She did it by, according to an appendix of her book, eating at every schlock restaurant at every major American airport. Not only does she not emulate the things this country used to hold dear, she attempts to make these notions seem antiquated and those that honor them a bunch of fuddy duddies. Relax, she seems to be saying, have a sandwich.
And Mo'Nique's relative success in this country means that her message is taking root. That people who are overweight may soon not see this as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a trait to take pride in. Or as another group (we are a group joining people) they belong to. But being fat is not an ethnicity, it is not an admission to secret club (in fact, just the opposite) and it does not make you cool. Like stuffed crust pizza, it just makes you fatter. This country is the fattest it's ever been, and diet trends not withstanding, there is no evidence that we'll be getting skinnier anytime soon. While that may be good for Mo'Nique's career, it is not good for us as individuals or as a nation. And while attempting to take pride in our faults, like being overweight itself, may be normal, it ain't healthy.
---Tony (Myrr Jerk)
030903
Posted by thynkhard
at 11:15 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 3 September 2003 5:00 PM EDT
