Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Betrayed by Hollywood, again

Last nights episode of "How I Met Your Mother" had a particularly hurtful fat joke. One character had proposed marriage to another. The woman was unable to have children and was scared to tell because she was afraid the male would rescind his proposal. The man was reassuring the woman of his love and she started machine gunning out different flaws about herself and after each one he still said he would marry her. She then confronted him and told him to stop being so nice and he said, there is nothing about you that could make me not want to marry you, unless you became a big fat fatty. The man then said "See, I do have my standards" For those of you who saw the episode I am sure I am not recounting it verbatim but sharing my impressions of what the joke was. I can tell you that this is one of my favorite shows. I can tell you tell you that over the years I have come to care about all of the characters on this show. I can also tell you that I feel sad and betrayed by the producers and the writers. Most of all I am sad and discouraged that our culture hates guys and gals my size so much that I have pretty much resigned myself to being alone which saddens me too. Now I have to go grocery shopping and inflict the world with the awful spectacle of having to look at my fat body.

6 comments:

  1. That sucks. It does hurt me when I "trust" a show(book, movie, etc)which then slaps me in the face. Sometimes it's about fat, sometimes about women, sometimes both. And they're often so ugly about it.

    It helps me to remember that media are a reflection of certain aspects of reality, but are not reality itself. Many, many things get twisted in this lens.

    As for resigning yourself to being alone...I don't know if that's the right thing for you to do or not, but I do know that many people, fat and thin, can't find a partner even when they really, really want to. Keeping hope alive can be so painful that closing off that avenue is sometimes best for certain individuals.

    But remember, while being fat can obviously make the dating process harder, many fat, and very fat, and very, very fat people are happily married/partnered.

    Inflicting yourself on the world...as if! You don't owe anyone an aesthetic experience.

    I really like your blog, and I really like you, as far as I can know you through your writing. I'm glad you're in the world.

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  2. thanks for the kind words about my blog.... I am just getting my desire to write again after a long apathy induced hiatus.

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  3. *Hugs* Glad to read your words again. Sorry to hear that HIMYM is back at the fat jokes again. I hate when that happens. Big Bang Theory goes back and forth between positivity and fat bashing. It's hard, but it's Hollywood as you said and the only way to fight it is to stop watching/giving them your money/attention.
    Being alone is difficult and sometimes it's a choice. Pursuing what excites you in the world? That is the spice of life. Do that and the rest will follow!

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  4. @notblu [basks in the hug] still have my radar up hoping to ping on something that excites me enough to want to pursue. I do value the sage advice, thanks

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  5. I was disappointed by that line as well. Fat jokes are a standard in Hollywood, sadly. When the writers can't come up with a sex joke, they go for fat - and to mine that cliche they even came up with 'Mike & Molly' so they could make fun of fat characters for 23 straight minutes. I'm sure to their horror, they discovered people actually love and identify with the characters from Mike & Molly and the fat jokes have gotten old fast, so now they actually have to come up with non-fat material to keep viewers entertained.

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  6. Oh man! I am right there with you on that one! Double whammy is that I am a very fat woman who can not have kids. I love the show and will keep watching. But it has its eye rolling moments. Thank you for speaking up about it.

    The nice part about it was that while I was sitting there, as my fat, sterile self, I had my amazing husband sitting there with me and we both eyerolled together :)

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