There’s an article in Salon today that I don’t quite know what to make of. In MeMe Roth style, the article’s author, Debra Dickerson, takes on some woman known as “Buffie the Body,” who apparently regularly appear in magazines aimed at black male audiences. Dickerson is appalled that this large woman is being held up as a sex symbol. Although she begins her op-ed by mocking Roth for her “won’t-someone-please-think-of-the-children” posturing, she 180’s in the very next paragraph:
“(Roth) does help lead the way to a worthy point: the culturally accepted high level of obesity among black women and its related health problems. But Jordin Sparks isn’t the poster girl for this issue. Buffie the Body is. Buffie, with a 45-inch ass, is the reigning queen of this scene and her popularity speaks to blacks’ normalization of a very un-p.c. fatness.”
Won’t someone please think of the poor fat-black-women?
Bleh. Dickerson goes on to point out that “pre-kids” she was a “hardcore gym rat” who harassed co-workers “over the contents of their lunch sacks.” Why do we keep letting people with obvious body issues themselves appear in media to tell everyone what kinds of bodies should and should not be allowed in the media?
Yeah, people in this country should lose weight. But making sure NO FAT PEOPLE APPEAR IN THE MEDIA EVER!!!! isn’t really going to help things. Not to mention the people like Dickerson and Roth are condescending and operating under the theory that fat-people-don’t-know-they’re fat and certainly don’t realize it’s unhealthy to be fat and thus need to be told so by skinny people at every available opportunity. Besides, prime-time married-with-children sitcoms are filled with nothing but overweight fathers and husbands; where is the hand wringing for the bad example this sets for all the fat white middle-class males in society, eh?
EDIT: More about the race aspect of all this here.
[...] at the time included elyzabeth’s: Dickerson goes on to point out that “pre-kids” she was a “hardcore gym rat” who harassed [...]