There’s been a lot of talk about fat jokes lately. That good old, low-hanging fruit for lazy comedians and self-described jokesters when well-thought-out humour gets a bit too tricky.
Last week, Richard Curtis apologised for making light of women’s bodies (and forgetting that the population of Notting Hill isn’t 100 per cent white) in movies like Bridget Jones, where characters who weren’t fat at all were made acceptable faces for all the “real” fatties society deems it acceptable to malign.
This week, there’s been another expression of regret from a member of the Hollywood machine: Emily Blunt.
Responding to a resurfaced story she told during a 2012 interview on The Jonathan Ross Show about a waiter’s size in a Chili’s restaurant she went to, she said:
“I’m appalled that I would say something so insensitive, hurtful, and unrelated to whatever story I was trying to tell on a talk show.
“I’ve always considered myself someone who wouldn’t dream of upsetting anyone so whatever possessed me to say anything like this in that moment is unrecognisable to me or anything I stand for. And yet it happened, and I said it and I’m so sorry for any hurt caused. I was absolutely old enough to know better.”
For context, the joke in question was: “The girl who was serving me was enormous. I think she got freebie meals at Chili’s.”
Hardy har. Still, my immediate reaction to this story as a “fattie” myself was coloured less by Blunt’s then-taste of humour than the reminder of how widespread and normalised jokes like these have been for decades.
That almost obsessive preoccupation with fat jokes both on television and in real life is the reason many of us have such complex relationships with our bodies – fat or otherwise. But for those of us who are visibly fat and are reminded of it in every facet of our lives – from fellow passengers’ disdain for taking up space, to short-sighted public health approaches designed to punish us for existing – it’s confirmation of a society-wide expectation to self-hate yourself into changing, or take it on the chin.
I straddled both camps growing up. Throughout my childhood, teens and early years, I’d steady my body when it instinctively winced each time I heard a joke at my expense on TV. I’d mete out fatphobic jokes to people larger than I was, hoping to avoid ridicule myself.
I’d hide and pinch my body into forms that I thought would protect me. During those years, I may have – while internally wondering what relevance the joke had, other than cruelty – laughed at Blunt’s joke. It would have hurt me to my core, perhaps contributed to some disordered eating, or sapped my diminishing self-esteem.
That said, I don’t think the only takeaway here is to suggest we lambast a couple of public figures for doing what society encourages and call it a day. I don’t even think it’s impossible to craft a genuinely funny fat joke. Fat comedians and those who understands satire and the scourge of fatphobia in society, have managed it plenty of times before.
That’s the problem when conversations like these come up. To the comedically challenged, or even just those averse to any kind of social progress, the assumption is that criticism of weight-related gags signals over-sensitivity in society.
That we can do no better than “you’re so fat that…” punchlines. That the rotund butts of the joke (see, it is possible) should endure shitty, low-brow, cruel humour because they’ve always had to in the past.
My problem isn’t with people knowing that I’m fat. It isn’t with fat people acknowledging that they are either. It’s with what ingrained fatphobia does to further harm towards people who deserve to have their humanity recognised.
Cue groans from people who can’t stomach the truth, but fatphobia has been used to justify the gamut of social prejudices, from suggesting certain racial groups (namely black people) are inherently savage and/or lazy, to justifying ableist and genuinely deadly stereotypes. I have a relative who died from what began as a non-life threatening condition, in large part because she couldn’t face the fatphobic treatment she was often met with when she sought medical care. As I’ve grown older in my own fat body, finding the wherewithal to endure similar treatment from GPs when I need medical assistance has been incredibly hard. I don’t find anything funny about that.
They say you have to find the truth to craft a good joke. Who knows the truth of being fat better than fat people themselves? I’d much rather hear their tongue-in-cheek spin on enduring society’s hate than from someone who can’t be arsed to come up with something original. Perhaps I should try too.
Have you heard the one about the woman who was so fat that when she summoned the confidence to wear a bodycon dress on the train one time, a passenger offered their seat because they thought she was pregnant? True story. I took the seat too – it was a packed train and I’d been standing for 20 minutes.
Just in case it was lost on you, that’s funny (to me) not because I think I should be laughed at because of how I look, but because of how ridiculous an assumption it is that anything that protrudes more than a flat stomach on women is considered evidence of being with child. Many of us, even those who aren’t considered fat, can relate to that.
Maybe I missed the mark a little there. True comedy shouldn’t require so much explanation. Turns out, crafting a good fat joke is harder than it seems.