Quotes From Around Yon Blob-osphere

UNTALENTED FOR SURE, BUT FAT?

[Brittney] Spears doesn’t need me to defend her. She has lawyers and sycophants for that. However, one criticism that seems to be haunting Spears' unprofessional performance at the 2007 VMA’s is that she looked fat.

No one disputes that the troubled pop princess royally mangled her much-heralded comeback. But what about the nastiest comments of all — those about her body? "Lard and Clear," read Monday’s headline in the New York Post. "The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot," wrote E! Online. And so on.

. . . Now I realize that much of this is based on the belief that female entertainers, especially in the pop realm are supposed to be rail thin. Spears was a lot of things at the VMA’s but rail thin was not one of them. However, if she is fat by any definition then most average females waddling about the malls of America are beyond morbidly obese.

That might actually be a true estimation but it is still not something I'm comfortable with. Spears' terrible performance and the subsequent criticisms for her alleged portly shape brings us to a contradictory place in the endeavor to improve the self-image and esteem of average young women across the globe.

. . . There isn’t a guy alive who digs chicks that would throw Brittney Spears out of the bed for eating crackers looking as she does now. There is not a girl or woman I know in my personal life who wouldn’t trade their current figure for Spears' current condition in a heartbeat. In real life, nobody would call Spears fat unless they had a self-image mental health disorder themselves or were just trying to manipulate someone for domestic violence purposes.

The outpouring of malice and ill-intent directed at Spears may ellicit laughs from those who love their celebrity gossip but this crap ricochets and hits innocent girls far and wide. No matter how many times parents, teachers and counselor’s tell girls in school that a healthy body is not one that looks emaciated but one with some weight, muscle and tone on it, none of these folks can measure up to the disabling power of an image of Britney Spears as she looks now with a headline that reads, "Lard and Clear."

-- MARK RADULICH

Burger King pledged Wednesday to offer healthier fast-food items for children under 12, with plans to sell and market flame-broiled Chicken Tenders and apples cut to resemble thick-cut french fries.

Burger King Holdings Inc., the world's second largest hamburger chain, said it has set nutritional guidelines to follow when targeting children under 12 in advertising, including limiting ads to Kids Meals that contain no more than 560 calories, less than 30 percent of calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars.

In that vein, Burger King is building a Kids Meal that will contain the flame-broiled Tenders, organic unsweetened applesauce and low-fat milk, for a total of 305 calories and 8.5 grams of fat. It will be available in restaurants sometime in 2008, the company said.

The fast-food chain is also developing what it calls BK Fresh Apple Fries. The red apples are cut to resemble french fries and are served in the same containers as fries, but they are not fried and are served skinless and cold.

-- ADRIAN SAINZ

Mayors and state legislators nationwide have weighed in on the obesity crisis by targeting fast-food companies and the way they cook and market their burgers and chicken. But looming behind every effort to coax the public into eating healthier has been a big question:

Is it possible to legislate away gluttony?

A federal judge in New York signaled Tuesday that regardless of how strenuously health advocates plead, it isn't easy to insinuate the government between a diner and his or her fries. In a closely watched case, U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell struck down a local rule that required fast-food restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus.

-- MIKE HUGHLETT

Fat men suffer from health problems, have difficulties maintaining relationships, and suffer from prejudice at work - and on top of all this they suffer from sexual dysfunction. A surplus of female hormones, blockage of blood vessels and possible diabetes, shortage of breath - all enemies of the erection and sexual pleasure.

It is normal to think that men aren't really concerned about their outward appearance; extra weight or even obesity doesn't really bother them. It is normal to be thin, but so what? That's another myth to be shattered in order to relate sensitively to this weighty problem.

-- MAYANA SHENHAR

I’ve never really been on board the Fat Acceptance, capital letters, train. For one thing, its goals are unclear to me: sometimes they seem to be about Acceptance of Fat People (i.e., nondiscrimination in accommodations and jobs; the right to be treated with dignity by health care providers; the recognition that there has never been any good scientific evidence of fat as a cause of various conditions; fighting the whole “obesity crisis,” etc.), and sometimes they seem to be about Acceptance of Fat (i.e., body acceptance). I am completely and totally down with the Acceptance of Fat People part of it. The reason I can’t get on board the train is the Acceptance of Fat aspect of it, and how it’s being used by some of the people in the movement as a litmus test, particularly in regard to weight loss being seen as a “betrayal” of the movement.

-- ZUZU

The story is simple: That it's well-established scientific fact that being "overweight" — that is, having a body mass index figure of between 25 and 30 — is, in the words of Harvard professors Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer, "a major contributor to morbidity and mortality."

. . . It's difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the actual scientific evidence fails to support any of this. In fact, the current evidence suggests that what the Harvard crew is saying is not merely false, but closer to the precise opposite of the truth. For the most part, the so-called "overweight" BMI range doesn't even correlate with overall increased health risk.

-- PAUL CAMPOS

Oh, so now here’s a great piece right in time for summer - particularly for those men who insist on wearing Greek-style bathing suits at American beaches…apparently women care more about your face than your body . . .

. . . of course this totally conflicts with some other research data in whichIi read that women are looking at neither face nor body, but rather behavior . . . but whatever, I’m probably fucked in all directions, but I think I’m gonna work out less hard and go back to heavy candy . . .

As for you all you single male geeks out there wiping tears of relief from your eyes, do be careful not to get any Cheeto dust in there - it stings!

-- PASSING NOTES

One aspect of Fat Girl that some critics don't like is that Fat Girl (and the person who wrote it) doesn't "end" happily and happy. Fat Girl does not haul ass its reader somewhere over the rainbow. Fat Girl's authoress does not prevail over adversity. I mistrust stories that finish on a note so triumphant that silver flutes pipe and wedding bells ring and Uncle Ben's long-grain white rice ricochets across the hot concrete outside the First Presbyterian Church on a June afternoon.

Adrienne Rich long ago wrote that "the dutiful daughter of the fathers is only a hack." I'd rather be fat than be a hack. The truth is: I may be both. Our buddy Keats wrote in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" that

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter;

Perhaps I should have kept my fat trap shut about fat fat fat fat thighs and the rubbing raw. I don't think so. Fat Girl wants to make room for herself. She wants to tuck in her big belly and sit with her strong spine straight; she wants to sit right there on the bookstore shelf with the other ladies whose true life stories are getting told. She wants you to take her off the shelf and hold her in both of your hands and open her up. She wants to tell you her story and she wants you to tell her your story. Especially if your thighs are fat. She also wants to say "Thank you for hanging around and reading this."

-- JUDITH MOORE

Roger Bennatti, a teacher at the George Stevens Academy, wanted to find out the shelf life of a Twinkie, so he hung a pack on the edge of his blackboard (later on joined by a pack of Fig Newtons). That was some 30 years ago "It’s rather brittle, but if you dusted it off, it’s probably still edible," Bennatti said. "It never spoiled."

-- ALEX