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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32962 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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They've managed to get "plus size models" onto Magazine Covers, so that's at least a norm or two cracked open.

Likewise, look at the very existence of Lizzo and Rebel Wilson as celebrities.

It's fair to say they've had superficial successes, even if it isn't going to "take" with the rest of the population.

Wait and see how they react to the recent development of seemingly effective weight loss drugs, though.

Likewise, look at the very existence of Lizzo and Rebel Wilson as celebrities.

I will not stand for this erasure of Ella Aretha Ma Rainey and this absolute fuckin' banger. I don't really know who Rebel Wilson is so I won't comment, but Lizzo makes fun music, fat acceptance for her isn't any stranger than Aretha or Ella.

Are there any obese male singers that have any real prominence now, other than Rick Ross?

I'll grant that Meat Loaf was a sex symbol in his day.

Speaking of Meat Loaf, if you broaden your scope to film actors as well as singers, you also have Jack Black, for instance.

I'd say DJ Khaled isn't exactly svelte. Luke Combs is a fatass, when he's in music videos with his wife it is disgusting to imagine them together. Historically we have Biggie, biz markie, Cedric the entertainer, big pun, a dozen great Tenors, fats domino, fats waller. Toby Keith's waistline varied throughout his career, as did the mustachiod half of Brooks and Dunn, I don't remember which is which.

Rebel Wilson has had recent weightloss and is no longer an example of what you're writing about. She might even be too thin for comedy now. Plus-sized people in comedy has existed for a while (Fatty Arbuckle, 1/2 of the duo Laurel and Hardy) and in woman more recently but I would say predates the fat acceptance movement (Roseanne Barr, Melissa McCarthy).

Wait and see how they react to the recent development of seemingly effective weight loss drugs, though.

It does show the power of revealed vs. stated preferences.

Fat celebrities are nothing new, and it's very possible that the occasional plus size model can be explained at least as much as a cynical attempt to garner hate clicks and get any-publicity-good-publicity as a genuine sop to fat activism.

Fat celebreties in the past were usually men, but never a woman whom one isn't supposed to laugh at.

Appeals to publicity don't make sense since they are always to left, were they not motivated by political considerations, right-coded deviations from the norm would be as common, if not more, than left-coded ones. Probably more, since a media espousing nazism is more controversial, than that which promotes stalism.

Not in opera?

Or, for that matter, Oprah?

I also don’t believe that appeals to publicity are “always” left-leaning. Jokes about reality’s bias aside, there are marketing niches which clearly code right. You don’t have to talk about the extremes to count.

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