Big Fat Chance

[drasecretcampus]

David Haslam, author of Fat, Gluttony and Sloth: Obesity in Literature, Art and Medicine, on Start the Week - making good points about the demonization of fat children in literature. I wonder whether his point is that these children are actually evil - if only because we have failed to counteract our genes

Comments

[lamentables]

I wonder whether his point is that these children are actually evil

He's a director of the National Obesity Forum, so I don't think there's much doubt that's where he's coming from. *spits in the general direction of Tam Fry*

[drasecretcampus]

I could really do without their moral high ground. It always seems to be someone's fault rather than - say - a peacocking signal of being a provider.

Wanders in the general direction of a stir fry.

(Why does the person who most often tells me to lose weight also offer me second portions? It's the Tree of Knowledge all over again.)

[Welcome back!]

[drasecretcampus]

It's lazy plotting, like making your villain a kiddy fiddler or even just gay. It's such a reactionary series (I'm marooned on p.1 of book five, hating the ... archness? of it all).

[pennski]

I've been re-reading my Granny's School Friend annual from 1928 (I have 1932 and 1934 to go) and every story has a fat girl in it who is either a) Bessie Bunter (nouveau riche) or b) Well-intentioned but lazy.