Fat Jokes are ok again, if you are bad

baby mask

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He’s not being described in “fatphobic” terms…

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TBF, the first thing that comes to mind in my case is baby fat, but I luv baby fat.

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Congratulations on your purchase of a thesaurus.

I don’t really care whether people refer to Rittenhouse as chubby-cheeked, boyish, baby-faced or cherubic. I doubt his victims do either.

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Who it was legally okay to call looters or rioters or anything but victims, but god forbid someone should comment on Rittenhouse’s face.

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Imma just going to use the phrase “fat-faced fascist fuck”

he deserves no better.

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Fat Jokes are ‘ok’ again, if you’re bad a dick.

FTFY

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Congratulations on your purchase of a thesaurus.

It’s a pretty common word. Most of us wouldn’t need a thesaurus to pull up that word.

I don’t really care whether people refer to Rittenhouse as chubby-cheeked, boyish, baby-faced or cherubic. I doubt his victims do either.

I care about minimizing harm to folks. And I care about the language we use. This isn’t about being nice to Rittenhouse or to his victims, it’s about not perpetuating further harm to other folks, in this case fat folks.

To put it in terms even a proudly apathetic person who doesn’t care about other people might understand, if the OP had described Rittenhouse as a “Brainspore-looking motherfucker,” you might not appreciate them making the association.

When such thoughtless associations are made with broader groups of people, especially already maligned people, the potential for harm likewise broadens. When the local news never bothers to mention the race of white criminals, but invariably and unnecessarily mentions the race of Black criminals, it reinforces cultural associations of Blackness with criminality. Likewise, unnecessarily harping on the chubbiness of Rittenhouse (or Trump, or whoever), is both cruel to individual non-fascist fat people, and perpetuates shitty cultural ideas linking fatness to immorality, lack of self-control, etc.

As with all things, intention matters less than impact.

What god forbade commenting on Rittenhouse’s face? I haven’t seen any person or deity arguing that point.

The point is that you used a synonym to communicate the same concept clearly intended by the OP. If the intent was to fat-shame Rittenhouse then he would have been called “chubby” or “fat” instead of noting that he had chubby cheeks that apparently helped convince certain people of his childlike innocence.

A better comparison here would be “wide-eyed,” another facial descriptor often associated with naiveté and innocence. I don’t think many people would react to that description with “but MY eyes are wide, why are you picking on me??”

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Um. Saying someone has chubby cheeks is calling them chubby.

And people with wide eyes aren’t a group of people who have been historically and continue to be maligned, stereotyped and mocked. That’s not a “better comparison,” it’s an irrelevant one.

No. It’s saying their face still has some baby fat rather than highly chiseled cheekbones, not necessarily implying that they are overweight.

Methinks you may be focusing on the wrong victims in this particular story.

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but of course, that would be valorizing an Eurocentric view of the world.

The biblical description is thus:

“In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf… had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. They each had two wings spreading out upward…and each had two other wings covering its body…The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it.”

That’s from Ezekiel, of pulp fiction fame.

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Season 4 Wow GIF by The Office

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I don’t believe that facial features are a very good indicator of body type. The plumpness of one’s cheeks has very little to do with BMI.

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Not always something you can count on. I still remember the explosive digressive thread about how it’s totally okay to use fatphobic language if the target of your language is racist. I can imagine if this post were about, say, Alina Kozhevnikova and not Peter Dinklage, even more folks would be lining up the trot out the most tired, abelist garbage language. People will bend over backwards to excuse themselves for their harmful habits rather than work to change them.

I don’t remember that at all.

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I remember the explosive derail when Kyle Rittenhouse was described as “chubby cheeked” in a write up and someone took immense offense to it despite native English speakers trying valiantly to explain that that description is generally used to convey the youthfulness of the person being described. I imagine that’s what they’re “remembering,” even though nobody (IIRC) was advocating fat-phobic language. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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Wait I thought telling addicts that they should not excuse themselves for their harmful habits was a bad thing and totally oppressing them? Now I’m super confused! Only some addicts? Ah… nvm. :melting_face:

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