Body positivity

Monday

Ani Wilcenski

The Mar-a-Lago face-off

In all the post election danger-to-democracy commentary, one unexpected new peril has emerged: the “nationwide surge of Mar-a-Lago face." Best exemplified by demented far-right activist Laura Loomer and former Fox News host-slash-former Donald Trump Jr. squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle, Mar-a-Lago face is a cosmetic look characterized by immense volumes of cheek filler, heavy eye shadow and enough Botox to petrify the face. The male version could be seen when Florida congressman and attorney general-nominee-for-ten-seconds Matt Gaetz stepped out at the RNC with so much Botox and foundation that he instantly became a bipartisan meme. I’d argue that Mar-a-Lago face is not taking over America anytime soon. It’s barely taking over the Republican Party.

cosmetic

Friday

Gareth Roberts

Where has the erotic film gone?

Sexy time at the cinema is becoming a thing of the past. That’s according to research on the prevalence of vices in top live-action films from film maven Stephen Follows. His study shows that drug taking and violence are as popular on screen as ever in the twenty-first century. Profanity has dipped only slightly, but sex has dropped off a cliff since the year 2000. We used to love what they used to call a steamy blockbuster. I came of age in an era where the “erotic thriller” — 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct — were the box office draws, in which big stars lost their drawers. Comedies like A Fish Called Wanda, Green Card or When Harry Met Sally relied on frisson and fizz for a large part of their appeal.

erotic

Monday

Tristan Justice

My 600-Lb. Life: the end result of ‘body positivity’

Imagine a movement of alcoholics wanting to glorify alcoholism. They’ll claim alcoholism is normal, even healthy. They’ll charge anyone who says otherwise as infected by a societally instilled form of methyphobia, the abject fear of alcohol. The movement will be sponsored by the alcohol industry, eager to gin up sales with the advent of “alcoholic positivity” promoting their addictive beverages. There will even be conferences around the country featuring activist alcoholics selling alcoholism as beautiful. The same movement is happening today with food.  TLC’s My 600-Lb Life returns with season twelve on Wednesday. Each episode offers a painful illustration of the consequences of extreme food addiction glorified today by activists for “body positivity.

my 600-lb. life

Wednesday

Cockburn

Lizzo doesn’t want anyone to out-fat her, dancers claim

Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed against Lizzo, the plus-size flute-playing singing sensation. It was alleged that she created a “hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment.” Lizzo has denied the allegations. But one week later and lawyers representing three of Lizzo's former dancers say they've received new complaints. Ron Zambrano said that his firm, which specializes in employment law, is vetting new allegations from at least six people who said they toured with Lizzo, including other dancers and some who said they worked on her Amazon reality show, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. The allegations are of a “sexually charged environment” and failure to pay employees.

lizzo

Monday

Ross Anderson

The useful influencers of Shein

The Soviets had a problem. On March 5, 1940, Stalin had given the order to massacre 14,700 Polish officers, which his vicious secret police NKVD happily did. Job well done; until they lost Poland to the Nazis, who discovered some mass graves in the Katyn forest. Goebbels began using this to paint Britain’s ally as monsters (which, in hindsight, was fair).  This was a disastrous public relations problem! And so, they turned to the press, and those like Ralph Parker of the Times of London, who traveled by caviar-supplied trains to Katyn, bedded Soviet honeypots and came back repeating the Soviet line.

shein

Friday

Matt McDonald

Get in loser, we’re canceling Bluey

When I saw on Twitter that Bluey was the latest victim of cancel culture, naturally my first thought was "who did she say the N-word in front of?" For those not in the know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon dog who stars in an eponymous kids' TV show that airs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and, in the US, Disney+. She and her family go on a series of adventures that guide viewers through a healthy mix of toilet humor and confronting difficult emotions, in a tenor suitable for the under-tens.

bluey

Monday

Kara Kennedy

The new war on weight

We’re getting fatter. We even have a whole day dedicated to it now, World Obesity Day. We are reminded about our expanding waistbands and inflated cheeks every time we walk down the street, or look at an XXL model stuck onto a magazine cover to make the rest of us chubsters feel empowered. I don’t feel empowered at all. I feel alarmed — and confused. In a time when such advanced medicine is at our fingertips, the obesity problem is worse than ever. In America, one person dies from cardiovascular disease every thirty-four seconds, making it the biggest killer in the country. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that obesity is responsible for 2.8 million deaths each year. But what if there were a simple way to stop us from eating ourselves to death?

weight

Thursday

Katherine Dee

Don’t blame Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons is the latest in a spate of streaming service exposés that seek to deconstruct the image-obsessed culture of the 2000s and 2010s. Netflix’s documentary about Abercrombie & Fitch taught us that the retailer was racist, fatphobic and potentially brimming with predatory closeted homosexuals. Hulu’s three-part documentary series about Victoria’s Secret teaches us that the company was sexist, fatphobic and potentially linked to pedophilic sex trafficking. Both take issue with the billionaire Les Wexner, who these days is more famous for his association with Jeffrey Epstein than his role in defining mall culture. (His retail conglomerate was also behind The Limited, Lane Bryant, Bath & Body Works and several other retail staples.

Victoria's Secret

Tuesday

Chadwick Moore

In defense of fat-shaming

Your business may have closed, your kids still aren’t in school, nana hasn’t had a hug in 18 months, and your uncle drank himself to death from the crippling isolation — but the real tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the luckless fats are feeling stigmatized again. Over the weekend the Los Angeles Times detailed the tearful struggle of being grotesquely obese in the age of COVID-19. ‘Chrystal Bougon cried after the needle went into her arm. Not because her first dose of the Moderna vaccine hurt. But because, finally, being fat actually paid off,’ the article begins. ‘Her experience with medical providers has been one incident of size stigma after another, she said, like the time she went in with a scratched cornea and was told to lose weight.

fat america

Monday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Lizzo and the politically incorrect obesity epidemic

The woke have spoken: fat is fab. This is great news for Lizzo, an American singer and rapper whose rise to fame and celebrity has been rapid and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Lizzo, or Melissa Jefferson as she was once known, is unquestionably rotund. In the days of yore, Lizzo’s excessive layers would have been considered optimal, a marker of wealth and status coveted by women and adored by men. In theory, we’ve grown and evolved since those days, and now enjoy unprecedented levels of knowledge and education about medicine, diet, and exercise. This wealth of information should produce an especially healthy populace; instead, Americans continue to stuff ourselves with everything we know we shouldn’t eat: too much red meat, too much fried food, too many carbs.

lizzo