Perceptive He Ain't
Bruce Kirkland describes George Clooney's appearance in his latest film, Syriana:
"He plays an angry, depressed CIA agent who is also repulsively fat and sweaty. Clooney larded on 30 pounds in 30 days. Sexy he ain’t."
"Repulsively fat"? "Larded on"? What an eloquent way to describe the addition of a few pounds. That Kirkland is such a charmer.
The kicker is that from what I can see in the picture accompanying the article, Clooney still looks pretty hot. Then again, I had a crush on Russell Crowe in The Insider so maybe I have a thing for repulsive, fat, sweady, lardy men.
"He plays an angry, depressed CIA agent who is also repulsively fat and sweaty. Clooney larded on 30 pounds in 30 days. Sexy he ain’t."
"Repulsively fat"? "Larded on"? What an eloquent way to describe the addition of a few pounds. That Kirkland is such a charmer.
The kicker is that from what I can see in the picture accompanying the article, Clooney still looks pretty hot. Then again, I had a crush on Russell Crowe in The Insider so maybe I have a thing for repulsive, fat, sweady, lardy men.
posted by mo pie at 2:26 PM
13 Comments:
George Clooney is always hot. On another note, in either the November or December issue of Self Magazine, there was an article written by a woman who lost a bunch of weight, but felt alienated from her mother after she had done so, since being overweight was something she and her mother had always had in common. I thought the article was interesting, until I came to a paragraph where the author states that one conclusion she has come to is that she will never have children, since she does not want to pass on the obesity gene. I threw away the magazine, so cannot give an exact quote, but I was horrified by this. I can think of plenty of valid reasons not to have kids, but this one struck me as outrageous. Doesn't this basically imply that the author thinks that a life where you have to struggle with your weight is not worth living? I should probably write this to the magazine, but came here and just wanted to vent. Thanks.
George Clooney looks incredibly hot in that picture! A "few extra pounds" works well on him :)
And, about the above anonymous post... That's awful. I've been overweight my whole life and after strict (sometimes hateful) dieting, I am finally somewhere NEAR a weight I'm comfortable with. But, I got my overweight habits from my mother. I don't necessarily believe it was a gene as such... but the habits of which food I eat, how much, and how often. Those are habits I have changed in my life and they have proven results. I am passing those on to my kids :)
To piggy back on what Michelle said, I have heard of more than a few people who are completely unwilling to pass on their own genes, to risk having overweight children is enough to make them forgo it altogether. They adopt, foster, or just don't have any at all. Should children be able loving and raising good people? Not worrying that they might not be what we imagine to be the "perfect" child? I feel like the public perception of the importance of our appearance is seriously getting out of hand when you purposely chose to give up one of the few rights given to you by nature, that women have been doing since time immortal. Seriously, we need to get our prorities straight.
I haven't got much to say about Mr Clooney, but agree about the woman in Anonymous's post.
Between us, my fiancé and I have various conditions which are (at least partly) inherited. He has quite serious depression, which has affected his quality of life; I have mild Asperger's Syndrome. We have discussed whether we should have children or not, this being so.
The conclusion that we came to was this: it's not certain what characteristics you'll inherit from your parents. We're both quite different from ours, after all. And if our children do have some of the same problems as we do - well, we're uniquely qualified to help, and we know a lot more about the conditions than our parents did. But probably our kids will have new problems all their own. Life is like that.
But to decide that you won't have kids in case they are overweight? Sorry? There are a lot of things you can inherit that might make your life harder, but nobody suggests you shouldn't have children if you're, say, shortsighted, or dyslexic.
Blasphemy, I say! I wouldn't mind getting sweaty or lardy with George Clooney.
Wendy, I absolutely agree with you. I think both men and women are far more critical of overweight women. I don't know how to go about addressing that double standard.
I just hope that the people like this woman who won't have children because of their own "defective" genes don't adopt. Cause imagine how hateful they'd be if their adopted child turned out to have a "defect" as well.
I think this is reflective of how scared some thin people are of getting fat. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. I'd really like the skinny-mini's out there to know that being fat really isn't that bad.
I've been fat most of my life and looking back on my past 25 years, I think they've been pretty damn good! Sure, sometimes I missed out on some things by being fat. I wasn't actively pursued for dates and I spent a lot of time being overly self-conscious, but that's halfway my own fault anyway for buying into the hype that fat eqals unhappy loser.
I've seen posts on some diet blogs by girls who are desperate to know how to get a completely flat stomach and I feel so bad for them. I think they'd be much happier if they could just learn to accept fat and not run around so scared of it. Sometimes when you face your fears you find out they're not as bad as you thought they were. I know I usually get really scared to go to the dentist, but in reality she's never caused me any more pain than a needle prick for the numbing agent.
In terms of women being harder on other women for being overweight than on men who are, that double standard thing, I wonder if it's a certain amount of self-loathing and projection of that self-loathing onto another person?
Fat women are so reviled in this culture. And women fear it, desperately. Are taught to fear it.
Or is it some kind of Stockholm-syndrome-like adoption of the same partriarchical standards that allow an overweight man to criticize an overweight woman for daring not to adhere to what the partiarchical culture deems beautiful. How dare a woman not be boner-worthy?! (think back about all the hoo-ha around the Dove ads when they went up in Chicago). What else is she then good for?
So in order to ally themselves with the patriarchy, women criticize other women for their appearance, for not adhering to the partirachical norms of beauty.
Go to Craigslist Rants and Raves and search "fat." Some of the most vehement, nasty invective flying around is written by women.Women, who, I suspect, are in some way, conscious or not, trying to suck up to men by showing how they are not that, because that is disgusting.
If any of that makes any sense...
My own two cents:
I think it's sad that people are so obsessed with "perfect" genes. There used to be the attitude that you deal with the hand you get gracefully.
Why is fat reviled more on women than on men? Because I think it has a certain power--it represents fertility, pleasure, sexuality, and a kind of female majesty which is terrifying in our puritanical, achievment-or-else society.
And I also would like a serving of chubby Clooney with a side of lard!
No, that totally makes sense. Women make up roughly half of the population in this country. If we were to band together and say "to hell with all that holds us back and down" it would be difficult for the men to stop us. Its just that we can't find any solidarity, in ourselves and as a sex. Is this our culture talking? Preventing us from finding strength and beauty in our differences? How can we change this?
Women make up half the population in most countries, for that matter!
But yes. Although there are men who are more accepting of fat on women than on themselves (the "girls are meant to be curvy" line, and beyond) mostly it's the other way. Guys can joke about fat - women hardly ever do. As Krista said somewhere on Stumptuous (at least I think so - can't find the reference) try to imagine a woman wearing a T-shirt that said "It's not a beer belly, it's a fuel reserve for a sex machine." You can't, can you?
I agree with the perspectives on why women are more critical of overweight women than of men. I read celebrity blogs and it is always women or gay men (ok so they are the majority of readers too, but there are some token straight guys) calling perfectly normal-sized women like Mariah Carey a "heifer".
PastaQueen, your post was excellent. We are taught to think our life is gonna be over if we are not as skinny as can be. I grew up with an anorexic mother and spent my teens and early 20s fighting my natural body shape and its tendency to always be on the top of the dreaded "healthy weight range" - I wasn't fat, but I wasn't skinny and I blamed all of my life's problems on that. The best thing that happened to me was developing hypothyroidism and gaining 115lb. Once I realized that life went on at that weight. The world didn't end and I was still the same person. I lost the weight but now I'm not the girl who won't wear a bathing suit because she is "too fat". I wear the bathing suit and don't care what other people are gonna think.
Post a Comment
<< Home