You know what I like about the parade of t.v. news stories about “Obese America”? We always get the same visuals: those endless shots of fat people’s midsections strolling down the street. Occasionally they are holding ice cream cones. We never see their faces or their feet, just their guts. Is this stock footage or are cameramen ordered to go out onto the sidewalk and film fat people walking by, from the shoulders down only? If they are filmed from behind, we might get a back-of-the-head shot that also includes a large behind, but mostly it full frontal and we only see rolls of sagging tummies.
Sometimes we get the headless fat person sitting at a food court at the mall, but mainly they're walking down the street. It's good to know that fat people walk so much. But it makes me wonder why so many of us are fat? We are getting exercise, apparently.
Has anyone ever recognized themselves in one of these shots? I know if I saw my headless self on the news, I’m fairly certain I’d know that was me. But could I recognize someone else? How easily can we identify another person’s belly? If faced with a headless police line-up could I pick out, say, the very large guy from our printing department? I’m not so sure.
And let’s say you’re watching the news and you recognize some body from work, do you go into the office the next morning and say to Fat Joe in the next cubicle: “Hey I saw you on the news last night!” And if so, is he happy about it?
1 comment:
joan, the protagonist of margaret atwood's LADY ORACLE, has gorgeous long red hair tho we are only told this once she loses tons of weight must be that fat girls can't also have gorgeous long red hair
just like all those fat people walking around in the obese alert news bits don't get to have faces, or one would imagine, personalities, histories, or lives
Post a Comment