Fuck You, Socialite's Life
This is just to formally declare my shunning of A Socialite’s Life’s Christina Wasil for her recent shitty comments regarding America Ferrera, whom I will apparently now defend to the death. Hopefully this defending will involve a steel cage match, just because that would be awesome. Plus, I suspect that should it come to that, I could snap Ms. Wasil like a twig.
PS. The shunning does not include ASL’s Lauren Burch, who at least offers my bff a half-hearted “You Go Girl”. But one wrong move and Ms. Burch will find herself equally shunned.
PPS. America, call me!
Edited to note: It appears that ASL has edited the post to change the title from “America Ferrera Is A Big Fat Sloppy Pig” to the less provocative “America Ferrera Ain’t Starving, Y’All”. (Unshun. Wow, that’s some fast backpedaling action, Christina. Afraid of what I got? Yeah, you better be. Reshun.) Note that the link in the body of this post still works, though.
Posted by Weetabix
Filed under: America Ferrera, Celebrities, Fatism
Damn. Was that woman trying to be clever with the “big sloppy pig” comment? Because, well, that’s not really, you know, at all clever.
My money’s on you, Weet. I’m *sure* you can take her.
I think she was trying to ironic.
trying to be ironic, that is.
Ironic? She needs a dictionary then, because ironic turned into moronic, I think.
She calls her everybody’s favorite pretend ugly girl, implying that she recognizes how attractive America is. I think her point was that America is not a big sloppy pig…which would make it the dictionary definition of irony.
I get that the intention was irony, but I think irony is not always an appropriate device with which to make ones point. Like, on the internet where tone and intention doesn’t usually come across. Bleh.
This was a bad choice on the author’s part.
I don’t really see what’s worth fighting about here. I mean, the ASL comment is dumb and unfunny, but honestly, I think America Ferrara’s original quote is pretty inane, too. Come on: “Even if I wanted to be anorexic, I just don’t have what it takes”? That’s like saying you don’t have what it takes to be an alcoholic, or get cancer. Of course I know what she means, but still, it’s a dippy thing to say.
And American Ferrara gushing in interviews about how much she loves to eat is only a slight improvement on Cameron Diaz gushing in interviews about how much she loves to eat.
Huh? I don’t get it. Is poor Cameron having to defend herself against people who think she’s a big sloppy pig?
ASL and Don Imus all in one week. Must be something in the air.
My point was that Cameron Diaz (and quite a few other celebs) LOVE to talk about how much they eat and how “not anorexic” they are, and it has always smacked of pandering. Just because America Ferrara is a little more believable when she says the same things doesn’t mean she’s also not pandering.
I think you have to pick your fights, and one ill-considered “sloppy pig” comment on top of another ill-considered “I’m SO above being anorexic” comment is not one I’d pick.
And I don’t think it’s anywhere remotely near Don Imus territory. This is just two people in celebrity land blathering about eating–one saying what we all want to hear, and one saying something sort of bitchy in response.
The beauty of the internet is that you can actually pick a lot of fights at one time. That’s true multi-tasking, right there.
Actually, I think America Ferrara is not necessarily pandering to her audience–if only because we, in general, more closely resemble her than we do Cameron Diaz. I mean, Cameron has to work to convince me that she loves food, that she isn’t anorexic (a kind of sorry, “See, I’m just like you!”) whereas I can look and see that America actually may love to eat. So, yeah, she’s just like me. That’s not pandering. That’s my homegirl.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s an insignificant battle to pick when someone “jokingly” attacks a woman on the basis of her body size or shape or her looks. It all contributes to a culture in which women either fear being judged or internalize that judgment so that we are never happy with ourselves, our lives, our bodies, or our faces.
Words (like “fat sloppy pig” and “nappy-headed ho’s”) actually have power, and using them, however jokingly, ironically, or lightly has consequences. (as Imus has recently found).
I love the shun, reshun thing! It’s soo dwight shrute from the office!
And I love america ferrera, anybody who (even jokingly) calls her fat or anything else is dumb twat, she is a very good actress and I’m so glad to see someone who is gorgeous and curvy doing so well in her work.
Then you should know that words like “anorexic” have power, too. Anorexia is a disease; we still don’t quite understand its origins, and for someone to publicly pat themselves on the back for not becoming anorexic is stupid, and it’s really ridiculous that a statement like that is considered inspiring. And I’m not going to excuse it just because came out of the mouth of a celebrity I otherwise respect.
Plus it implies that people with eating disorders are NOT “our homegirls,” not “one of us.” Again, I don’t think Ferrara is being literal here when she says “anorexic,” but just because I agree with the general sentiment doesn’t mean I don’t want to take her choice of words to task. We can jump on the blatantly mean-spirited words all we want, but other words have consequences, too, even in the context of a statement we agree with.
Not that I think any of this makes the ASL comments okay, but if we’re talking about the power of words here, we shouldn’t just attack certain statmeents and choose to ignore others.
No, actually, as someone who has dealt with eating disorders, I don’t think it’s acceptable for people to joke about them.
However, I clearly wasn’t addressing America’s “joking” use of “anorexia,” but rather your idea that we should ‘pick our battles”–which implies that, yes, we should just somehow learn to ignore *some* of the insults that are so easily hurled at us “big fat sloppy pig” women, or any of the countless messages or advertising that tries to teach us to hate ourselves for being too fat or too skinny, too light or too dark skinned, and so on and so on. So, yeah. Those careless words that denigrate women for their size or looks *are* my battleground.
Because that’s true, I can recognize that there is a difference between America saying, “I could never be anorexic,” and, for example, Elizabeth Hurley saying that she’d kill herself is she were as fat as Marilyn.
Oh, celeb blogs are so 2006.
But still, many of them annoy me, because their type of irony is on the junior high level. Snide, not funny, and often perpetuating stereotypes.
I can recognize that there is a difference between America saying, “I could never be anorexic,” and, for example, Elizabeth Hurley saying that she’d kill herself is she were as fat as Marilyn.
Not the least of those differences is that we as a culture (or at least the segment of this culture that this blog represents) love to hate people like Elizabeth Hurley but totally heart America Ferrara.
I don’t excuse “big fat sloppy pig comments” either, but picking fights with blogs that make them feels like chasing windmills to me, and America Ferrara has plenty of fans to defend her. But if we willfully overlook the fact that even someone as totally fabulous and girl-crush-tastic as Ferrara can say things that make arbritary and misinformed distinctions between healthy and unhealthy and fat and thin and dieting and not-dieting then I think the battle we’re fighting is a hollow one.
I’m not going to blame the victim (America Ferrara). Sometimes it’s easier to mock your own weight/eating habits before someone else does. I think that’s what AF was trying to do–so it was defensive. Cameron Diaz’s proclaimed love of food–also defensive–to counter accusations of having an eating disorder. ASL? Just plain offensive. The claim of irony would have rang more true if the post was about a “thin” celebrity. The context of the other posts also indicates that it was a slam rather than a cleverly ironic expression of support.
Nice attempt to CYA, ASL, but you are dead to me. And thank goodness you told all the “newbies” they were idiots. That should keep your readership down. I know how pesky it can be when you draw new views. Maybe you should password protect to keep out the uncool kids.
Because it apparently can’t go without saying, I want to add that, in addition to America Ferrara, I am also a fan of many skinny actresses. I am not a “weightist” or whatever you would call someone who draws distinctions between people based on weight. (Didn’t Weet just write about this?) Anorexics are my homegirls, as flip as that sounds. Have you seen the documentary “Thin”? My heart went out to those women. Their body image issues obviously manifest in different ways than people who overeat. Either dynamic, however, can provide insignts into the pressure women feel about appearance.
To me BFD has always been about acceptance (which includes shuning the intolerant) and not pushing an anti-thin/fat agenda. (That kind of all or nothing thinking is why some people think support or even tolerance of gays and lesbians is the same thing as being anti-heterosexual.) Just because people support actresses like AF does not mean they are unsympathetic to an actress who might engage in unhealthy practices in response to pressure to be skinny. The call for acceptance of people of all sizes–or at least media accuracy in depicting the range of BMI that is normal/healthy–can benefit women like Nicole Ritchie as well as women like Jenifer Hudson. (I am biased to the extent I would rather look like the latter.)
Can’t we all agree that the only women who deserve our scorn (besides the shaming and intolerant) are those who are super thin yet eat a ton of food? Kidding–I have friends like that too.
[paraphrase] ” … celebs [sic] LOVE to talk about how much they eat and how ‘not anorexic’ they are”
Sometimes they lie.
Also, for those who don’t know? America is 5’1″.
Those cameras that make those teensy little actor boys you swoon over who are really puny in real life look six feet tall? Those same cameras make her look LARGER because she is SHORTER.
The level of critical thinking skills in absentia is pretty severe.
http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_5548
Article on feederism.
What is sad here is that people have become so sensitized to overweight and beauty standard issues that it has some how become an emblem of empowerment to mock, ridicule, and diminish young women who have a potentially fatal psychological disorder.
Being even very thin is not the equivalent of being anorexic.
Girls who are anorexic frequently die from it, statistically either from heart-failure or stroke or, should they ‘recover’ and maintain a healthy weight, succumb to depression and commit suicide.
How clever you are to laugh at them. How very clever in deed.