Via Shakespeare’s Sister, I find that the Boston Herald thinks it’s okay to refer to an overweight person’s “blubber.”
It is not my normal habit to be a Fat Activist, simply because it’s not a way I choose to define myself. I’m overweight, I’m not interested in your diet for me thanks, let’s move on. It’s not nearly as interesting to me as, say, civil liberties, or Wicca, or bringing home the troops, or James Bond. Once you get the ‘love yourself’ paradigm, just keep lovin’.
But this makes me mad, because this endangers people (primarily women, what a surprise). The information about overweight people getting improper medication doses is important. It’s something every overweight person should know so she can discuss it with her doctor before getting an intramuscular injection.
How many women won’t read this article, or learn from it, because the language used was so wounding? How many will read “blubber” and stop reading, because they are rightly offended or because their self-hatred has been reawakened?
As Thesaurus Rex pointed out in his comment to the Shake’s Sis entry,
“If the article were about Asian women, it wouldn’t make jokes about their li’l yellow booties or quote “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew. If it was about black women, it wouldn’t talk about their skin color or quote “Brown Sugar” by the Rolling Stones. Oh, but fat people, well, they’re fair game. “
And he’s right. Let’s just leap in and find the fun in this article, rather than inform people that the reason they’re still sick may be because they haven’t gotten proper medication dosages. After all, the only sick people affected are fat, and maybe they’ll lose weight, so it’s all good.
Update: Someone asked if “blubber” isn’t just a word meaning “fat.” No. It’s a word meaning whale fat, from which derives a secondary and insulting meaning of excessive fat. In other words, you’re as big as a whale so I refer to you as one.
New Update, 12/2: I just realized that when I was in the hospital I woke up in the middle of the night in agony, and they had to raise my Demerol to a surprisingly high level. Demerol, of course, is given by IM. So let’s have a blubber joke while I’m in screaming agony because I didn’t get enough meds. Fun, huh?
