Fat Wars

They're at it again: celebrities, mudslingers, tabloids and fanclubs. Recently, J. K. Rowling updated her website to include a rant about the unrealistic physical standards girls are held to by the media. Seen it, heard it, read it a hundred times, ho hum. Wouldn't have given it a second thought if it hadn't been for some British tabloid called The Mail zooming in on JKR's heated words about "this skinny-obsessed world" from the article and running a smear job with it.

I actually agree somewhat with the spirit of the article: leave that for later, though, because the examples the article gives are just... bogus! It's patently clear this was written by somebody who's just read the first few chapters of the sixth book and hobbled together whatever could be found.

Rowling happily mocks another Hogwarts pupil, Marietta, whose 'thick layer of makeup did not obscure the odd formation of pimples etched across her face.' Is that her fault?

Yes, dummy, it is. The "odd formation" thing there? That's the pimples spelling out the word "SNEAK". Any questions?

And here's another:

But Rowling is in awe of Fleur Delacour, who is sweet on Harry. ...(quote from "An Excess of Phlegm", describing how breathtaking Fleur is)... Tall and willowy? Skinny obsessed? Not Rowling.

Fleur is not 'sweet on Harry'. And I'm wondering how it's possible for JKR to be 'in awe' of someone whose nickname in the books is "phlegm". Yeah. The main character and his girlfriend invented it.

Harry’s girlfriend, Ginny—pale and with long, flowing, red hair—has an air of Hamlet’s Ophelia about her. Rowling frequently uses dancing metaphors to describe Ginny. In one section she waltzes across the floor ‘like a ballerina.’ There are few fat ballet dancers.

Ginny is actually dancing across the room here, in a mockery of Fleur's conceited airs. If this person had read even the paragraph surrounding this sentence, s/he would have known that.

This makes me think the misrepresentation going here is deliberate. Tabloids will do anything for a catchy headline, won't they? I only wish it was confined to tabloids.

A few years ago, I was mad about Objectivism. You know how it is when you first stumble across Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead - especially if you're in your teens when it happens. I was an instant convert, I had Saurabh buy me all Ayn Rand's non-fiction books as a birthday present, etc etc. I've outgrown the mania, of course, but I still find the precepts of Objectivism to be sound: the supremacy of reason, the validity of rational self-interest, the rightness of capitalism.

And yet I find people expecting me to apologise for these beliefs. In the "adult world" that I have recently entered, it is the hallmark of immaturity to confess to having one's philosophical roots in Ayn Rand. A couple of months ago, someone asked me, "So what's your brand of philosophy?" I told him, "I take my basic tenets from Objectivism and leave the dogmatism alone-" He wouldn't even let me finish my sentence. The moment I mentioned Objectivism, he was shaking his head, waving his hand and turning away. "Talk to me when you've grown past it."

Nice guy, too. Knows a lot, fun to hang out with.. but there it was. To him I had suddenly turned into an Atlas-Shrugged-thumping geeky freshie. And the reason it happened was because there's always been a wholesale misrepresentation of Objectivism in the stuff you read, most of it deliberate. Whether it's intellectuals who pooh-pooh Rand as having pretentions to philosophy but not the real stuff, or Michael Shermer branding Objectivism a cult, the smear campaign is out there.

It baffles me. There is so very much that can be rightly said against Objectivism as Ayn Rand defined it to be, where is the need to take the good stuff and misrep it? Does the latter actually make better headlines than the former? I wouldn't think so - "Immoral To Dislike Rachmaninoff, Rand Says" vs "Ayn Rand Is Immature, Nyah Nyah Nyah". Take your pick. (Okay, so you think the second headline is funnier, ha ha. :P Pick again.)

But what I deeply suspect is that the people involved in this random crap-shooting are too lazy to go dig up the actual dirt. It takes effort to read, understand and knowledgeably criticise someone's work, and who has time for that? It's precisely what happened with J. K. Rowling and the tabloids. Just find a monkey willing to hack out eight hundred words of snit against a celebrity, and you're set.

Having said that, let's get to the part where I actually agree with the spirit of that article in The Mail. JKR may not be 'skinny-obsessed' when it comes to standards girls are held to (which was the specific subject of her rant on jkrowling.com), but she does commit a subtly different sin: portraying fat people as losers, in general.

The idea is prevalent in the mass media - fat people are inept, incompetent, pathetic... and sometimes evil, but never in a smart way. Sharp, formidable, intelligent, cool villains are always thin. And so it is in JKR's world. The people who carry the show are thin, the people who don't need to be taken very seriously are fat. Cases in point:

• Wormtail (fat, pathetic man who is disgustingly servile to Voldemort; lived 12 years as a rat)


• Neville Longbottom (positive character, good friends with Harry, but his defining characteristics are clumsiness, forgetfulness and ineptitude)


• Dolores Umbridge (evil, but can hardly even perform basic spells, students easily outclass her in magical skills)


• Cornelius Fudge (former Minister of Magic, fat, utterly incompetent beaurocrat)


• Dudley Dursley(a bully and a loser who is ineffective against Harry's brains and magic)


• Hagrid (the giant is dimmer and less mature than Harry and co. - sort of embarrassing for a 60-year-old man)


• Horace Slughorn (enormously fat, pathetic man with weak moral fibre, generally seen as a loser)


• Crabbe and Goyle (fat, dimwitted pair of thugs in Draco Malfoy's posse)


• even Molly Weasley (so inept at magic she can't get rid of a boggart - something kids learn in their third year of school)

In short, I can't think of a single character in the HP universe who is fat, and yet smart and competent, magically or otherwise.

I'll bet this characterisation was unconscious, and this is slightly different from having a skinny-girls-only worldview. Rowling's characters aren't simplistic either; it's not just fat=incompetent thin=competent in her world, the characters go much deeper than that. But she is following a trend here, and not a healthy one.

Now why couldn't the newspapers have pointed this out instead of making up all the crap they did?

Questions? Observations? Leave your smart, biting queries in the comments, and I'll get 'em on Ask Me Anything Day!

Tags:

• rants
• HP