I like Dan, but Lindy's winning this smackdown.

Gay & Fat People!

Aside: Must be nice to have a blog with more than two dozen regular commenters. If memory serves me correctly, the most comments any Blogtown post has ever received was on the Janelle C. Jeffries thread, which got 801 comments

Only 276 comments to go!

P.S. Thanks to Blogtown historian, @richbachelor, for his post on the aforementioned Blogtown kerfuffle

http://pleasestopticklingme.blogspot.com/2…
#longread

@y Süpêr Chȕñdy

"Must be nice to have a blog with more than two dozen regular commenters."

Hmm... "nice" is not exactly the word I would've chosen. (Especially in the manic-depressive month of February.) Besides, I prefer quality over quantity.

Lindy's statement is fine on its own - she's happy. Awesome. I'll be the first to hand her a flag to wave. But she really takes Dan's initial post way the fuck out of context to grandstand about being "fat and proud," it's a bit absurd to me. So absurd that it seems staged between the two of them.

I don't think it's staged at all, I think Lindy (a very funny writer) finally snapped after Dan took yet another shot in this vein. I've read Savage Love my entire adolescent and adult life, and he can be pretty merciless with fat people and problems that touch on obesity.

Dan's original post did what it usually does: shows how stupid and hollow anti-gay arguments are by applying them to other areas where people who genuinely believe Reason X would also be expected to be taking their "principled" stands.

However, he just pushed the "fat" button one too many times for Lindy. As we all know, arguments with people you've known a long time usually blow up this way, and the stated causal event is usually just the last straw, rather than being a freestanding reason for another's rage-y outburst.

Lindy can go on a diet and not be fat anymore but Dan Savage will still be boring for the rest of his life.

Most girls who are as smart as Lindy usually have at least a few partners ask ScarJo.

@CC: Well, when you put it that way it makes sense. I don't read Savage Love often. More so since I've been checking Blogtown for stories. I don't mind the guy, but sex columnists populate the "popcorn entertainment" section of my brain: it's hard for me to take anything they say seriously.

Wow. This reminds me of the Alien vs. Predator tagline:

"Whoever wins, we lose."

@ rich bachelor: I just can't decide whether I dislike you for the right or the wrong reasons.

@ WSH re: "I prefer quality over quantity."

We'll try to get you one or the other someday.

Especially if they forget to use the nuance emoticon.

Shouldn't someone be making a Hitler/Nazi comparison right about now?

I wanna hate on fat people but then I remembered I gained weight. FUCK! Being fat sucks! I don't care how funny her writing is- there's no pride in being fat. FUCK FAT acceptance, How about some JOG acceptance? Which I am about to do so I can go back to being able to hate other fat people again. Luckily I'm male, so it's slightly easier to get with skinny people- only slightly.

I'd be like a fat people Sonderkommando. Shit, I'd totally send those fellow piggies to the delousing showers- just pay me in pizza. NOM NOM NOM

Jogging is fun even if you can only go half a mile. It's the endorphins that get you.

I am poleaxed that thin people think it's easy for fat people to stop being fat. We all WANT to be thin, right? It's not like we're asking others to help us, as in the case of people moving up the corporate ladder to financial success.. this is all on us! We can do it at home. Eat less, exercise more! SO SIMPLE!

Why don't people understand, it is NOT easy enough to just DO it! Fuck!

If it WERE easy, everyone could do it. Ever met a smart fat person? Think they just don't CARE? No, losing weight is FUCKING HARD! Harder than pretty much anything I've attempted in life, and I'm old and have had to do a SHITLOAD of hard things.

I've been through desperate family illnesses, extreme poverty for years after losing jobs, legal troubles and more. Before you think I'm white trash, I've also had to wrestle with delicate corporate maneuvering in order to get promotions I am due for, legal trust issues that affect younger members of my family, and so on.

I don't want to hammer on the bad things I've been through. They're bad, okay? Just like every person here. We all have ridiculously dark moments.

The fact is that my weight has never been a factor in ANYTHING in my life. Nothing that has happened to me would have been easier for me if I was thin. Or, maybe it would, what do I know? Not being privy to that heavenly-cloud-world of how the pretties are treated.. I don't care, since I'm used to handling my own shit.

(ASIDE: BTW pretties, you're going to be ugly sooner than you think. You better start building some actual character because once you age into the world of the uglies? We've been doing this shit for decades longer than you, and might toss you out on your ass if you don't contribute to society. Practice empathy now.)

Of everything I've conquered in life, the one thing I have never been able to fix is my weight. Once I did, for 9 months, and I lost 100 pounds. That was cool and insane. Forcing my body to be the way you want it doesn't fit into real life, though. Unless I spend 23 hours a day on it, I'm fat.

And don't care, the end. :)

I thought about this a bit and came to this conclusion: when I call someone "fat," it implies more than just extra pounds on a body. There's subtext which suggests poor eating habits, bad exercising, laziness etc. It means more to me than the content of the body, it's a statement about the sum of the person.

If someone seems to actually take care of themselves, I never use the word. I don't know, I may be alone on this one. People with extra weight that I respect, I'm much more likely to say chubby or chunky.

Also, you don't need fat acceptance when you're on Anti-depressants.

"Oh so I'm fat? Who gives a shit! I'm high on cymbalta. I don't give a fuck, bitches."

And if you don't like synthetic anti-depressants, you might want to try real ones- like exercise.

I personally, do both.

@ rich bachelor: My comment was more or less just wordplay, though I do sometimes find you rather snotty, snooty, snobby, one of those words, it's difficult to pick. Maybe I'm being unfair and should look over your corpus of comments more carefully. Or maybe that's just to be expected from a rich bachelor.

As for the smackdown comment, I was referring more to the kerfuffle between Lindy and Dan and not to the preponderance of comments supporting Lindy. I was possibly not very clear on that. Of course it's easy to whip up a mob on the Web. That doesn't mean she's wrong, though.

Nope. Totally wrong. She needs to grow a thicker "emotional skin" to go along with the layers of "physical skin" she already has.

@fruitcup "If someone seems to actually take care of themselves, I never use the word. I don't know, I may be alone on this one. People with extra weight that I respect, I'm much more likely to say chubby or chunky. "

"I have lots of black friends and no, I would never call them the n word to their face."

SAME. SAME.

ALSO. I read Lindy's post right before I went into dance class this morning. I'm at least 20 lbs heavier than I was when I used to dance and I cannot tell you how much more I was able to relax and enjoy class after reading this. No body issues. No wondering if the other ladies thought I was too fat to be in class. No crazy self loathing American lady feelings.

And that is why Lindy wins the internet and Dan can SUCK IT.

Too nuanced to be so...

NO FAT CHICKS!

To be fair Kiala, I don't have any black friends.

@fruitcup touché.

I have a friend who put on around a hundred pounds while working on her thesis and battling a rather nasty case of depression. She finally got fed up, went vegan, started exercising and got back to her ideal weight in 18 months. It took a hell of a lot of work. If I was in the same boat though, I'd probably be a shut-in like the mother in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Maybe I'm being daft but I'd say that being overweight is akin to having a crap job, a crap marriage, etc. Digging one's way out of all of them is difficult and situations like that are a bitch, all around.

@ rich bachelor: There's a lady of the house? Next you'll be telling me that Fruit Cup isn't really a sentient (more or less) cup of fruit. Is nothing as it seems here?

@kiala: I so don't get this mentality. You realize that the majority of gym regulars are there because, at least at some point, we were fat or had other body issues we were sick of and wanted to get under control? There are always exceptions to the rule, but people don't care how fat you are when you're working out. It's projection of your own insecurities. If someone has the time/energy/whatever to spend the class judging you, then their lazy ass isn't working out hard enough anyway.

@mynamehere Kiala is just doing that "I'm so fat!" thing non-obese ladies approaching middle age do; it's suppose to be endearing, but it actually makes women who are fat feel even fatter.

HEY A DOG! http://www.flickr.com/photos/lavallelinn/5…

@blogtown this thread totally didn't suck; there were some actually decent points made! Hurray!

@RB Apparently, you haven't seen this:
https://twitter.com/ecavalli/status/357707…

Correction: I'm a cup of fruit, with tentacles (for typing).

@Rich Bachelor:
And that is the motto for 2011,
"Keep it way less retarded".

I dunno, seems like Nex has a right to respond that way.

@superchundy Thanks?

@ Baron von Turdwell: Let's not overdo it. Might be better to shorten it to just "Keep it less retarded."

@ Fruit Cup: Does that mean your brain is the size of a grape? If so, you're still ahead of one or two other people around here.

Y'all are some real compassionate motherfuckers.

@byron Sure. He can respond any way he wants. I just find his use of the word "retard" and/or "retarded" to be uncouth. But what the hell do I know?

@kiala Totally. You are my favorite non-obese, under 40, un-male, portland-based internet commenter of ALL TIME!

@Todd, no sir, it's more the size of the unidentifiable red bits that seem to be cherries.

So your brain has been pitted, split, bleached, and dyed an unnatural color with dangerous chemicals?

God, I miss the '70s.

BTW, if you had a threesome would it be "Two Girls One Fruit Cup"?

And on that classy note, we have 50 comments.

Huh, guess I forgot that whole "keep it less retarded" thing already.

On the other hand, one should never apologize for a comment, for, as Lautréamont wrote, "The crocodile will change not a word of the vomit that gushed from his cranium."

If you're an online commenter in PDX and willing to be on film, please contact me at commentersfilm@gmail.com. I'm making a short documentary about online comments. Thanks!

Has anybody suggested yet that fat people should simply eat less, and exercise more?

I was pretty heavy all through middle and high school, and it does some serious damage to your self-worth. Even after I lost the weight (thank God that was by the time I got to college) I had major self-esteem issues (which was why I could never pick up on the signals girls were sending and therefore had a troubled love life), and it just really sucks to constantly think you're undesirable and such.

But I went vegan and I bike everywhere and now I look and feel FANTASTIC. So suck it, Dan Savage. How about just encouraging heavier folks to empower themselves rather than treating weight and self-image issues as if they're just akin to laziness?

I sincerely hope this doesn't go the way of The Dickwolves. Good discourse, but these kind of emotionally charged online debates have a tendency to get out of hand

@Dave J: OMG UR GENIUS

@Dave J For COTW! We need more original comments like this one

Here's a fun game. Find an old photograph, now find the fat person...