excitablehonky:

Dan Bernstein:

I understand if somebody has a terrific performance or a breakthrough performance, you want to praise that person’s performance. Or it was a particularly interesting character or sympathetic character, but I’m sorry, morbidly obese does not constitute beautiful. And if I have to hear one more person say that Gabourey Sidibe is beautiful—that’s not beautiful. That is disgustingly fat. That is like “Oh-my-God-I’m-going-to-have-a-stroke-and-die-soon.” That is dangerously obese. That is not beautiful. There is certainly … there’s beauty on the inside. I get that. If you want to say somebody is a wonderful person, I’m sure she is. She’s a wonderful person. Stop saying she’s beautiful. The Army Corp of Engineers had to put that dress together. You can barely look at her, she’s so disgusting to look at it. And everybody’s thinking it and nobody’s going to say it.

Well, I was saying it last night. I remembered a few years ago reading either Elisabeth Shue or Tea Leoni saying how the two of them were going to swear off plastic surgery such that when they’re older, they would be the only ones able to get parts written for elderly women.

Maybe Sidibe really has tried dieting since six, is comfortable with the risks of her current appearance and doesn’t mind that everyone’s lying through their teeth about how “beautiful” she is.

And maybe she is cornering the market for all of those many roles they have for obese black women, but count me out for feigning sympathy when Oprah and Hollywood start telling us what a tragedy it is when this woman’s weight inevitably leads to her early demise.

Emphasis mine, because that’s what I think is the gist of this.

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