The fat lady
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Sat, 21 Mar 1998 16:47:26 -0800
Matthew_Stevenson@baylor.edu wrote:
> this reminded me of something that struck me in my last reading of f&z--zooey
> always refers to bessie as fat, fatty, etc. is she the fat woman? and if she
> is, might that open the door for some oedipal interpretations of seymour's
> advice to zooey about the fat lady? just a few thoughts...matt
Interesting observation, matt. Fat ladies (commonly referred to as bbws or "big
beautiful women") have never really been made to feel comfortable in society,
when, ironically enough, all of Western civilization started with a bbw, really.
The Venus of Willendorf, which is the logo of the BBW/FA webring.
I've been chatting online in bbw channels for two years now, and in fact am in the
process of being interviewed by BBW magazine for an upcoming issue so I've been
crystallizing my thoughts about "fat ladies" all week, specifically the oedipal
angle.
I think that one of the reasons the media still refuses to glamorize bbws is, yes,
the complex set of psychological layers involved with the body shape of what
amounts to a pregnant woman. So many bbws only become larger after they give
birth, but the whole concept of finding a mother erotic is a taboo here; but for
males in this society if you’re eroticizing about a mother you’re either divorced,
cheating, need therapy or are a lesbian. Because if you shift the perspective of
idealized desire from a female who hasn’t given birth to one who has, the amount
of psychological tectonic shifting involved in that change of angle is monumental.
And with this culture’s emphasis on the beauty of the young and underdeveloped as
opposed to the beauty of size and experience it’s any wonder that the highest
profiles on the landscape of the media don’t deal with the real world.
If I have to choose between interpretive camps, I'm a Jungian (who fully
understands and respects how it was Freud who built the academic structures for
modern day theory and analysis) but I guess I should point out that my mother is
not, nor has ever been, nor is there any real chance of her becoming a fat lady or
a bbw. Just something I thought I'd mention simply as a footnote
Malcolm