The Wide Angle: Skinny People We Love
| 10 Jul 2007
We love the fatties here at The Wide Angle, but it doesn't mean that we don't also love the skinnies too. Being great has nothing to do with body size or sexuality, it's all about the attitude. So here's a topsy-turvy bunch of skinny folks we adore and, get this, some of them are even straight.
Film-maker John Waters has done more for fat visibility than almost anyone. True, his fat characters are generally freakish comic vehicles, but then so is everyone else in his films - the man does not discriminate. See also Percy Adlon, for his work starring the gorgeous Marianne Sägebrecht, and Lasse Hallström for What's Eating Gilbert Grape? which portrays Darleen Cates' super-sized life so sensitively. The latter co-stars well known fatty-lovers Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, fact fans.
Next up are musicians Brace Paine and Hannah Blilie of The Gossip, not forgetting Kathy Mendonca, the band's former drummer. It takes a lot of guts to stake your professional and artistic claim behind a fat dyke, even one as amazing as Beth Ditto, and especially in an industry in which women singers are often required to be waifs or bimbos. Let The Gossip be a lesson for us all.
Finally, an angel sings every time a thin person steps up to the mark and publically announces their love for a fat person (creepy fat fetishism doesn't count). This happened when Pierce Brosnan professed his love for wife Keely Shaye Smith who was getting a lot of terrible press for being - shock - slightly fat. It also happens when veteran funny man Eric Sykes talks about his admiration for his late lamented comedy partner Hattie Jacques. And you can see it in the love that shines out of every photograph of Hollywood superstar Jim Carrey beaming at his chubby teenaged daughter. Beautiful!
Watch and learn, skinny folks, watch and learn.
Film-maker John Waters has done more for fat visibility than almost anyone. True, his fat characters are generally freakish comic vehicles, but then so is everyone else in his films - the man does not discriminate. See also Percy Adlon, for his work starring the gorgeous Marianne Sägebrecht, and Lasse Hallström for What's Eating Gilbert Grape? which portrays Darleen Cates' super-sized life so sensitively. The latter co-stars well known fatty-lovers Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, fact fans.
Next up are musicians Brace Paine and Hannah Blilie of The Gossip, not forgetting Kathy Mendonca, the band's former drummer. It takes a lot of guts to stake your professional and artistic claim behind a fat dyke, even one as amazing as Beth Ditto, and especially in an industry in which women singers are often required to be waifs or bimbos. Let The Gossip be a lesson for us all.
Finally, an angel sings every time a thin person steps up to the mark and publically announces their love for a fat person (creepy fat fetishism doesn't count). This happened when Pierce Brosnan professed his love for wife Keely Shaye Smith who was getting a lot of terrible press for being - shock - slightly fat. It also happens when veteran funny man Eric Sykes talks about his admiration for his late lamented comedy partner Hattie Jacques. And you can see it in the love that shines out of every photograph of Hollywood superstar Jim Carrey beaming at his chubby teenaged daughter. Beautiful!
Watch and learn, skinny folks, watch and learn.