[I slept] like a baby. Had nightmares though about 300 pound women in thongs grinding on me while eating chicken wings. Scary.
When challenged about his privileged, sexist, fat-shaming and crass joke, Kodjoe tried to turn the incident into a "teachable" moment for the fatties. The actor brought the tough love and implored black women to stop making #fatexcuses.
According to Clutch, Kodjoe "cited the statistics, and began discussing how weight contributes to diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer and began giving tips for his followers on how to live a healthier life." Danielle writes, "Although Black women’s relationship with weight is far more complicated than Kodjoe made it seem, everyone can benefit from his advice to live healthier lives."
Yeah...no.
Here's my assessment:
Kodjoe was attempting to make a funny. And goodness knows if there is anything that folks find reliably funny it's fat, black, oversexed women. (Yes, I assume that Kodjoe was speaking specifically about black women, because his following is predominately black and his Tweets referred to elements of black culture.) I've written about this trope before:
Fat, black woman. Big, black chick. Those descriptors are lazy comedy shorthand in a racist, sexist and sizist society. Want to bring on the cheap laughs? Then trot out an over-sized, brown-skinned lady. Even better, despite her fatness and blackness, give her a more than healthy opnion of herself. See, that makes it doubly funny, see, cause even though everyone knows neither black women or fat women are hot, this character doesn't seem to know this and actually behaves as if she is attractive and worthy of amorous attention.
Read more...See, it's funny cause the women in Kodjoe's dream are fat and eating chicken, 'cause them biggens is always eating. And...and...these heifers had the temerity to believe that had the right to be wearing thongs! Thongs! Just like skinny women. Don't they know that the only reason women wear thongs is to be sexy...and that fat chicks aren't sexy and so should never wear thongs? And lastly, these fat chicks were grinding on Boris Kodjoe! As if!
Ha, ha.
Kodjoe's initial comment was all about the male gaze, or rather, his male gaze, and the idea that women who aren't acceptably attractive to him deserve derision. Notice that his alleged nightmare wasn't about a woman discovering she has high blood pressure or Type II diabetes or breast cancer. It was about the horror of having to get up close and personal with a fat chick.
What Kodjoe forgot is that his mostly black female fan base comes in all shapes and sizes. And many of his Twitter followers didn't like being the butt of the joke. And so, he pulled the "I'm just concerned about health" card.
I had no idea Kodjoe was a medical professional, social worker or lifestyle coach. Or perhaps he is not any of these things, which is why missing in his paternalistic Twitter flow was the idea that some women are naturally larger; that one can be fit and fat; that weight is not the best indicator of health; that a woman's worth is not inversely related to her jeans size; that the barriers to good health for many black people are complicated and not so easily overcome (particularly in the case of the poor and marginalized); and lastly that no one gives a damn what a C-grade actor thinks about weight or health or sexiness. Stay in your lane, Boris!
The black community (not just black women) is indeed plagued by many health problems that could be alleviated by education and lifestyle changes. But what helps no one is shame, derision and mistaking fat phobia and acceptance of current beauty norms for health guidelines. Even if every health issue that faces the black community was related to fat and not diet or exercise or heredity or a host of other things, fat people still would not deserve thoughtless and unnecessary tweets about starring in some pretty boy actor's nightmares.
Photo Credit: Clutch Magazine
