You're the One For Me, Fatty

'You're the One for Me, Fatty' is a Morrissey song. It's a good one, I think, in that jangly, early Morrissey still-sounds-a-bit-like-The Smiths kind of way. It's just that, being a fatty myself, I'm not entirely sure whether I should be offended by it or not. Watching the video, it seems straightforward enough. It depicts a large lady who is clearly adored by the nice man, so far so good. But it also includes my biggest pet peeves when it comes to the depiction of fat people: she's eating constantly, AND she'll eat anything, apparently, including the flowers at the picnic even though there's plenty of actual food to eat. This happens a lot on television, I've noticed. You know, that fat person so desperate for food that they'll eat the potpourri, plastic fruit, or food from someone else's plate. Otherwise we won't know they're fat, presumably. Although considering that the "fat" person on these shows is often just a normal sized person who looks fat compared to the other actors, maybe they feel that it needs to be more obvious.

I'm not offended by the word "fatty", either, although it's taken me a long time to get to a place where I'm comfortable with it. I was an overweight child and teenager before being an overweight adult, so I've been subjected to my fair share of "fatty" type insults over the years. It's also taken me a long time to get over the idea that being fat is all people see in me. I always assumed it was the first thing they'd notice, which is probably true, although that's not necessarily as negative as I imagine it to be. It's one of the great things about the internet - here, no one can see you're fat. Unless you tell them. Bugger. Anyway, for a long time I was incredibly self-conscious about it, and still am to some extent, but somewhere around 30 I decided to get over it and just get on with my life. Now I try to just be myself (which is shy, timid and awkward, mostly) and if someone is going to like or dislike me, judge me or otherwise think negatively of me based solely on my weight then there isn't much I can do about that. If it's not that it would probably be something else, anyway. At least this way I don’t have to spend time with the kinds of people who would judge me, or others, in that way.

So should I just assume that Morrissey’s saying that you can fall in love with anyone, whatever size or shape they are? Or maybe he really is saying that it’s hilarious that someone would actually be in love with a “fatty”? Or it’s entirely possible that I’m just too personally invested in the subject matter to ever really look at it objectively at all. Here’s the video (or at least a link to it, I couldn’t find one on YouTube that would allow me to embed it, unfortunately), make up your own mind. Although having watched it several times now, I’ve decided that the song doesn’t offend me nearly as much as Morrissey’s day-glo orange shirt does!

You're the One for Me, Fatty