By David Futrelle
When you hear someone talking about a woman’s winsome thickness, you may find yourself flashing back — at least if you’re an old like me — to Sir Mixalot’s Baby Got Back. But there are some people out there who evidently start thinking about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Consider the following terrible copypasta, which seems to have originated on 4Chan’s /pol/ back in 2017, alleging that the current popular obsession with big butts and other appealingly oversized body parts is the result of some sinister secret scheme masterminded by, well, you take a wild guess.
Damn, I guess I already have!
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
You can kinda tell that the person who initially wrote this (and those that repost it) is the kind of person that has a desperate need to pull disparate threads into a cohesive theatrical worldview, probably to feel in control, if not for egotistical reasons.
The misogyny (and racism) is bad enough, but the snag of it all is… there is almost a cogent critique of capitalism in there. Multinational pharmaceuticals are hideous entities. Purdue Pharmaceuticals is patient zero for the opioid epidemic. Social media and YouTube bombard you with ads to get you to consume and stay hooked to your phone or your computer. But these assclowns take this and twist it into their own prejudices against other races or genders or sexual orientations.
The weight-related concern-trolling is also really obnoxious.
@snowberry
Aw no, I’m super disappointed to find Nina Paley is a TERF. Her film Sita Sings the Blues is one of my favorites, and I’d admired her for her stance on copyright abolition.
What a shitty era we live in. What is it about this current time that seems to make people so terrible?
@Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meanie:
MIND. BLOWN. ?
@TheKND, Kupo, Rhuu:
I know language is constantly evolving, but it does frustrate me a bit that between the ever-increasing rapidity of the euphemism cycle, and the constantly-shifting standards for the “ideal” woman’s body type, I’m never sure how an adjective like “curvy” is going to be interpreted by the hearer/reader; I’ve seen it applied to every body type from Kate Winslet’s to Beth Ditto’s.
(The masculine version seems to be straight people discovering the term “bear” and applying it to, say, Tom Hardy.)
@Moon_custafer
Why do you need to comment on a woman’s body type?
@ Kupo
I’m so old, I remember when all the “apps” had “plications” 🙂 🙂
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
We had to drop the plications. Take too long to compile and just a pain to debug.
Regarding the paleolithic venus figurines, there’s a side-bar of thought today which regards these as… (yup, you guessed it) paleolithic porn. I haven’t researched this much because I found it to be kinda wacky, and my reading time is limited.
Here’s April Nowell interviewed in New Scientist (courtesy of Slate)
https://slate.com/technology/2012/11/prehistoric-pornographic-art-venus-statues-and-other-cave-art-werent-paleolithic-pin-ups.html
I’m of the school that holds the cultures that carved these were “goddess centered”, and the figurines are tributes to that end.
@ Kupo:
Debug?!?!? I thought y’all stopped doing that, went to “change the documentation and call the bug a ‘feature’ “
@Weird Eddy
That’s just for tge hard bugs. If it’s a typographical error we just file a minimum of 3 tickets, have at least 8 planning meetings about it, and eventually close it as “will not fix.”
@kupo
Do we work for the same company?
@snowberry – I’m also really disappointed to find that out about Nina Paley. Fuckin’ TERFs.
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll change the category of ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ in my head to ‘an impressive accomplishment, done by a shitty person.’ :/
@Kupo:
I don’t (and I don’t comment); but if I’m reading a description, I like to to have some idea of what the person giving the description actually means by their word choice.
Maybe, Victorious Parasol!
Also you would be surprised how often a bug is actually a feature! I’ve had many conversations that went like this:
Dev: “are you sure you want it this way? It feels broken.”
PM/PO/UX: “yes. Our customers use this in a very specific way and while you can feasibly make it do the broken feeling thing, our customers won’t. Our customers *want* it this way.”
Dev: “…alright”
2 months later
Support: “customers are saying it’s broken.”
Dev: “wait, they’re using it like that? PM said they never would!”
Support: “I just did a database query and 80% of customers use it this way.”
Dev: ??♀️
@Moon Custafer
Ok, so what do you want, exactly? You want language to stop evolving because you feel out of the loop when you encounter a new usage?
Personally if I don’t immediately understand a new term or construction I just observe how it’s used. That’s the most natural way to learn. Sometimes I’ll google it, but often that just leads to urban dictionary which seems to be mostly joke entries anymore.
I fear I’ve a LOT of art in my collection that would fit there.
One of my favorite tunes is “Prodigal Daughter” by Michelle Shocked… now, I don’t know her personally, and I know only a bit about her catalog of work,so I’m not saying she’s necessarily a “terrible person”… but now everytime that song comes down the playlist, I hear that rant….
I get some solace from what Anita Sarkeesian said, (paraphrasing — my memory is fucked) “It’s possible to be critical of media we love, and it’s ok to love media we’re critical of….”
re: language evolution. When my son was 10-12, I was VERY critical of his grammar and diction. He spent about two months collecting information, evidence and examples of language and pronunciation evolution in an attempt to school me. I learned… and what I learned is that even if the culture is changing and I feel “left behind”, it’s a normal progression of the culture and I need to accept it.
That was a Bingo card of junior fascist/incel/conspiracy theory jargon.
@ Kupo, Weird (and tired of trump lints) Eddie:
OK, I’m not explaining myself well, so I’ll stop digging.
Snowberry, I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have posted the link if I’d known – and thank you for letting me know.
It won’t be crochet, which was invented relatively late, but it might be nålebinding or sprang, two much older textile technologies.
I asked David to delete my comment, which he kindly did. Thank you, David! Everyone, I apologize for linking to a fucking TERF.
Some people are deeply committed to erasing black people.
@Hippodamiea: I aim to displease. ? If that’s the current policy, then might want to delete my link as well, since I linked to another site by the same TERF so people wouldn’t have to take my word for it.
I wasn’t suggesting that people shouldn’t enjoy that particular piece of artistic ingenuity for what it was, just warning people who weren’t aware of that about the risks of further exploring her work.
@doomcup: I don’t think it’s any worse, only that in the past it rarely mattered. Hardly anyone knew about the awful stuff done/believed by creators/performers, or if they did know it was mainstream, or if it wasn’t mainstream then it was rude to imply it was anything more than a harmless eccentricity.
I’m not very hip, so when I see the term thicc I think of videos like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ly4Z281daQ
Poor doggo.
No, it’s not policy – I just felt really uncomfortable leaving an uncritical link to her work up.
You weren’t criticizing the art or the people who liked it. I’m seriously disappointed in the artist but I’d rather know than not know.