Do you remember the advert for the Nationwide Bank? It was trying to show that while other banks were only after your money and used tricks to entice you, they were a model of integrity that only cared about the financial welfare of their clients. Now apart from the obvious unintentional irony of a bank that only cared about the financial welfare of their clients there was something else about it that stuck in my mind.
And that was that the central character was fat. Do you think that was intentional? Could you have imagined the lines "For brand new customers only." delivered by a slim, young black woman?
What really were the advertisers up too?
I think that they were using a rather nasty little prejudice and one of the few that 'nice people'are allowed to indulge in and that is against the overweight. By making the banker fat we can jump rapidly to a number of conclusions about him and hence the banks that he represents.
We can assume that because he is fat, he is greedy (like the banks he works for) and doesn't look after himself, his personal hygeine is probably suspect too and no doubt he spends too much time on the internet and has no real friends.
Now, I do not want to get all Susie Orsbach over this. Being seriously overweight is a health risk but what concerns me is that here being fat is used not to say that that such people are putting their health at risk but that they are actually carrying out an immoral act! This strikes me as body fascism gone mad and also reminds me of the similar treatment of the depressed nowadays as if feeling bleak and alone is a moral choice and something that we should choose not to embrace rather than a curse that we are born with and struggle with each day.
Now, I guess, from writing this you may assume that I am too somewhat overweight. Actually, I'm a very trim and still athletic 47 year old, my genes have blessed me here as I am sure they have cursed some people who are not so trim but I wouldn't be so quick, as others are, to condemn them. Maybe those that consider the extra pounds of others to be an immoral act should remember a very moral saying (and me an athiest an all!) which goes "Let He Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone."
