Ashley Graham Smiling and Cashing Checks

Based on a scientific sampling of omnipresent female bloggers, women care an awful lot about men validating overweight women as healthy and sexy. It’s a neurotic Kobayashi Maru that men solve by ignoring the entirety of the conversation so they don’t end up in fights they don’t understand with their girlfriends.

If you scan the writing by women about being bullied in school, you’ll inevitably find a Mean Girls antagonist. Men simply don’t wander hallways snickering at the fat girls. Not since the ESPN app launched. The dreaded male gaze is focused on conquest, not deconstructing poor fashion choices, who’s trying to bite on Katy Perry’s new hairdo, or who’s had to move to elastic waist band pants.

When heavyset women model thongs and there’s a directive from Central Command that you’re not to snicker, that’s when the trolls appear. Also the lazy journalists grabbing inevitable “harpoon the whale” barbs from TMZ Comments section to write outraged counter pieces on acceptable social behavior. Rebecca Jane Stokes of YourTango.com can’t help but remind you that harpooning is murder. You literally just said you want to kill Ashley Graham for being fat. You’re ISIS. She’s got you now.

Frankly, I have no idea how Ashley Graham deals with these people. Probably the fact that she is insanely wealthy, beautiful, and getting more hot ass than anyone spewing vitriol at the sight of her fat ass could ever dream of, helps. 

Here’s the conundrum, outside of a few random trolls, the fat body proud/body shaming conversation has nothing to do with men. They are literally the straw man. Gym memberships for women are at an all time high. Oprah Winfrey is making bank off Jenny Craig enrollments. Women are still buying Victoria’s Secret lingerie by the billions of dollars worth. All the evidence points to broad swaths of women with goals to ditch the large body. You wonder exactly how many are making New Year’s Resolutions to better accept their overeating in the coming year.

That men are pigs is more than a fair assessment. That they intentionally put any time or energy into making women feel unhappy with their appearance is simply without evidence. If Ashley Graham insists you love her cellulite pockets, you’re allowed to say no thank you without being a misogynist. She’s making millions off her shtick. What do you get?

Wake me when Travolta’s hoisting buckets of pig’s blood to ruin Carrie’s prom night. Which, for the record, he did only at the behest of the Mean Girls. They probably knew his shameful secret.

_{Photo Credit: Splash News}