Robert Benson/WireImage; Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images
-
Health
Slideshow
-
Entertainment
Photos
-
Health
Slideshow
Never mind that this is Fat Talk Free Week, a national campaign organized on college campuses to encourage more body positivity among young women.
For Kelly Osbourne, it's apparently Fat Talk Is Awesome Week. So she had no problem getting on E! "Fashion Police" last Friday and calling Christina Aguilera fat...yet again! The first (televised) time was back in August, when she called Christina fat plus a bunch of other words I can't repeat here. This time, fellow fashion cop George Kotsiopoulos said he thought Christina was probably still a size 2 or 4, despite performing at a Michael Jackson tribute concert dressed in a not-so-flattering, fashion police-offending body suit and fishnets. But Kelly was having none of it: "Trust me, I'm a 2/4. That is not a 2/4."
Okay. Let's get into this.
First, just for the record: Christina Aguilera is one of the only celebrities I have ever glimpsed in the flesh, and I can confirm that George is right and she is, in fact, a teacup person. She's just wee all over. So whether she's gained weight or not (and I haven't seen her bathroom scale so I'm not going there) you'd have to subscribe to a pretty narrow definition of beauty in order to classify her as "fat" at any weight. Kelly's comments could use some fact-checking.
But -- and I cannot emphasize this enough -- Christina's actual size is entirely beside the point. What matters is that Kelly committed a public and irresponsible display of size discrimination, despite having been once subject herself to our culture's cruel and unusual punishment of larger people. She's using fat as an insult when it shouldn't be one.
In a nonjudgmental world (so, someplace very far outside the jursidiction of these fashion law enforcers) fat would be a neutral descriptor, merely referring to the amount of visible adipose tissue a person carried around on his or her frame. We'd be able to describe someone as fat in the same way we refer to them as blue-eyed or green-eyed.
We can't do this, of course, and it's in large part due to phenomena like the fashion cops, which no longer draw the line at mocking sartorial choices but think celebrities' bodies are fair game, too. This reinforces the idea that there are "good" and "bad" bodies and we wind up in this weird Stockholm Syndrome-esque situation where someone who has been on the receiving end of all that hate can't wait to take her turn dishing it out.
Which brings us to Kelly's "defense." She said that Christina "called me fat for years." We don't know what Christina might have said to Kelly to have scarred her so deeply. But, if true, that's sad and disappointing. Regardless of who dished out what, there's only one real origin to fat talk -- whether someone is calling you or somebody else fat, what they're really saying is, "I'm uncomfortable with myself."
So, Kelly Osbourne, if you're reading this, I think you look great. Or, as your friend Christina would say: I think you're beautiful, in every single way. So, please. Don't you bring us all down today.
