Side Jawn Season 2 Episode 39: We Love Big Poppa But Not Big Mama Intro: Dennis: Welcome to the Side Jawn. I am your host Dennis the Ignoranthinkerspodcast Holmes, and I am joined by my co-host Sharon the Chocolate Girrrrrrl! (Say it right Dennis!) How you doing Chocolate Girl? Sharon: Tells how she is and how her week went. Asks Dennis how he is doing? Dennis: talks about his week. This week, we gonna pivot a little bit and talk about some things people don't really want to talk about, so we asked some special people to join us today. Dennis introduce the guests: Tavi, Alease and Jay, and anyone else who shows up. Dennis: So here's what we talking about today. We call this show We Love Big Poppa But We Don't Love Big Mama (unless she's standing over a stove). What we talking about is fat shaming and how society tends to accept fatness in men much more often than in women. It's something Sharon mentioned and wanted to talk about and I thought yeah it would be interesting to talk about. So Sharon is gonna start with some data. You know we always bring the stats right Sharon? Sharon Yeah, we do. (Sharon reads some stats) Sharon: This subject is personal for me. Growing up as an overweight kid I learned early a powerful lesson. You can have an ugly face, walk with a limp, be dumb as a doorknob, have zero personality, and it is accepted, but you better not be fat or you will be ridiculed just for showing up. That's how it was growing up. It was funny I had lots of friends. Lots of them. But invariably there would be times when I would be going along feeling good about myself and one day some fool who got mad at me about something or who were jealous would call me fat, make up some lame rhyme, people would laugh, and then I would shrug them off and keep it moving. Mama always taught me never let em see you sweat. I took that to heart. So instead of looking sad or crying or something like that, I would just roll my eyes, give em a good lip smack, and dismiss them and walk away. On the inside though, that was where the hurt showed up. But that also is what drove me to be excellent, get good grades, excel at whatever contest I got involved in, etc. Sharon: As I got older, I even noticed people seemed to look right through you when you're fat. But I will talk about that part later. I wanted to ask our guests and you Dennis, have you ever seen any differences in how fat people are treated vs average sized people? Sharon: Do you see skinny people get the same ridicule? Why or why not? Discussion Dennis: Tells his point of view Dennis: When I was talking to Sharon about this earlier I mentioned to her that I see big girls winning. I see fellas around them and with them all the time so I wasn't sure what she was getting at. But then she explained. Sharon: Yeah so first, acceptance to me is more than whether or not men like you. It is everything. It's getting jobs, getting promotions, getting respect from direct reports, being asked to present or represent in front of people, all of that. It's not just how many men are chasing you as a woman. Me, growing up larger than the average girl, I never was without having a man since 1st grade. Sister Sheila will tell you some years I had more boyfriends in a year than she had her whole life, and she was always the thin and cute one. So it was never about getting a man for me. But the acceptance I am talking about is with society. For example, let's look at sports media. We have 2 fat sports journalists in the industry right now: Brian Windhorst and Ramona Shelburne. They have been in the game about the same number of years. Both are very good at what they do. Search the Internet. You see people on social media calling him fat or satire about who is this fat asshole and why is he on tv. But for Ramona it almost cost her her job. She was told to lose weight or else a few times. She did it for a while, and then during the early --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dennis-holmes/support