Dingus of the week: “Mixed-weight relationships”

C’mon, man

This is the weekly dingus, the cult classic newsletter where I make jokes about someone or something in our news or culture that’s making life just a little bit worse. Then I link to some good things and recommend a drink. 

More and more people are saying, “Lyz, when will you stop doing this? Isn’t three years of dinguses enough? When will you drop out of the dingus race?”

To which I respond, “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I am naming dinguses.”

I am not commenting on the ongoing conversation on the fitness of either candidate this week. But the gerontocracy was the dingus back in September.  

Sign up and never miss a dingus! It’s the most fun you will have during the collapse of an empire.

The show Bridgerton, a quasi-historical romance series from executive producer Shonda Rhimes, has the internet discoursing about “mixed-weight relationships.” In the show, Penelope Featherington (played by the absolutely incredible Nicola Coughlan of Derry Girls) and Colin Bridgerton (played by Luke Newton, who apparently was on a Disney Channel show someone has probably heard of) fall in love. Pretty standard stuff for a show based on romance novels.

But what is not standard (at least as far as television shows go) is that it depicts a woman who is perceived as fat dating a man who is thin. I write “perceived as” because Nicola Coughlan is reported to be a UK size 10 (a US 14) and the average US woman’s clothing size is a 16. 

Of course, if you have bought clothes marketed toward women any time in the last 50 years, you know all of that is meaningless. I am sitting here writing this wearing size XL pants and an XS top. That’s not an aesthetic; that’s just how messed-up women’s sizing is. 

What size clothes does a woman wear? Might as well ask how to do cold fusion. Might as well ask about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the nature of infinity. Women’s sizes are basically Schrödinger’s cat: We are all sizes until we put on a pair of pants. We don’t pick the size; the size picks us.

Want to know what size a woman wears? You are better off contemplating the mysteries of the ocean’s depths. Honestly, men have dedicated more time to going down to the ocean floor than going down on women. But I digress.

The romance between the two characters has revived the debate over “mixed-weight relationships.” Which is a very stupid term. As my friend and the author of Fat Talk, Virginia Sole-Smith, so succinctly told me via text, “EVERY RELATIONSHIP IS MIXED WEIGHT UNLESS YOU DATE YOUR CLONE!”

The very idea of a mixed-weight relationship implies that people who are fat do not deserve love from thin people and that loving a fat person requires overcoming some sort of obstacle. Which, it doesn’t! Lots of people love fat people all the time. This truly isn’t that complicated. But studies have shown that biases against fat people have worsened in recent years. Also, as researchers at Nova Southeastern University point out, “The burden of weight stigma is not evenly distributed throughout the population, as it intersects with body size/shape, gender, race/ethnicity, and other characteristics in ways that influence the experience of weight stigma.”

While men are not immune from anti-fat bias, it is much worse when a woman has the audacity to be fat, and to be fat on screen. The fat man with a thin wife is a trope of American sitcoms. It’s far more rare to allow a woman to be fat on screen and to be the main romantic object. Remember when we were told that Renee Zellweger was fat as Bridget Jones? 

Like it’s the running joke of the movie. She can’t find love because of it. Also, there is a whole plotline where a thin woman in Love Actually is derided as fat. 

Also, it’s fine to be fat. A lot of people are! SO WHAT?! Democracy is collapsing. The world is burning. And you are mad because a woman doesn’t have visible hip bones? BE SERIOUS. 

A woman is free! Quick, make her feel bad about herself!

Despite years of work by anti-fat activists, this standard is rearing its head again in fashion and in the discourse. I truly believe anti-fat bias is back because it never really left, but it’s also part of the anti-feminist backlash in America. It’s like the moment women get happy, here come the police to tell them to eat rice crackers and be miserable and ride their Pelotons so men can like them again.

But good Christ. We need to end this idea that whatever women do should be to make men like them. I simply do not care. Oh, you don’t like that I’m a single mom who is aging? Okay. Your son does. See you at the family reunion, weirdos. 

Oh, you don’t like that Nicola Coughlan is fat and you don’t find her attractive? Sir, she’d never date you! No one would. That’s why you are on the internet writing about how women need to look to get a high-value man instead of out on an actual human date.

It all reminds me of the time when a woman emailed me to say that she knew her marriage was ending when her husband told her that Taylor Swift had gotten fat and ugly. And every time I see Taylor Swift out with Travis Kelce, I think of that woman’s ex and wonder how his divorced ass is doing in his standard gray apartment with his mattress on the floor.

This is why there is a male loneliness problem. Someone alert David Brooks!

Writing about the relationship in Forbes, author and activist Virgie Tovar noted, “This love story creates friction around the socially acceptable limits of desire and desirability, doing what Rhimes does best — unveiling unsettling truths about human relationships. In this case, the truth is that thin people (yes, dare I say, even straight men with cash and cachet) desire, love and marry people who are larger than they are all of the time.”

Coughlan, for her part, has handled it masterfully. Recently, when a reporter said she was “very brave” for bearing her body on screen, Coughlan replied, “You know, it is hard ’cause I think women with my body type, women with perfect breasts — we do not see ourselves onscreen enough.” She added, “I am very proud as a member of the perfect-breasts community. I hope you enjoy seeing them.”

Thank you, my monarch.

And now for something good

Nicola Coughlan is a very very good thing.

Violet Affleck is rad as hell.

Gay furry hackers come for the Heritage Foundation.

What I am drinking

I leave for vacation next week, and I am dragging my weary, burned-out self over this finish line. This week, after a full day of work and parenting and more work, I went to my son’s baseball game, which got canceled due to lightning.

Armed with some surprise free time, I took my book and went to Taco Depot, got three amazing tacos and realized it was still happy hour. I got two margaritas and ended up happy-crying with the waiter because his wife is graduating from college this week after dropping out years ago to take care of their kids. 

It must be cancer season. 

Next week, I’ll be in my Nancy Meyers era, swanning around on a beach with my two friends who I have known for over 20 years. We will be wearing hats, donning pants with lobsters on them, swirling glasses of white wine, and cackling at ungodly decibel levels.

I have an incredible lineup of writers for you, so don’t worry. The newsletters will continue until morale improves.

Here is some Jensen McRae. I’ve been listening to Jensen McRae for years. I learned about her in 2020 from her song “Immune.” In 2021, I played it for a man I was dating at the time. He screwed up his face and said, “Oh wow, another woman with a guitar. Ugh.” We didn’t last long. 

Anyway, Jensen’s new song “Massachusetts” is blowing up and I hope that man, wherever he is, is forced to hear it over and over.

Bye. I am climbing back into a coconut tree.