By The Landlord
“It’s an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of disease.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch
“‘She's beautiful,' he murmured.
'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.
'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.” – George Orwell, 1984
"Folk music is a bunch of fat people." – Bob Dylan
"My fat never made me less money." – Dolly Parton
"None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back." – Paul McCartney
"I write songs about fat girls and about men who run off to Mexico." – Mika
Let's go large. But incidentally, why might a fat (or even phat) bass sound be attractive to the ears, but a thin (voice) generally be bad? Yet when it comes to perceiving the human body, the association of those adjectives flips right round?
This week's topic title could have been tad more cautious, perhaps a more politically correct 'songs about body shape and weight issues', or 'songs that refer to the larger-sized person', but no, sod it, let's just loosen the belt, let it all hang out, eat the full chocolate gateaux, open the family size bag of nuts and crisps, scoop out the ice-cream sundae, swing the old bingo wings, wobble the spare tyre, and call it songs about being or feeling fat, or simply songs about fat people. There's no point in skirting, or indeed covering up the issue, because in lyrics, what comes out? Awkwardness, self-loathing, cruelty? Yes of course. But then again there could be glory and celebration. Though in the strange shape of things as we see them, and in the messed up cultural and social pressures that are built, associations with fatness can conjure up a whole big plateful of irony, self-loathing or derogation, mockery, humour, tragedy and pathos that can really line the musical stomach and give this subject a bellyful of great songs.
Fats Domino
Fat is a lot to do with perception but it’s also a real thing. Some fat is good for you, but were not talking about fat as a food per se. “Fat is your friend. The brain thrives on a fat-rich, low-carbohydrate diet. Two forms of fat that are vitally important for brain health are cholesterol and saturated fat, says the American doctor and health writer David Perlmutter. But this week our topic is fat on and in people. Fat is always topical, a constant preoccupation, even for many who are not. The singer Natalie Imbruglia, who isn't exactly the size of a house, in fact she's more on the Kylie scale, says that in the media spotlight, "You're either too fat or too thin. You just can't win." But we're leaving aside the skinny rakes this week, and concentrating on the bigger personalities.
Covid-19 lockdown has also brought out the issue, sending some of the population into a frenzy of exercise to energise, strengthen heart and lungs and keep the mind sane, while the other half perhaps bloats on an overdose of TV and sugar. But also like many, I've done both – quite a bit of running, cycling and walking, but also at times, an excess of couch-potato Netflix, and as a comfort reward, a new found addiction to ice cream and daily treat of cheese on toast with various embellishments. Mmm! So while I'm generally on the slimmer side anyway, I've got fitter, and flatter-stomach thinner, but then since cafes reopened, a bit fatter there again, so am back where I started. Perhaps I should try to emulate two childhood heroes from the world of British wrestling.
Big personalities. Halifax’s Big Daddy aka Shirley Crabtree just 6ft 6in, with a 64in chest, a mere 375lb /170kg ; and Manchester’s Giant Haystacks, aka Martin Ruane – 6ft 11in, 685lb/ 311 kg.
Despite what George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch, being overweight isn't great when it comes to surviving coronavirus. But the British government, led in in tawdry shirt-untucked disarray by yawny-voiced blond fathead, Boris puffy-faced Johnson, regularly wobbling his bellyful of bullshit, and with an administration whose priority is not to save the nation but to dish out corrupt big money contracts to old school chums and tax-avoiding fatcats, has recently announced lazy concerns about growing public obesity, but simultaneously is offering half-price discount vouchers to buy burgers. Duh! Sounds like the kind of cuisine a certain overweight D Trump might welcome visitors with at the White House, the sugary top of the land of the obese. And yes, really, he did – "great American food". I cringe for you, US friends.
But hey fat-headed leaders, aren't burgers what did for Elvis at the mutton-chops and bejewelled-collar end of his career, when it all went down very badly in the toilet?
Elvis in 1977
Who learns from history, though, eh? Fat however is very much a 20th- and 21st century obsession. In many cultures particular in the east, whether that's China, India or elsewhere, fat, even now, can be a sign of success and wealth and attractiveness. Even in America fat was attractive in the early 20th century, in the size and shape of, for example, the actress Lillian Russell, who weighed a shapely 200 pounds.
Lillian Russell 1861-1922, American actress when in an era fat was super sexy
It's interesting also that some of the biggest stars of 1950s, 60s and 70s were pretty large. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. How torturously confusing it must have been to be lauded as so sexy when she was also likely told constantly to lose weight. But while so much pressure comes from men on this, it also clearly comes from women too. Here, for example, is a more than unfortunate and insensitive remark by model and actress Elizabeth Hurley. "I'd kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe." Ouch. So wrong in so many ways.
Marlon Brando was fat too, at least after his Wild Ones and Streetcar physical prime. But being a bloke, it wasn't so much of an issue, even though he didn't really want people to see it. On the one of his last films, he famously walked on set naked from the waist down, just so they couldn't film his lower stomach area. An extraordinary mixture of self-consciousness and a fuck-it, devil-may-care amount of front. "I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money," he said with a muffly-voiced shrug.
Brando. A big star who got bigger
"Well, with my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60," adds Jack Nicholson, with a certain self-conscious candid humour, and now he's even fatter and 83.
"Is Elizabeth Taylor fat? Her favourite food is seconds," adds Joan Rivers, who knows how to have a laugh at others and herself, but also had enough liposuction to fill a bath.
And the double-edged fat jokes keep coming. "My mother-in-law's so fat that when she passes her handbag from hand to hand she throws it, said the chubby old-school standup Les Dawson.
"When a fat person goes in the water naked, would it still be called skinny-dipping?" says the writer Anthony Liccione.
That’s er … one way of looking at it
"If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult," says PJ O'Rourke, drily.
"A recent police study found that you're much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run," says TV presenter and pundit Dennis Miller. Fat cops with their donuts are sort of funny, but hmm, this joke's not so funny if you're black, Dennis.
"All fat women look the same; they all look 42." says the serious writer Margaret Atwood. And more of an indulgent description than a joke, “She threw back her head with a laugh that made her chins ripple like little waves," writes Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence.
Barry White, the walrus of love
But it's hard not to smile at the attitude of self-confessed cake-loving standup Jo Brand. "I read that book 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it.”
But the relationship between eating, fat and women is brought into a more nuanced, serious and excellently vivid perspective by Caitlin Moran in her book How To Be A Woman: “Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the ‘luxury’ of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light.”
Fat brings out all kinds of emotions of shame, embarrassment, dark humour and excruciating love. Such an example is wonderfully portrayed in 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, in which Darlene Cates, as the oversized mother, Bonnie, of brothers played by a young Johnny Depp in the title role and a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio playing his autistic younger brother Arnie, plays a huge woman who hasn’t left the house for years. When Arnie gets into trouble and is arrested for climbing a water tower, she decides to go out to get him from the police station, causing cringeworthy ripples of public attention for the family.
But as much as this shows how fat can be damaging, it’s a subject that can still be undeniably and darkly funny was well as bringing out pathos and tragedy. How would Laurel & Hardy work if they were the same size? Homer Simpson is fat, a brilliant symbol of American man, and in one episode overeats so much he ends up wearing a muumuu. But perhaps one of most surreal moments in that ever inventive series is when Bart fantasises about growing up to be so fat he can just lie in bed all day and have to wash himself with a rag on a stick.
But how do musicians view and chew the fat on this topic? With a mixture.
“Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn't handle people talking about how fat I was,” says Stevie Nicks. Blimey. Stevie Nicks? Fat?
“One of my insecurities was my looks. I was short, cute and chubby, and Dad used to call me his 'little fat sausage.' But I always knew I had musical talent,” says Suzi Quatro. Fat then is something that’s also a state of mind that many must shake off from an early age.
Some singers however are better for being bigger:
Luciano Pavarotti and Montserrat Caballé
But what about later in life? “When you're fat and comfortable, your music is going to sound fat and comfortable,” reckons Peter Hook.
But now here's Alison Moyet, making a great point about the music and media industry and how it views another star with a great voice. "When I saw Adele, I thought: 'I'll give it an hour before people say I was her,' just because I was fat. When you watch X Factor, you can bet your bottom dollar, every single fat singer sounds like me as far as the judges are concerned. Can you imagine if they did that with every black artist?”
Good point. And so while some singers are known for their size, it’s also their huge talent that makes them even better despite all the body image pressures around us. Two excellent examples are Beth Ditto and Lizzo aka Melissa Jefferson, the latter with a body that’s hard to ignore but brings massive of positivity to the larger body shape for people who are both fat and black. Here’s Ditto: My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I've put them all to work onstage.”
Beth Ditto
And Lizzo: "This music is medicine and I'm trying to get it to my sisters. It's so exciting to me to finally be at a level where I have exposure to my Black sisters, my big sisters, my Black trans sisters. It's not about being poppin'. It's not about being famous or fashion. It's about being better and making sure that this world can hear us and respect us.”
Lizzo
So on that note, it’s time to all squeeze through the Song Bar doors and place your big fat nominations on the counter. Sizing up and no doubt bigging up whatever you’ve got, our guest guru to put this all into shape is, I’m delighted to say, the highly perceptive philipphilip99! Deadline for nominations is 11pm on Monday UK time (BST) for playlists published on Wednesday. Pile it on!
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