by Earlier this week, a woman who's writing about flirting and has a book deal wrote in Marie Claire about how she is grossed out by the idea of the new romantic sitcom, Mike & Molly, on CBS.
Maura Kelly wrote:
So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room ‚Äî just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.
She quickly followed that up by saying, hey, she has "plump" friends! And she later apologized for being an insensitive jerk, as she suggested at the end of her column! She's only living flirtatiously. Just not with fatties.
Stand-up comedian Billy Gardell plays Mike.
We all know, or should be aware, that fat people seem to be the one thing we're all allowed to laugh at derisively because, haha, they're fat. Overweight stand-up comedians know this and have said this, and still have poked fun at themselves over it. But still.
Mike & Molly's creator, Mark Roberts, had this to say overnight to The Hollywood Reporter:
The shocking thing is we live in a society where this was an issue. Jackie Gleason would never get on TV now because he's a large man who drank on TV. We've taken steps backward under the guise of what's healthy. Almost everybody I know struggles with something — whether it's their weight or alcohol or temper. To stand in judgment of somebody — especially when you're breaking it down to just the aesthetic. It just makes me sad … wow that makes me sound much more upset than I really am. But I am un-friending that woman on Facebook.
