Late Night Eating
There is a member of my extended family who is quite large, and she gets up in the middle of the night to eat. It is a very serious problem for her. Today’s For Better or For Worse strip reminded me of her, and is on the verge of being offensive to persons who have that particular eating disorder, especially with unusual face Elly has in the final panel, being done for comedic effect, as she eats the pie and the chicken leg. However, when the strip was originally published, I am sure such things were never considered.
As far as the strip story is concerned, we have seen that Elly Patterson cannot control her eating on several occasions, and this is the reason she looks the way she does. In contrast, Lynn Johnston looks pretty thin to me, in her pictures, and in her old videoed interviews I have seen, so I wonder where the image of big-bottomed Elly comes from.
As for comparing John to Elly, John clearly exercises more often and more effectively. Elly occasionally goes on a jog with Connie Poirier, but the destination is usually a coffee shop. I know there are a lot of women who can relate to this model of exercise and eating, but I wonder if this is an area where Elly diverges from Lynn Johnston in her physical appearance. It is possible, I suppose, that Elly does not diverge from the way Lynn Johnston thinks about her physical appearance.
As far as the strip story is concerned, we have seen that Elly Patterson cannot control her eating on several occasions, and this is the reason she looks the way she does. In contrast, Lynn Johnston looks pretty thin to me, in her pictures, and in her old videoed interviews I have seen, so I wonder where the image of big-bottomed Elly comes from.
As for comparing John to Elly, John clearly exercises more often and more effectively. Elly occasionally goes on a jog with Connie Poirier, but the destination is usually a coffee shop. I know there are a lot of women who can relate to this model of exercise and eating, but I wonder if this is an area where Elly diverges from Lynn Johnston in her physical appearance. It is possible, I suppose, that Elly does not diverge from the way Lynn Johnston thinks about her physical appearance.
posted by howard at 12:51 AM
7 Comments:
I found the strip borderline offensive as well, enough to write in to Coffee Talk about it. Aside from late-night eating, the whole "eat virtuously in front of people, and hide your indulgences like a shameful secret (which they are, if you are too weak-willed to stick to your diet)" situation is one that is very painful for a lot of people. Sure, there's also the angle of "Diets suck, sometimes you just gotta cut loose!" but I feel like this strip navigated more towards the former while having the lighthearted tone of the latter. It bothered me.
In contrast, Lynn Johnston looks pretty thin to me, in her pictures, and in her old videoed interviews I have seen, so I wonder where the image of big-bottomed Elly comes from.
I have seen Lynn say in interviews that she deliberately draws Elly to be much less attractive than Lynn herself; if she draws Elly as being very pretty, she said, some people may accuse her of trying to make herself look better through her comic strip. Presumably that follows with thinness as well. I hate to see Lynn doing the "fatter = uglier" thing, but from the way she handles fat characters in her strip (Julia being the most recent bad example) I'm not surprised at all that she has that view.
-bad_latin
The problem I have with this strip is that John almost seems to be taunting Elly. His comments seem harmless but to my eyes, he's congratulating himself that he's a man and thus doesn't have to stay slim to comform to a male standard of female beauty. It's a recurring theme in the strip; harried women making fools of themselves to keep insecure, pasive-aggressive men in their lives. No wonder Elly is loaded with hostility; she wants to yell at the smirking invertebrate whose hateful selfishness is at the root of her misery but her need to stay married to the fool precludes that. She is thus reduced to yelling at things she secretly knows are no big thing.
I think this strip shows - in a humorous way - the tremendous struggle that so many of us have. I appreciate LJ's creation of realistic characters.
Anon, NYC
Ellie(bad_latin),
It will interesting to see if any of the persons writing into the Coffee Talk about the situation will make it in. Lynn's statement about drawing Elly less attractive has always made me think it would be more about her every-increasing nose size. However, Anthony's wedding date Julia, did definitely give an "anti-fat" feel to it, considering that Elizabeth did not even consider Julia a threat well before Julia said much of anything. The contrast with the way Elizabeth acted the first time we saw her with Thérèse gives it away that at least as far as Elizabeth is concerned, there is a relationship between fat and unattractive. I can also point to the Susan Dokis strips where she initially appeared as a nice, somewhat plump woman to her later appearance, when Elizabeth thought of her as horning in on her and Constable Paul Wright, where she looked like she had turned into a fashion model.
DreadedCandiru2,
John's behaviour is somewhat taunting, but also somewhat tempting. I have observed this in the officeplace when somewhere is obviously trying to keep to a diet (i.e. not taking the chocolate cake at someone's birthday celebration) and there are others that seem to be hell-bent on offering that person chocolate cake. His behaviour is not out-of-line with things I have seen before, but he certainly is not playing the part of the supporting husband. On the other hand, Elly does check John is asleep before she goes to get the food; so she seems to have the opinion he would disapprove if he caught her eating in the middle of the night.
Anon, NYC,
I think the situation presented is definitely realistic. I think it struck me differently because of my step-mother's sister who has this problem and because, unlike situations where Fred Flintstone eats in the middle of the night, the face and eye-colour and demented look on Elly's face I found to be more disturbing than funny.
That's a problem I noticed from the earliest years of the strip; John was rarely, if ever supportive of Elly. Always and ever, he made little effort to see things from his wife's point of view. He nver seemed to be able to get it through his thick skull that patting her on the head and going 'There, there, dear' like she was an MONGREL IDIOT INFANT instead of a human being with wants and needs did not help.
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