Fatgate continues

I was impressed that celebs spoke out in favor of the evidently fat Jennifer Love Hewitt. It was a pretty low bar. I mean, all they are doing is saying that a thin women is thin and not fat. Hardly challenges the system, but given how advantaged that system is, even the slightest pushback comes as something of a surprise. I mean, there WERE people insisting she was fat to begin with, after all. That's how screwed up things are.

Which brings us to Janice Dickenson, the former supermodel, who "defended" Hewitt by using it as an excuse to pick a cat fight with Tyra Banks by calling HER fat. You may recall in January that Tyra was defiantly accepting of her post-modeling body and insistant that it wasn't fat. You may also recall in May when she was on magazine covers boasting of her amazing weight loss. Mixed signals, there. Doesn't excuse Dickenson's insane use of defending someone from petty nitpicking about a thin woman being fat to offer her own petty nitpicking about a thin woman being fat.

Even more stunning is where this happened. Was she at some mindless industry photo-op where she was asked by the fine reporters of Extra or E!News about Hewitt? Nope. She was on the freaking Today Show. Admittedly not a bastion of serious news reporting, but not really E!News, either. First off, why are they covering a silly gossip story like "JLove is a fatty"? Secondly, why would they bring on the notoriously trash talking and notoriously superficial Dickenson on to discuss the issue? Oh, right, because they wanted this sort of thing to happen because cattiness and fat mocking makes "good TV". I guess maybe Extra and E! are actually a step above Today.