Fatso

I watched this movie this afternoon, it definitely had funny moments. It's from 1980 when Dom DeLuise was on the scene and he was a funny comedian and he tells the story of being a lonely fat man raised in a very close-knit Italian Catholic family.

Like other fat comics, I always got the feeling Dom DeLuise had suffered for his weight and felt it barred him from further inclusion. What is ironic is while he was "fat" for 1980, today he barely would fit "portly", one can tell definitely the obesity standards have changed since those times. There are negative stereotypes about fat people in this movie, that they are always hungry, love snack food and go on food binges. While there are the eating disorder folks out there, in one scene Dom DeLuise's character eats 2 huge bags of Chinese food or 40 dollars worth. I have to admit that gave me an uneasy feeling since some of us have majorly suffered for those stereotypes. In the "Get the Honey" second video of one scene, Dom DeLuise has his Overeaters Anonymous group, "Chubby Checkers" come over to do an intervention while his girlfriend is missing. The group is starvation dieting drinking only hot water, which makes them even more food obsessed and in this case, they rip the locked up cupboards apart to get to the food. Well that is one bad thing about strict dieting, it makes hunger levels skyrocket.

I found two aspects really interesting when Dom figures out dating and having good times with his new love Lydia after a lifetime of no dates takes off weight naturally and when he tells his siblings, that they have to love and accept him just as he is, fat or not. That was a nice scene. When the Chubby Checkers get together and make themselves chant "Fat, Fat, Fat", I laughed, this reminded me of NAAFA when we were told to own the word FAT. Wasn't 1980 about the time they popped up?