Quidditch!

You're jealous.



Check for yours truly ~17 seconds.

"Proud" to be obese? Please don't be.

Of course I'm for positive body role models, supporting women with curves and healthy self-esteem -- the whole shtick.

But when obese young actress Nikki Blonsky boasts about her glowing self-image in this article, I groan.

From the Us article:

"I play a character called Willhelmina. She's awesome, she's totally against the grain," Blonsky tells Us. "She doesn't want to
lose weight. She thinks fitness camp is stupid and that's why I love her, because she doesn't want to do anything that the camp wants her to do."

And like her character, the actress admits that she's proud of her full-figured shape.

"I feel awesome," Blonsky tells Us. "I think there's nothing better than just showing by confidence and showing that I love my body. Why not share it with L.A., New York, everywhere?"


Based on the way she gloats about her self-image, it seems like she's trying to convince us that she has the body she's always wanted in an attempt to reconcile her insecurities.

But even if I'm right, there are countless women -- and even men -- who feel they look better if they're a couple dozen pounds past overweight, dribbling the word "voluptuous" as a trendier way to describe being fat.

At first it seems refreshing to read, in contrast to the poor self-esteem that usually accompany obesity. (Thanks, western society.)

But supporting notions such as "fitness camp is stupid" is unjustifiable.

Boasting about how proud you are of your weight when you're obese represents a complacency with an unhealthy lifestyle that should be unacceptable. There's a difference between accepting your flaws when they come in the "those last stubborn ten pounds" variety and tolerating a destructive lifestyle.

Blonsky is only 21 years old and clearly in the "obese" category -- potentially "morbidly obese." Her negligence for health and fitness in favor of proving that she can be happy with herself among the unfairly perfect bodies of Hollywood frightens me. This shouldn't be the only way she markets herself.

This does apply to famous men too. Though being "fluffy," as Gabriel Iglesias might say, may provide great material, comedians often fall into a habit of using their obesity for laughs and are unwilling to shed the weight.

These entertainers may fear they'll lose their fan base if they do trim down to a healthier range. Yet Jennifer Hudson, who was also praised for her larger figure, recently became a spokesmodel for Weight Watchers and still garners the same support for her talent and character as she did before.

The Hollywood obese may want to sacrifice years of their life for a few more years of fame and success. If that's how they feel fulfilled, then that's the case. However, like it or not, they have a responsibility to be role models to their legions of fans that make them the celebrities they are.

Some of the responsibility falls on Blonsky, comedienne Mo'Nique, actress Kirstie Alley, and several others to lose the weight themselves.

At the same time, part of the responsibility relies on the rest of us.

Entertainment magazines, have a field day publishing quotes from Jennifer Love Hewitt and Tyra Banks defending their weight gains, because by any account, they're physically more gorgeous than most of us. But stop praising shows like Mo'Nique's Fat Chance, as they're probably harming women's bodies much more than they're promoting self-satisfaction.

If your daughter is 10 years old and 200 pounds, there's no reason to tell her she's ugly, but stop telling her she's just "fabulous" and leave it at that. Change her diet, get her active, and don't let her fall into a habit of rejecting fitness.

And if you're obese, know that you're not ugly either. Nor is Blonsky. Nor is Mo'Nique. In fact, they are both beautiful, and I bet you are too. But you're not at your best when you're much fatter than you need to be. When your metabolism can sustain you through your fast-paced day, you'll love your body heck of a lot more. And trust me, your body will love you back.

The irony of America's Next Top Model

I spent a while letting my cursor blink of the "Title:" field.

For one, I'm embarrassed to admit that not only have I seen America's Next Top Model, I've seen every episode ever aired, most of them multiple times. I'm ashamed that I can't deny offering a critical opinion on the photo shoots and prancing struts down the self-important runways that the contestants on the show produce. Not only is the quality of the production terrible, but the show takes the subjects that I rage against -- superfluous fashion, vanity, materialism -- seriously. Devoting an article to the show forces me to draw on my expertise as a religious -- dare I say 'fan'?


Giving up on a show once I've seen a full season is hard for me to do. Hey, I stuck with Chuck for several seasons, and even Heroes long after it stumbled away from its geeky, self-referential fun and into a swamp of convoluted melodrama and useless characters.



(If this character had been killed off any later, I think I would've acquired her "power.")

This leads me to my second reason for my hesitation before typing the title: what do I call this article? I want to discuss the 'evolution' of the show, but while I've watched its artistic direction change, I certainly wouldn't suggest it has improved on its formula.

I started watching the show after Vh1 insisted on playing frequent weekend-long marathons of the show. What hooked me was watching someone do this:



Or make this:



And watching the show means following the back stories, so I cheered when I saw an Internet meme named "Creepy Chan" go from posting pictures of herself on 4Chan like this:



To this:



The first season of the show spared no reality TV cliche: creating catfights, exaggerating characters to make villains, reiterating sob stories, you name it. Even for reality TV, it wasn't innovative or smart. Yet, as a teenager somewhere around 14 years old, I was entranced by how chic the visuals seemed and how fascinating the makeup, hair, and costumes were.

And up until somewhere around the fourth season, this seemed to be their demographic. After all, the self-important young woman who plunges into social trends and scoffs at the quirky and weird has kept magazines such as Cosmopolitan a profitable market.

Maybe Tyra Banks was disappointed at the spoiled generation upon which she depended for her audience. At this point, "personality" became a main criterion in hiring participants.

Alright, sure. This is TV, right? In order for me to appreciate the contestants a little more, I need to cheer for the endearing ones as they fight against the antiheroes.

Yet more and more, "endearing" is turning into "relatable." So sure, we all have temper tantrums once in a while. And not all of us know everything about fashion without this show. But when has this ever been charming?



As it disintegrates into trashiness, America's Next Top Model simultaneously begins to cater to the tween market. Pastel colors pop up everywhere. Contestants are fed lines such as "I'm just SOOO super excited!" to squeal. Since cycle seven, one of the prizes has been a spread in Seventeen magazine, which prides itself in putting "role models" on their cover.



If the show sells out the dignity of its contestants by proving them to be vapid, selfish, arrogant, and/or short-tempered, why bother appealing to the younger audience?

Tyra's Top Model doctrine, which she makes painfully obvious, is to accept intriguing and unconventional bodies and faces to redefine "beauty" and offer girls a standard. With contestants cursing at each other and referring to themselves as "the head bitch in charge," I wonder how that's going.

A little note before we move on

You all thought this was out of commission. To be honest, after piles of reporting assignments/essays consuming most of my time, social life aside, I decided gleefully tapping away at my keyboard was not the type of leisure I needed.

(Somehow, sleep found a way of overriding that. I hate being mortal.)

Well, I'm back.

As a reminder, I don't take this little blog seriously, and neither should you. The writing is terrible, the entries aren't cohesive, and if I say anything clever you can assume it was an accident. Monkeys with keyboards, you know.



That said, feel free to browse An Awkward Angle at any time to see what's on my mind, or even comment on the inanity.

Now, on to talk about something trivial.