Horrible Beast: 13 Drawings That Depict The Shameful Fatties Of America

Horrible Beast: A Gallery of Shameful Fatties

B.R. Crumb

B.R. Crumb is a web developer in New York. He's on Twitter.

March 6, 2014 81 Comments Culture

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

Because it bears repeating, in men, healthy (i.e., not fat) women inspire feelings of love and compassion that transcend the boundaries of self, country, and creed. In women, healthy men inspire the same.

This male-female polarity—borne mostly out of feminine beauty and its counterpart, masculine action—establishes a degree of human connectedness that cannot be created otherwise. That is why the strongest possible “community” is really just two people: a man and his lover.

All other communities are built on that foundation. The newly-minted VP fucking the secretary in the handicap stall; the dutiful young woman who skips lunch so she remains doable in the eyes of her fiancé; the husband enjoying a Thursday evening rimjob from his adoring wife—these are the atoms of our civilization. The world is a funny place.

And yet, for thousands of years, people understood this just fine. The ancient Greeks knew that Helen’s was the face that launched a thousand ships. They composed a couple epics on the matter. Two millennia later, Marlowe saw it just as clearly when he wrote that famous line. Then somehow, somewhere, we got it twisted. Today our mass culture is larded with fat apologists who advocate a feminine ideal that could scarcely rouse a single dong, much less move men to build careers, homes, families, futures.

For Horrible Beast, I’ve prepared thirteen drawings to serve as reminders that what separates the feminine woman from the fat woman is not a difference of degree, but of kind. It is my hope that these drawings will hold a mirror up to fat women so they might see themselves as we men do: as abhorrent; repulsive; alien; as existing beyond the farthest reaches of our love and compassion.

In brief, as beasts.

Human civilization is vast and can comfortably contain multitudes—but it cannot contain the beasts. Let us hope they are recognized, and righted, while there is yet something left to right.

Breadcrumb; New York City, February 2014