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Muggle Headed

by | 6th, April 2006

‘“DUDLEY looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large, pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes and thick, blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head.” That’s what JK Rowling said of Harry Potter’s nemesis Dudley Dursley in book one of her Devilish works.

The evil fat kid

We mention this in light of comments made by Rowling on her official website, and picked up on by the Mirror.

Rowling, a mother of three, is disgusted at skinny models, or “empty-headed self obsessed, emaciated clones” as she describes them.

She is appalled that “talking toothpick” types – see vacuous Paris Hilton and lollypop-shaped Victoria Beckham – are held up as role models.

We live in a “skinny-obsessed” world, says the author. She reads an interview with model (nameless) and notes with disgust her “concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms”. This model says she eats loads and has a very fast metabolism. Rowling says the girl’s figure tells a different story. “This girl needs help but the world being what it is, they’re sticking her on magazine covers instead,” says she.

And there is more horror. Rowling talks with friends, telling her that “fat” is often the first insult a girl hurls at another to cause hurt. The friend is shocked. She then compares this to yelling “thicko” at Stephen Hawking.

We have looked at a file photo of Mr Hawking, an author in his own right, and can say with no hint of doubt that he is far from fat.

We also note that the Lucasian Professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge (a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton), suffers from tetraplegia. Yelling insults at a man so awfully crippled is far from pleasant, even if he is denser than Lebesgue’s density theorem.

But before we dwell too long on Hawking’s mental capacity, Rowling ponders how “strange and sick the ‘fat’ insult is”. And she has a question: “Is fat the worst thing a human being can be? Is fat worse then vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring or cruel?”

We think not. And, considering Rowling comments on her large boned Dursley character, we suggest that fat is merely shorthand for all those things and more…’



Posted: 6th, April 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink