My latest piece is now live on Slackjaw. This is the first time I’ve published twice on the same site and that was a purposeful decision. I love Slackjaw’s take on humour and the welcoming Medium community. Thank you to editors Alex Baia, Sarah James and the rest of the Slackjaw team for taking a chance on my pieces and for all their hard work.
Those who know me know how much I love 90s sitcoms like Seinfeld and Frasier. In this piece, I ranked the hottest characters from those shows and others whose faces we never get a chance to see (e.g. Maris Crane from Frasier).
Writing this piece was an eye-opener in many senses. Three of the six characters I wrote about were morbidly obese, while Crane’s rampant anorexia was played off for laughs (she once sprained her wrist by putting too much dip on a cracker). I also could have included Peggy Bundy’s mother from Married With Children, who was so heavy that the walls would shake when she walked.
Is this a sign of previous generation’s fatphobia that all of these characters’ morbid obesity were played off for laughs? Or perhaps it’s more a testament that when writers don’t show a character, they are prone to exaggerate their features. Thus, a skinny character becomes really skinny and a fat character becomes really fat. What do you think?
Check out the piece and make sure to clap for it on Medium and subscribe/follow directly on Medium. Once I get to 100 followers they will start paying me for my writing. I got well over 50 followers from my first piece to that site, Mom And Dad, I’m Gray, so I’m over halfway there.
Happy New Years!
Jared Cappel 