SONG OF THE DAY: TV Mama

I am old, so I remember when "fat" as positive slang came into vogue. And to be honest, I never saw at first, nor supported when it did show up the "phat" version of spelling fat. Mostly it was spoken for a long time, as actual oral language before I ever saw it written. And it was a complimentary term that turned the negative orientation of the foundational word around. The use of "phat" always felt like it was not turning the negative connotation of the word around so much as distancing itself from being perceived as the same as the traditional interpretation. There's a key difference there - if you are recreating what something means, you are destroying the negative within it. But if you are creating an alternative word which positions itself as related yet still accepting the implied truth of the foundational word, you ain't recreating shit. You're still living off that original meaning.

I've seen the same thing in recent years with "thick" and "thicc". A lot of humans appreciate thick humans, in terms of attraction as well as sexually. That's fine. I mean, we want to not overly objectify anybody ideally, but if everybody's a willing party to what's going on, then love on some thick people. But I guess other people wanted to associate themselves with thickness while still hating mainstream notions of fatness, which ultimately is what we're trying to fuck up, or people don't care for. So they started saying "skinny thick" meaning they were (allegedly) thick but still skinny, which really creates some unattainable and unhealthy body goals, to look like a 1970s Barbie doll. But then "thicc" came along to just straight up pretend to be thick all while still being skinny. I don't support any of this.

I think about nine times a week I think in my head how Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth warned us all to not recreate the power structures of our institutions we want to replace (colonial thinking, which most of us still possess to a startling degree when you actually look into it) with those same power structures. Our human way of thinking in the era of world exploration/colonization was one of conquest and domination and subjugation. Seems like so often we see these same violent and subjugating ways of thinking applied in our current discourse. Shit, the discourse itself is opposing paramilitaries of colonial thinking attempting to out-dominate each other. It's gross and disgusting and we really could use more transformative thinking.

How does this relate to an old blue song about having a fat ol' lady? Well, Big Joe Turner was probably fat himself, judging by his descriptive nickname, and thus I can assume as a person who listens to music then writes blasts of prose from that trigger, that this is a couple of people who are overweight by mainstream standards, but they're loving on each other still. According to society, they are unattractive, and ugly, and yet here they are, loving the fuck all up on each other. That is more transformative and revolutionary than any hot take tweet that became a viral meme.