Let’s talk about this meme some dumbass sent my friend

Hey kittens ❤

Today, I got a message from a friend of mine, a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, funny, and fabulous, wonderful little feminist vegan friend who I love. She wanted to know if  I found the following meme funny, and what I thought about it.

I wasn’t able to find the source through a reverse image search, so I can unfortunately not give the artist their due credit, but most of us have seen this kind of nonsense before. It’s so simple, but there is so much going on, so let’s parse this out.

First off, let’s ignore the my guess that he appears to mean only cisgendered, heterosexual white women, as if there are no other women out there, I guess?! It’s just a feeling, but I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that, so I’m gonna let you make your own conclusions about that idea.

This bullshit, stupid meme starts with the assumption that being fat is a bad thing, is inherently unattractive, and that a woman is reliant on the opinion of a man to determine her own attractiveness. It’s insulting to the intelligence of women that the question can only be taken as a Catch-22. The imaginary man in this scenario loses no matter what happens.

Either you’re a liar (because the woman already believes she is fat and therefore undesirable, and you’re not honest enough to tell her) or you’re mean (for answering her question in the affirmative, which in this guy’s world, is equivalent to calling her ugly, lazy, undesirable, etc.)

It’s fat-shaming because it assigns a value judgment to a body type, and it’s misogynist because it implies women are too stupid/irrational/obsessed with their appearance to handle asking a question and receiving an answer.

The implication is that a man wouldn’t be this stupid, irrational, or appearance-obsessed. It also implies that no matter what, women are going to hate you, so it doesn’t matter what they say – which takes a step towards a dangerous perspective of the value of a woman’s consent.

So yeah, it’s not funny.

Also, even if you accept his premises, it’s not funny. It’s not original at all. It’s like the “airline food” of internet comedy. It’s almost a satire of itself. Almost.

0/10, would not view again.

P.S. If y’all like this, I’ll review more of your memes. Just send them to me and I’ll tell you all the shit that’s wrong with them – and if I missed something or if you disagree, leave a comment. Or don’t. I don’t care.