In the context of “obesity plus happiness,” a recent post brought up the subject of professional comedians. There is a lot more to say about that particular demographic, and since one of the traits of an accomplished comedian is to speak with extreme honesty, most of them are worth listening to. This is especially true of Louie Anderson, who performed stand-up comedy for around 40 years, and acted in films and on TV; and who died (of cancer) two years ago at the age of 68.
Matt Zoller Seitz described Anderson as being conscious that if he ignored his size, audiences would ignore him. Consequently, at any given time, his standup act might be 50% fat jokes. Seitz writes,
The jokes were preemptive: He knew if he didn’t make them, someone else would. [He] felt he had to do them, otherwise viewers would be looking at the TV saying, “D’ya think he knows he’s fat?”
Childhood Obesity News has also mentioned, more than once, a fear that is believed to be universal among fat funny folks: If they no longer inhabit such an identifying trademark of a body, perhaps they will lose their comedic edge and be hounded out of the profession. This apparently was not the case for Anderson, who was asked by Conan O’Brien whether an extreme weight loss would cause him to drop the fat jokes from his repertoire. In that eventuality, Anderson replied that he would retire his fat jokes because “I think I’ll always be funny.”
Dark days transformed
His comedic mood varied, especially when the narrative concerned his alcoholic, abusive father, but in general what he wanted, and achieved, was to offer a gentle sort of comedy that could help people forget their troubles. He was described as a generous, beautiful, loving soul, whose pre-comedy activities included working as a counselor for troubled children.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Anderson already had a head start on becoming the behemoth that inactivity caused millions of other people to dread turning into. (Government agencies and medical institutions all over the world have quoted childhood obesity statistics that vary, but are universally dismaying.) Entering the COVID-19 era at close to 400 pounds he joked, “I’m on the intermittent fast. One minute I’m eating, the next minute I’m not. Then I’m eating again.”
Anderson wrote five books, including Goodbye Jumbo, Hello Cruel World, which…
[…] dealt with his lifelong efforts to come to terms with being overweight. In it, he recalled how his mom would overcompensate for the trauma her children were experiencing by overfeeding them.
He told journalists Christie D’Zurilla and Nardine Saad that the process of writing that particular autobiographical volume completely changed his life:
I was able to be freed up from that burden, and that low self-esteem and self-hatred that you get into… I decided that I was gonna change all that, and I was not gonna hate myself anymore. That I had gone through enough guilt, and enough shame, and I wanted to move on. And that I had something to offer.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Honoring His Mother Was Louie Anderson’s Life’s Work,” Vulture.com, 01/22/22
Source: “Comedian Louie Anderson Says He’s Lost About 40 Lbs. Through Intermittent Fasting,” People.com, 03/17/21
Source: “Stand-up comic and actor Louie Anderson, Emmy-winning ‘Baskets’ star, dies at 68,”
LATimes.com, 01/21/22
Image by Walt Disney Television/Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
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