Body Image

You know, I don't make any bones about it, I like a girl with meat on her frame. I like the chubby girls. Always have. Only recently have I allowed skinny girls to turn my head. Me, I call that personal growth. Of course, the media is particularly keen to tell me what I should and should not like. TV and film is repleat with so-called perfect bodies, and more that one young woman has succumbed to eating disorders or soul-crushing insecurity because she could not achieve that level of "perfection". But 50 years ago, voluptuousness was the beauty standard. So what happened?

Superman happened.

Let's go back 50 years to 1958 and Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #5. The story: "The Fattest Girl in Metropolis." This is where Superman taught kids that fat was uncool, and that nobody wants to marry the big girl. (Despite the fact that he doesn't want to marry a thin Lois either.) In this thing, Lois walks in front of a "growth beam" that makes her 100 pounds heavier overnight. So bear in mind that she's only 200 lbs. Struggling with obesity, but hardly able to...
...break a car's axle!

Oh wait, three large women in the same car? My bad. Certainly there's no excuse for giving her a reinforced chair:
Do all the 200 lbs. gents use them around the office?

Given that it will later be revealed Superman knew it was her all along, and despite the fact he tries to spare her humiliation later on, he's pretty cruel about the weight thing here:
Dude. You can juggle planets. Cut her a little slack.

More dignity-robbing, confidence-crushing claims made by this comic include:
-Full-figured women buy their clothes at a store called "The Fat Girl's Shoppe".
-Lois is convinced that "nobody loves a fat girl" (sob).
-Fat girls can't keep from eating:
-And when they eat, oh boy, is it ever expensive. Superman spends his entire paycheck on Lois' last dinner as a big girl (chomp).
-Oh yeah, and you better not walk past the circus:
Unless you want a job, that is.

It's a cruel world out there, and it got just a little bit crueler back in 1958.

This article by special request from Bauble.