[HPforGrownups] Re: FAT

[Ebony Elizabeth Thomas]

No: HPFGUIDX 20406

I've stayed out of this so far, but...

Rosmerta wrote:
"IMO the Dudley scenes are hands-down the weakest writing in the books
and I sure hope JKR takes a different tack with him next time out.
Anyone who can make werewolves, convicted murderers and former death-
eaters appealing ought to be able to do better than to demonize fat kids."

We all have our hot-button topics.  I must say that weight was one of mine 
as a kid, but on the opposite tack.  In my elementary/middle school, the 
larger kids NEVER got teased (in inner-city Detroit in the 1980s, being 
overweight wasn't a sin, it was common), but for skinny bespectacled little 
kids like me, there was no end to the torment.  (Anybody see the modern 
version of Dr. Doolittle, with Eddie Murphy in the title role?  The girl who 
played his daughter looks and acts so much like I did when I was a little 
kid that it's not funny.)  In primary school, that teasing *was* bullying, 
and my tormentors were kids who were healthier than I was.  I still remember 
how afraid I would be.  Therefore, when it came time to write a story with a 
bully when I was in my teens, that bully was a caricature of my tormentors.  
We all write from our life's experiences.

No, larger children should not be teased about their weight.  But neither 
should smaller children be terrorized on the playground... Harry's 
experiences with Dudley and Co. in SS make me instantly flash back to 
kindergarten and first grade.  If you were not bullied as a child, you 
cannot know the fear you feel.  At home, when I was angry and crying, rest 
assured I didn't think or say nice politically correct things.  I thought a 
lot of the same things Harry did, of course.

Let's be honest.  When one is extremely angry at someone, the natural 
inclination is a tendency to take comfort in their most obvious 
characteristics.  For instance, most of my supervisors have been female and 
a great deal shorter than I... and most of the time, I never think about 
this.  On the rare occasions that I do get angry at them, however... rest 
assured I think to myself (and say in private) some things that I'm not 
proud of later on.

In JKR's defense, she's an equal opportunity offender.  Her pen is not all 
that kind to blondes, either.

Also, while connotations are important to recognize, I think that sometimes 
we have a tendency to overdo it.  I mean, I have friends who get *very* 
offended with anything that included the equation dark=bad or black=evil... 
and will tell you why Harry Potter reinforces this subtle negative 
phenomenon with its vilifying of Dark Magic, the Dark Lord, etc.  It's not 
that their concerns should be dismissed--a telling exercise that I have my 
older students do is to look up "light", "dark", "black", and "white" in the 
dictionary--but it goes back to what the point I made 2-3 weeks ago with my 
post on Disney.

Something I was told growing up:  "if you go looking for offense, you're 
liable to find it."  The twins' revenge on Dursley in GoF is one of many of 
my favorite scenes in that book... wish they'd been around my neighborhood 
back in the mid-1980s.  Even nearly twenty years later, I can think of a few 
kids who could have used some ton-tongue toffees.

It'd be much different if Dudley was a nice kid and Harry was teasing him 
about his weight.  My best friend weighs over 400 pounds, and we are 
constantly trading childhood stories from the opposite sides of the coin.  
But you know full well that nothing of the sort is in these books.  Dudley 
is, as George says, "a great bullying git"... and that's all there is to it.

As a teacher, I do not sympathize with bullies.  I do not "understand" their 
behavior in the light of the way they've been treated, and I do not want to 
see things from the bully's point of view.  We've all got problems, but it 
doesn't give *anyone* the right to take out your frustrations on someone 
else.  And I am so *sick* of this relativist culture in which the 
victimizer's rights as a human being are valued over the victimized's!

Incidentally, the girl who was the worst bully of all in elementary school, 
then my middle school rival came to my classroom unannounced last January.  
She's now a married homemaker with two children, trying to finish college, 
and just "heard I was there and came up to see me"... she hugged me as if we 
were old girlfriends, we talked about where life's taken us so far, and 
exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses to chat.

Later that day, I was having lunch with a colleague... and I broke down and 
cried.  When I told my mother about the incident that evening, I cried 
again.  (This is why the general opinion of People in Real Life is that 
Ebony is off her rocker.)  But Mama understood what I had to explain to my 
colleague, and just hugged me back and said "I know... I went through it 
with you, remember?"

Somewhere inside of me, there's a six year old girl who accepted the olive 
branch that the bully of yesteryear offered.

So perhaps there's hope for Dudley after all.  I am far less concerned about 
his outward appearance than I am with the kind of person he's growing up to 
be.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ
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