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Linddy West Essay Thesis

854 Words4 Pages

Paul Redhead
Feminism and Gender Studies
Warfield
9 December 2021
Shrill Book Essay
Lindy West was labeled and discriminated against since she was a child. From the moment she was born, West was labeled as so big she was “off the charts”, her head was so large that the doctors observed her for months to make sure there were no medical anomalies compared to the “regular” babies. The message was; Lindy West was too big for this world from the moment she was born, and the message was clear. Lindy West’s weight, love for comedy, and gender are the most essential intersecting identities that shaped her life and the interactions she had with other humans.
Lindy West was hindered by her weight for most of her youth. One defining moment of her teenage …show more content…

As Lindy West started to come to understand the misogyny, fatphobic, and racist jokes being praised in comedy, she started to dive into how comedy starts to normalize that type of behavior. When comedians use harmful jokes they create an environment where those actions are accepted. When they are called out they use the “it’s just a joke” or “you don’t like humor” deflections. Jokes that encourage terrible things, such as rape jokes, create a toxic environment for whom the joke is aimed (women and minorities). “Why should I have to sit and cheer through hours of ‘edgy’ misogyny, ‘edgy’ racism, ‘edgy’ rape jokes, just to be included in an industry that belongs to me as much as anyone else?” (194). In this example, Lindy West is describing discrimination in comedy towards herself. Jokes about rape or fat people may not be directed at West, but the joke still is discriminating against her and her identity. When those jokes are said in a comedy context and people laugh at them, it creates an environment where the subjects of the joke are made to believe they are not welcome and everybody shares the comedian's view. Comedy should be a place for all people, no one should feel unwelcome due to racist, misogynistic, and fatphobic jokes. Because West is also a fat female identifying person, she has twice the

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