I'm calling for a boycott on Marie Claire magazine

Due to an article published on October 25, 2010 by Maura Kelly.

If you haven't already read the article, let me give you the highlights here:

It's an article about whether or not overweight couples should kiss or make out in private to spare the rest of us seeing it. No, I'm not joking.

Some of my favourite lines from the article:

"Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly (from the CBS sitcom of the same name) can be healthy."

Really, Maura? Are you really that uneducated? It is outrageous of you to compare these characters (who are played by real life people, by the way, and I bet they even have feelings, too, unlike you) to models. Part of a model's job is to make her body look a way in which clothing will be appealing to those who want to buy it. Society dictates that skinny is sexy. So models are skinny as part of their job. These people, who you are referring to as the characters they play in a sitcom for no other reason than to make yourself feel better about slamming them for the way their bodies look, I'm sure, are not employed by the fashion industry and therefore do not depend on their bodies to land jobs and make money. In fact, I would be willing to hazard a guess that their size has probably given them a lot of set backs in their lives because of judgmental people like you.

"So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room - just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair."

Maura, I get more and more disgusted with you as I read your article. You are comparing an overweight person to a drunkard or a drug addict? You'd feel the same way about watching a sober overweight person walk across a room as you would about a drunk person doing the same thing, or a drug addict slumped over in a chair? Alcoholism and addiction are diseases. Not that I'm saying that obesity is 100% healthy because I know it's not. But this is like comparing apples to oranges. And let me remind you once again that the people who play these characters on tv are people, "in real life," too.

Maura goes on to say that she has friends who "could be called plump" and that she's "not some size-ist jerk." She says she knows that it can be difficult for "truly heavy people" to "psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down" because she's spoken to some guy at her gym about it. And then she gives us some words of wisdom regarding how to go about losing weight, which includes walking more. Really, Maura? After you say you feel uncomfortable watching an overweight person walk across a room you're going to tell them to walk more? Overweight people are just supposed to forget that there are judgmental people like you in the world who don't want to see them walking and walk anyways because you say so? No one is going to take your "YOU CAN DO IT!" seriously after reading the first part of your article. If you want to encourage people to lose weight being judgmental towards them is not the way to do it.

I'm calling for an apology from Maura Kelly for writing such filth and from Marie Claire for publishing it. Until then, I will not purchase a Marie Claire magazine and I urge all of my readers to do the same. Let's let Marie Claire know that we want to read articles about real things.