Jokes related to people's appearance - acceptable in writing?

So, I wonder: comedy throughout the ages have used jokes related to people's appearance, whether people are tall, short, thin, fat, balding, etc. etc.

The TV series M*A*S*H*, for instance, had jokes about Cpl. O'Reilly's shortness, and the fact that Cpl. Klinger was cross-dressing (and trying to get out of the Army).

On the long-running series The Two Ronnies, there were constant jokes about Ronnie Corbett's shortness, Ronnie Barker's stoutness, and other various body parts (always done in good taste, mind you - nothing that could be considered rude, only suggestive).

So ... when did jokes like this start crossing the line and start being offensive? If a story character is fat (or thin, or short, etc.), saying so is merely stating the fact. Where is the offense?

All right: if character A is described as "fat", and everyone spends the whole novel making fun of his/her weight, that's obviously offensive. But if someone is described as "fat", and he is aware of it, and is either trying to slim down or is comfortable the way he is - that's not offensive, surely?

The same goes for if the character is very short, or very tall, or balding, or whatever. I don't mean using insults etc., but simply characters pointing out the obvious - for instance, let's say that John (very thin) is meeting his friend Rod (very fat):

John: G'day, Rod. Have you gained weight? You now have your own gravitational pull.
Rod: G'day, John. And your hair's so messy, if we turned you upside down, we could use you as a mop.
John: Indeed. But my nose, pray, isn't so long and sharp it could be used as a pencil.
Rod: True, true. But to look at you, John, one would think England is going through a famine.
John: And to look at you, Rod, one would think that you caused it.

Obviously this could only pass between friends. Neither of these characters would dream of saying this to an acquaintance / stranger / business colleague / etc.

So when does the banter stop and the offense begin? Just wondering.

 

A case like that the offense is all in the mind of the reader. Snowflakes like that are why trigger warnings were created.

 

As a formerly fat person myself, I may point out that I find your post inescapably offensive and shows scant regard, if not utter disregard, for the time, energy and unwavering dedication on my part to redefine my terms. I'm not, not ever was, overweight. I'm undertall and, had I measured at my natural height of 8 foot 6, you would probably not have anything to say about excess mass.

As regards the OP, make the fat people evil, then you can say whatever you want.

More seriously, do what you do. If it's mean and petty, it may appeal to people who are mean and petty. If it's funny, it might appeal to people who find it funny. If it's insightful...oh you get the idea.

 

a while back, i asked for help constructing a joke/insult about erectile dysfunction. it was hilarious.
but served its purpose. The character that does joking has a very crass personality and would totally stab you where it hurts if given the chance. It just so happened that the person this character was talking to has trouble with his junk.

 

Don't try to reprogram yourself according to the latest social trends. If you do that you'll have to update continually and you'll never find firm grounding. You have to do you—write what's meaningful to yourself. Otherwise where is your writing coming from? A shallow social movement that might be over in a few years? Write the world as you believe it to be, and be ready to defend it (not to apologize for it, which only feeds the blood frenzy of the mob).

 

I think it's telling that your example is two men teasing one another. In my experience, men are much more likely to rib one another about physical things. Almost like a rite of friendship. Women, on the other hand, are much less likely to negatively comment on another women's appearance. We are more apt to say, "You look beautiful!"

 

Yeah, in general women want to make people feel better, and men want to make sure other men can handle harsh reality. Of course, I have to include the usual caveat—there are masculine women who behave more like men and feminine men who behave more like women. So it isn't so much about men and women as masculinity and femininity and how they they manifest in individuals.

 

^ That's until women get catty of course, but that isn't about testing for how someone can handle harsh truths, it's about hurting their feelings. Men will do that too, and also sometimes men will directly challenge each other, verbally or as a prelude to a fight.

The caveat applies here as well. It applies to everything we say about men and women, which is usually really about masculinity and femininity. It's just easier to generalize and say men and women.

 

Something that I may have poorly communicated in my first post above, but a thought that does occur to me. By all means do what you do, but sometimes reflect on how well it is that you're doing it. How is it received and by whom? What of the author who writes an unflinching account of sexual relationships with frank and curt language to explore the foundations of intimacy only to find it heralded as a champion of free speech by a bunch of Neanderthals who think predating is what you do before a romantic dinner?

Similarly with the subject of the OP. Authorial intent does not guarantee delivery and it can be interesting to see who you've got in your corner to defend something you've written. Might not cause you to change it, but might be something to consider all the same.

 

All very interesting viewpoints! Thank you.

To be honest, I'm not thinking of doing this simply to be mean or petty. I was thinking, rather, of the kind of banter you sometimes see between two young people of the opposite sex who are forced together against their will. (Think of Mort and Ysabell in Terry Pratchett's Mort and their on-again, off-again romantic involvements. They insult each other, then work together, and finally realise they are meant for each other. Aw. I love a happy ending).

As for free speech -- sheesh. Sorry to digress, but I'm so tired of people using insults or hate speech, and then saying "I have a right to free speech!"

Sigh. With rights come responsibilities, you know.

 

It's one thing for a character to offend another character. It's a completely different thing for an author to offend the reader (readership). And it should be quite easy to separate the two, I would think. That's not to say you can't be a bit provocative and push the envelope. I think it all comes down to doing things tastefully (this does not mean PC or whatever) and skillfully.

You should really try to find written material if you are looking for how writers are handling this sort of thing, finding examples that do what you're looking to do. And there are always examples out there. I think the execution is going to be quite critical when it comes to this. And I think reading prose writers might give a better sense of what and how it might work for you. It's just pretty much a different occasion of sorts when you bring language into the mix the way prose writers would probably do it verse how you've seen it done on tv.

 

To be honest I think genre is going to play a part in whether your readers will accept your humor. I notice a lot of female writers writing thrillers are raked over the coals for making cracks about character's appearance. This of course is only a subset of the readers but it's amazing how noisy that subset can be. Especially when you figure - horror (a close relation to the thriller) can be quite crass. Or at least used to be, I haven't read a horror book since the early 2000s.

What is equally strange is I'm now finding that the trend from years ago circulating the writing sites - no need to describe your mc - now seems to include all characters. Descriptions seemed to be quite thin and polite now. Not with every book but still. I know tone can cover a lot - but man, am I missing the brashness of Louise Fitzhugh who had Harriet eviscerate her characters in one sentence - Carrie Andrews is considerably fatter this year - Harriet the Spy.


My advice is write what you want in the first draft and then look it over to see what works and what sounds off. I write a pretty thin 1st draft to test out a tone and discover my characters. I trim or fix in subsequent drafts.

 

A portion of this question is oddly framed. The example given is dialogue between two characters using intentionally offensive remarks as banter. So question at least encompasses: "Could the reader be personally offended as an observer of what one fictional character tells another?" But if that is the concern, then there had better not be any violence in the book, because any reader who has the temperament for that kind of third-party offense would be mortified by the concept of one character stabbing the other with a letter opener (I, who identify as a currently breathing person, am offended by how he just perforated that dude's lung enough to strain spaghetti).

There's characters making fun of fatness and there's the narrative making fun of fatness. Different things, and the latter is what will reflect on the writer. It's interesting, because visual media likes to pick on ugly people in general. The joke's entire premise will be that an unattractive person is doing an ordinary thing, but it's funny because they're 'ugly.' This is especially the case for flirtatious or lewd acts. That acceptability, though, has dropped off rapidly depending on the attribute.

I'd say fat, mentally disabled, most racial things, crossdressing (or anything trans____ essentially) has recently and rapidly fallen out of favour. It was really not that long ago that it was okay to laugh at the Korean gas station owner simply because of his mannerisms etc... Though it's still okay for the narrative to joke at the expense of short or bald or old people. Well, not too short. Sexist jokes flipped—now 'oh, men can't do anything right' is acceptable rather than 'hah, yeah, those hysterical women certainly can't drive well, can they?'

The last thing to note is it will depend on your audience, too. If Tumbler or Twitter or military veterans are reading your book (and you care about possibly violating their sensibilities—frankly the readers I prefer are willing to be a little offended), maybe it's better to ask them rather than a bunch of writers who are concerned about self-censorship?

 

Fair enough. *smile* I'm not particularly interested in Tumbler or Twitter, and my genre is historical fiction (with an emphasis on the ancient era, aka pre-B.C.) ... so, unless there's a veteran out there who's old enough to have met Julius Caesar, I think I'm safe.

Then again, the battle of the sexes (banter- or insult-wise) hasn't changed much over the centuries. Of course the language changes, and mannerisms and etiquette come into and go out of fashion. But if you judge societies by the graffiti or books they left behind, then both the Romans and the Victorians were incredibly open-minded about both sex and the battle of the sexes. (Latin insults can be incredibly strong, as well as super-modern).

My only worry is that what was normal (and even expected) in the 1st century may seem to be crass in the 21st. But that's not up to me; if I stopped writing because of the potential that someone, somewhere would be offended, I'd never get any writing done at all.

 

A Roman, an Athenian and a Scythian walk into a bar...

 

... And the Roman says "Ouch!"

The Athenian says "Stop walking into iron bars."

The Scythian says "And if you keep invading my country, I'll hit you again!"

 

I am reminded of a Wodehouse description, "he looked as though he had been poured into his clothes and forgot to say stop." Or something like that. People do come in various sizes and need to be described. I found that description amusing and clear and harmless. And to be sure, the character's weight had nothing really to do with the story, that's just his appearance. I suppose some could be offended by it, but it strikes me as better than saying, "he was fat" or obese. I saw it as gentle humor.

 

Sure. Saying "he was fat" doesn't really say much. He was fat? In comparison to whom -- someone suffering from anorexia? Be more specific, please.

Then, there are other ways to say that someone is (say) tall. Terry Pratchett in Night Watch said of a character: "He was always the first to know when it rained."

Or if someone was short: "He could easily audition for a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Or if someone is flashily dressed: "He stood out like a redback on a slice of wedding cake." (Thank you, Raymond Chandler, for the inspiration. Unusual metaphors FTW!)

 

Hi Louanne, Xoic,

I found it amusing that you should say this since I just saw a witticism (maybe fact / maybe observation) on You Tube.

"Men will socialize with other men by insulting them. Most of what is said is lies. Women will socialize with other women by complimenting them. Most of what they say are also lies!"

I think there's some truth in this. But I also think that it doesn't really matter to the OP's thread. You really want to write your story according to what seems truthful to it, to your characters. If your MC is an arse, write him as an arse. Don't try to sanitize your work. Your characters. Your audience won't believe them.

Cheers, Greg.

 

This right here. The Overton Window is a real thing, and all the people chasing after being socially acceptable just keep stepping on each others' toes in their mad dash to keep up with the latest standards.

Write what makes YOU feel comfortable. If you write a joke and you wonder if it is crossing the line, imagine you found that in someone else's book. Would it make you feel uncomfortable there? If you're unsure just put it in some tupperware and come back to it in a month. Don't ask what other people think because there is no way to please everyone; someone will be offended because of what you say, someone else will be offended because of what you didn't say. And if there was something that didn't offend, it wouldn't have anything to make it interesting.

So just just write what you like; write what you want to write. The people who like what you write will read it. Don't waste your time writing for people who don't like what you write.

EDIT: Re-reading this a day later, I feel compelled to clarify. "Don't ask what other people think" Actually, DO ask a trusted friend, there's great value in that. Get an outside perspective. But get it from a trusted source, not the masses of the internet.

 

Very wise. Thank you, Xoic and Marscaleb.

 

Consider as well the context you put it in. In a series I was watching recently there were two female characters that were constantly calling each other bitch and skank, but the context showed they were friends so the dialogue wasn't offensive. It was friends ribbing each other. So it is as much how you do it as what you are doing.

 

Hi,

Just to add, in my latest crime fiction (I'm about to start work on the first edit) my MC pretty much finishes the book referring to his boss as Lard Butt - because he's fat. But it's right because they're friends and his alcoholic and severely unhealthy boss needs to go on a diet after getting out of rehab. It is actually a term of friendship.

In addition to that his eldest brother - a member of a biker gang and not a main character until the end - carries the moniker Fat Boy. But then his father Maurice is Bad Boy, so Fat Boy works well, considering he's about four hundred pounds. His other brothers are Blade (he likes knives, and his actual name is Blake), Tweaker (because he does a lot of drugs, actual name Cain), and my MC before he went into witness protection was named Baby (his actual name not a moniker, given to him because he was the youngest). The monikers are used because they fit with biker gang culture and reflect an aspect of the characters / family dynamics etc. They sound believable - to me at least. They're not meant to be nice names and I wouldn't want to sanitize them. These are not nice people (except my MC of course!)

Cheers, Greg.

 

It's a useful device for showing the mind-set of the character that's doing the insults. When Character A delivers a scathing assessment of something they don't like about Character B, the reader is informed about the value judgements that Character A uses to categorize people, so it really ends up displaying more about Character A than Character B.