Issue No.
52
January 2012
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| Welcome to January’s review |
 Tim Black
It is a bit of a paradox. At the same time as anti-
bullying campaigns proliferate - in the workplace, at school and so on - it has become increasingly acceptable, it seems, for officialdom to pick relentlessly on fat people. Yet, as Rob Lyons argues in this month's spiked review of books, the nasty, bullying nature of the obesity obsession should not surprise us: historically the concern with fatness has always rested on aesthetic distaste and outright snobbery. That this distaste for certain people is now dressed up in the language of health should not blind us to the real target: the supposedly overweight and their lifestyles. Also on this week's menu we have James Heartfield on the myths and self-deceptions of the Italian Communist Party, Lexy Barber on the misery of being Jeanette Winterson, Patrick Hayes asking why so many excitedly fantasise about the far right, Nathalie Rothschild on the Obamas, and much more. [Cover illustration by Jan Bowman.] |
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