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It’s nice to imagine that the media’s psychotic body dysmorphia is a relatively recent development, but as this vintage Sears ad makes clear, it’s been around and in effect for at least as long as little Tracy Harper’s been humiliating her mother with her morbid obesity.

And I can’t believe they cut the final line of text: “And then one day, Tracy Harper murdered her entire family.”

(Thank you, Chicago Eye.)

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

28 replies on “Look at This Fucking Fat Ass”

  6. I’m more interested in the fact that items for children used to be advertised to their mothers. Now we skip right to the children themselves, who are expected to pester and beg until they receive what they’ve been told by ads they should want.

  10. If that girl is 10-12, then, yeah, she’s a little fat for that age. They don’t actually use obese children in ads for fat kids clothing nowadays either. They just use slightly fat kids, so I don’t think this is era-specific, really.

    Long story short, she’s chubby for a pre-pubescent girl, and could stand to lose some weight.

  13. @10,

    Oh please. 10- to 12-year-old girls don’t have to be thin as a rail for fuck’s sake. Telling a kid who is perfectly fine that she needs to lose weight is putting her on a path to obesity. Or don’t you know that yo-yo dieting makes people fatter?

  17. Yeah, @10, that girl looks pretty normal to me. And not “normal” in a “average 10-12 year old today” kind of way. Normal in a “within a healthy weight range for a girl her age” kind of way.

  19. “10- to 12-year-old girls don’t have to be thin as a rail for fuck’s sake.”

    True, they don’t have to be. I’m not saying how one ‘should’ look. I’m just saying that she’s chubby for that age, and she is.

    I’m also not suggesting a change in diet. But if my kids were that weight at that age, I’d see to it that they got more exercise, because whatever habits led to that will only increase over time. She doesn’t seem unhealthy now, but when adolescence hits… Bam! she’s a fat girl.

  20. @6:

    Remember, this is SEARS – no self-respecting child or adolescent with even a modicum of fashion consciousness would WANT to wear anything made by Sears.

    Seriously, if it ain’t in the Christmas catalog under “toys” no kid would be even remotely interested.

  21. Eh, I disagree with #19. I knew girls who were that “chubby” in 5th or 6th grade and they slimmed out over the next couple of years. I was scrawny as hell until the very end of high school, and as an adult, carry a little extra that I’m slowly working off. Some chubby kids grow out of it, and others don’t get fat until later. Making a kid feel bad about themselves isn’t okay.

  23. People were skinnier before high-fructose corn syrup was dumped into everything. We didn’t sit on our asses playing video games all day either.

  25. Body image pressure, my ass. Fat kids become fat adults. Fat adults have more health problems and cost the health care system more.

    At least Sears was trying to make the little pudgy look halfway decent. Today, she’d go to Target or Macys or Wal-Mart, be stuffed into the regulation slave labor made low-rise jeans and too-small T shirt with “princess” on it, and have to fend for herself as an object of ridicule.

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