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- Content editor, Joanna Lowy, comments on all things health-related, and gives you a sneaky peek into her news-based medical musings of the week. Sometimes controversial, other times humorous, always straight from the heart; here you get to know the girl behind the facts! Enjoy! Comments welcome and invited!
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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious, if you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious.
At least, that’s what Mary Poppins had us believe.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I think of that song, I immediately imagine the bald, skinny, stressed looking man who explains the effect it had on his love life. “One night I said it to me girl, and now me girl’s my wife”, said in response to a warning by Ms Poppins that you “better use it carefully or it may change your life.” The said bald, skinny, stressed man is accompanied by his said wife, a somewhat larger, angry looking woman, who, on glaring at him after uttering these words, immediately claims, “and a lovely thing she is too.” Wife breaks out into a smile, before proceeding to bang her tambourine on her husbands head in rhythm to the song.
I’ve always loved this scene, but never did I think I’d be able to write an article about it.
Then again, I never imagined the day that a news story would claim that stressed men are more attracted to ‘heavy women’.
There is so much wrong with this statement, I don’t quite know where to begin.
Excuse me for confusing my Julie Andrews’ analogies, but let’s start from the very beginning.
You see, ‘heavy’ is an interesting choice of expression. Because whilst an adjective like ‘plump’ or ‘curvy’ has connotations of a kind, friendly and personable demeanour, ‘heavy’ just implies rude, aggressive and intimidating – regardless of weight.
And so, even though some of the research attributed to the story could be valid, for example the conclusion that “in times of stress and hardship it makes sense for men to be attracted to women better equipped to handle times of scarcity”, the fact that they have chosen to label these women as ‘heavy’ undermines the whole thing.
Because all I think of when I hear the phrase ‘heavy women’ is the large, angry looking woman in Mary Poppins, who clearly bullied her husband into marrying her.
So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Are these ‘stressed’ men stressed regardless of their ‘heavy’ partners, or because of them?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is used when you have nothing else to say. But I beg of you said researchers, if you have nothing nice to say, it’s probably best not to say anything at all.
- 13 August 2012
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