The Jersey Fat Guy Authenticity Thing

Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, who visited the Writers Institute in 2006, offers a critique of an American cultural phenomenon he calls "fat guy authenticity" in Slate this past Monday.

"Jersey fat-guy authenticity is a subcategory of Generalized Fat-Guy Authenticity, and you can trace the roots of Generalized Fat-Guy Authenticity all the way back beyond Falstaff to the Buddha with his fat bellyful of aphorisms. I always wondered about that: The Buddha preached abolition of worldly appetites, yet judging by the many representations of his bloated belly, the guy seems never to have missed a meal. Maybe there’s a mystic lesson there."

"But let us not get lost in the mists of time. Let us look at the evolution of fat-guy authenticity, and the recent rise of the Jersey Fat Guy as an icon of authenticity, the trope that has endowed Chris Christie with his heavyweight hubris." More.

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