Digital illustration of a vanilla iced donut on a yellow background with "Dastardly Donut and the Pityporn" hand written on top of the donut.

Introducing Dastardly Donut.

I have no words to explain the sheer amounts of bullcrap that happened yesterday, so I drew a comic. Basically it began with Biggest Loser starting it’s newest season in Australia, then John Birmingham writing about it being good pityporn for his kids so they don’t get fat, and then a trillian jerks thought they’d abuse Nick on Twitter because he has feelings.

So I made him into a super hero, Dastardly Donut. He sounds villainous, yes, but his enemy is actually diet culture and people who say rubbish things about fat people. In this installment he takes on pityporn, specifically the fat pityporn bonanza that is The Biggest Loser.
A screen shot of a Brisbane Times blog post entitled "Why is fat such a fractious issue" with a fat blue-clad superhero type figure standing down the bottom saying "What's this? Some fat shame and concern trolling?"
[Image – A screen shot of a Brisbane Times blog post entitled "Why is fat such a fractious issue" with a fat blue-clad superhero type figure standing down the bottom saying "What's this? Some fat shame and concern trolling?"]
A comic split into three panes. The first is a close up of our superhero's face and shoulders, he has a donut on his chest, and he thinks "I thought we already told that guy about fat people not being his PITYPORN". In the next column that guy, John Birmingham the author, stands in a starburst saying "Chill out; I used to be fat; No fat kids; If I can do it so can you!" Oh and his t-shirt says
[Image – A comic split into three panes. The first is a close up of our superhero's face and shoulders, he has a donut on his chest, and he thinks "I thought we already told that guy about fat people not being his PITYPORN". In the next column that guy, John Birmingham the author, standing in a starburst saying "Chill out; I used to be fat; No fat kids; If I can do it so can you!" Oh and his t-shirt says “I heart Michelle Bridges” (a Biggest Loser trainer). The third pane is a super close up on our hero's eyes as he says "Err…"]
A digitally drawn speech bubble saying: A. My body does not exist to provide a cautionary tale; B. What if your kids get fat regardless of what you feed or deny them?; C. Your experience is yours. Don't assume it can apply to others; D. Fat people have feelings!
[Image – A digitally drawn speech bubble saying: A. My body does not exist to provide a cautionary tale; B. What if your kids get fat regardless of what you feed or deny them?; C. Your experience is yours. Don't assume it can apply to others; D. Fat people have feelings!]
An illustration of our superhero standing one arm raised and speech bubbles saying: Fat hatred isn't helpful. It can stop fat people from seeking medical help, finding enjoyable movement and it makes them sad! So like, stop that.
[Image – An illustration of our superhero standing one arm raised and speech bubbles saying: “Fat hatred isn't helpful. It can stop fat people from seeking medical help, finding enjoyable movement and it makes them sad! So like, stop that.”]
An illustration of a vanilla iced donut with a banner saying "The End" wrapping around it.
[Image – An illustration of a vanilla iced donut with a banner saying "The End" wrapping around it.]
I did this in like an hour and it’s the first comic I’ve ever made. EEP.

Elizabeth wrote an excellent response to Birmingham’s post and you should go read it for more back story. I’m not linking to the original post because it and the comments are absolutely awful!

So, maybe I’ll trot Dastardly Donut out again… whenever and wherever injustice prevails, any time and any place!

Note – You might have noticed I’m putting image descriptions underneath every image, this is going to be happening from now on. While I have been writing these descriptions within the image html, I want to ensure maximum accessibility and inclusion. Here is why!

44 comments

  1. Your superhero is super-dooper! It’s even cooler that you get to be married to him ;-) Love your work, as always.

  2. I just don’t do Channel 10 while “biggest loser” is on. It reminds me of the Weight Watchers “pig pen” for members who weighed more in a given week.

    I hadn’t considered that some parents are training their children to be hateful and judging (but it explains some of the behaviours at my primary school!).

  3. I saw Dastardly Donut on your tumblr the other night and was pretty sure that was Nick, he makes an awesome superhero. Hooray for Dastardly Donut!

  4. *swoons* MY HERO!

    (no, seriously, I’m both a fan of superhero comics and a FA person, so this is like all my dreams rolled into one doughnut!)

  5. Not only am I petty and boring, but I’m considerate too! I’m going to block your email and IP addresses so you are prevented from ever being tempted to grace my site with your nastiness. Horay!

  6. I don’t have TV, but when I was on holiday I saw a few minutes of an episode in the last season of The Biggest Loser. It was toward the end of the season, where everybody had lost a ton of weight, and it was so disturbing because nobody looked healthy – they looked like they’d been starving themselves, which they probably had. One lady had a broken foot but she spent 6 hours – 6 hours! – on an exercise bike for a challenge because she couldn’t run like the others. I think any sensible trainer or doctor would tell you that if you have a broken foot, rest!! But obvs these trainers aren’t sensible. What was glaringly obvious is that those trainers were doing so much damage to those people’s bodies and psyches with the whole “thin = champion” mentality. I really hate that show.

    Lydia x

  7. I love the idea of this, but “Dastardly Donut?” Because us fat people’s lives surround around food. Couldn’t we just have a normal superhero who is fat? Like Endomorph Man and his sidekick Zaftig Lass or something…

  8. I understand where you’re coming from, but in this case I was cheering Nick up and I asked him what his favourite food was (at that point in time) and he answered “donuts”. There is a real risk of dividing fatties into “good fatties” who eat healthy food and “bad fatties” who don’t, and I think it’s important to show that good fatty/ bad fatty dichotomy isn’t helpful and should be challenged. While this comic might not challenge that, it’s also one that has a specific context – cheering my husband up after people said some really nasty things about him.

  9. I doubt whether this will be posted since this is an obviously biased site toward obsiety acceptance but i must question your 4 points.
    A – Why not? Do you honestly want others to suffer the same disadvantages you have now and will have in the future?
    B – How are the Kids going to get fat if not by eating the heathly food they are served? by osmoses?
    C – But it proves it can be done, peaple living in denial don’t like seeing this sort of example I know.
    D – If fat people are upset because they are treated like losers, then perhaps they should do something about it. If ut doesn’t worry you then fine, die happy.

  10. a and b) Some people are fat, some people are skinny and some people are in between. It’s genetic, it’s environmental, it’s about class, it’s about race, it’s about lots of things. It’s not just about food and exercise, and the diet culture we live in FAILS children by claiming it’s only about these things. It hurts people to be so simplistic.
    c) A very small percentage of people can lose more than 5-10% of their body weight and keep it off. Recent scientific studies prove this to be true – and many of these studies are available online without having academic access restrictions. Please avail yourself of them. Many people after shows like Biggest Loser put the weight back on, plus some. Yo Yo dieting like this causes much more severe health problems than fat by itself. There are also scientific studies (NOT funded by diet and food companies!) that prove this. You need to read these as well instead of believing what TV tells you.
    d) Fat stigma hurts people’s health. If you think treating fat people like shit is ok, you are a terrible person.

    I don’t expect that you will pursue any further information about this, but whatever you do please stop referring to fat activism as “obesity” acceptance. Don’t medicalise or pathologise bodies, that’s disgustingly bigoted.

  11. a and b) Some people are fat, some people are skinny and some people are in between. It’s genetic, it’s environmental, it’s about class, it’s about race, it’s about lots of things. It’s not just about food and exercise, and the diet culture we live in FAILS children by claiming it’s only about these things. It hurts people to be so simplistic.
    c) A very small percentage of people can lose more than 5-10% of their body weight and keep it off. Recent scientific studies prove this to be true – and many of these studies are available online without having academic access restrictions. Please avail yourself of them. Many people after shows like Biggest Loser put the weight back on, plus some. Yo Yo dieting like this causes much more severe health problems than fat by itself. There are also scientific studies (NOT funded by diet and food companies!) that prove this. You need to read these as well instead of believing what TV tells you.
    d) Fat stigma hurts people’s health. If you think treating fat people like shit is ok, you are a terrible person.

    I don’t expect that you will pursue any further information about this, but whatever you do please stop referring to fat activism as “obesity” acceptance. Don’t medicalise or pathologise bodies, that’s disgustingly bigoted.

  12. Even more petty and boring are people like you who comment on websites only to say “you’re petty and boring!”

    (seriously. I never got the point of that. I had like 2-3 regular trolls who would ONLY show up to say that. Like why are you still reading!? o_O)

  13. A & B “Some people are fat, some people are skinny and some people are in between. It’s genetic, it’s environmental, it’s about class, it’s about race, it’s about lots of things. It’s not just about food and exercise,”

    Sorry… if you eat more calories than you burn, you will put on weight.

    There were no fat prisoners of war that walked out of Changi prison in Singapore….. Their intake of food was inadequate to maintain their weight.

    Genetics have very little to do with weight gain it in this day & age. The same with class. Those statements are incorrect. Please do not make misleading statements.
    Excessive intake of energy, and inadequate output does.

    I do know that diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, reflux, and sleep apnea are all physical problems closely associated with being overweight.
    Can you please list these scientific studies,re weight loss & yo yo dieting, because everything I have read in the BMJ and the like indicates otherwise.
    Obesity is a medical problem, so you HAVE to “medicalise” it….There is no other way to treat it.
    28 years in clinical medicine would lead me to believe that the person actually has to want to lose the weight before any change will occur.
    If you don’t want to lose it, fine…be happy with your choice… but that’s your choice.
    Please don’t blame society for the problem that you have. It is of your own making.

  14. If weight were as simple as calories in/calories out, how do you account for thin people that eat junk and rarely – if ever – exercise? Genetics…?

    “If you don’t want to lose it, fine…be happy with your choice… but that’s your choice.
    Please don’t blame society for the problem that you have. It is of your own making.”

    I find this statement completely disturbing. I do not believe that all fat people are the size they are by choice. However, even if I was proven wrong and all fat people have made the decision to stay fat, do you really think that justifies sub-standard treatment from other people? Think about what you’re saying. “Please don’t blame society for the problem that you have” implies that you think some people deserve the be treated as inferior if their choices are deemed unhealthy.

    And yet… I don’t see anyone hurling abuse at people sunbaking on the beach. I don’t see strangers walking up to people in a pub and informing them they are going to die. Because it’s not medical. It’s prejudice.

  15. Genetics, they’ve found, has MORE to do with weight in this “day and age” than in those previous. Given the higher intake and association with toxicity in our environment we’ve created an unstable physical condition. The increase in endocrine disorders alone should speak to that.

    Also, calories in -calories burned is a simplistic and inaccurate view of the process of weight loss. You can feed the same people the same calories and make them work out the same way and get entirely different results varying from no weight lost in some to weight GAINED in others. That should speak to the fact that individual physiology highly impacts weight

  16. These FA people are cockheads. They cost the Australian health system billions of dollars each year just to save them from themselves and the resultant diseases they develop. It’s not FA, it’s “gourmandise” as the French say, pure and simple.

    There’s chubby and then there’s MORBIDLY OBESE and Fat Acceptance perpetrates the myth that fat is ok. It’s not.

    So guess what, I like JB’s take on it. Teach your children to NOT shove 1/2 dozen donuts down their gaping gobs or smoke a pack of fags every day until they are gasping for breath; teach them to not play on the freeway.

    It’s not Fat Acceptance, it’s time to grow the fuck up and take control of your lives.

    It’s not spending the weekend shoving your head up a gigantic chocolate donkey’s arse and chewing your way out.

    Move around a bit and have a stick of celery.

    I’m a nurse and you annoy the FUCK out of me when you show up at my hospital complaining of chest pain/diabetes/cancer/impotence/blah/blah/blah.

    Kill yourselves now, it’s cheaper.

  17. Brian_epc the voice of reason.

    These FA people are victims of themselves but they blame everyone else, sprout obscure “research” perpetrated by charlatans, and fail to realise that if they just stop EATING so much, there wouldn’t have to be Fat Acceptance.

    Obese people cost the Australian health system billions of dollars each year just to save them from themselves and the resultant diseases they develop. It’s the single most difficult and frustrating thing to have to care for an obese (i.e. FAT) patient. It’s horrific and it’s embarrassing for them and it’s horrible for the doctors and nurses and wardsmen who have to help them move their overgrown arses around a hospital. FAT is the cause of heart attack, obesity, breast and bowel cancers, strokes, peripheral neuropathy, lung disease, suicide and guess what else? FAT PEOPLE have trouble conceiving babies. And it’s not because of the mechanics of rubbing to fat uglies together, it’s all that peripheral oestrogen that screws with your metabolism and hormones. Shall I continue. Maybe not. You’re all reaching for a nice bit of cheesecake by now, just to ease the pain of the truth.

    You know, there’s chubby and then there’s MORBIDLY OBESE and Fat Acceptance perpetrates the myth that fat is ok. It’s not. It never will be, no matter who many silly self-indulgent blogs you write or who joins up to the Fat Acceptance movement.

    So guess what, I like JB’s take on it. Teach your children to NOT shove 1/2 dozen donuts down their gaping gobs or smoke a pack of fags every day until they are gasping for breath; teach them to not play on the freeway.

    It’s not Fat Acceptance, it’s time to grow the hell up and take control of your lives.

    It’s not spending the weekend shoving your head up a gigantic chocolate donkey’s bum and chewing your way out.

    Move around a bit and have a stick of celery.

    or alternatively, kill yourselves now; cut the journey to the grave short and save us all a lot of time and effort to get you lot to have some responsbility for that state that you are in.

  18. Natalie deleted the comment that I was responding to. I’ll paste my response anyway as I think it is important.
    Warning: Discusses suicide and mental health.

    You mention that being fat causes suicide. Wrong. How can being a shape directly cause suicide?

    It is the hatred, the abuse, the taunts and the bullshit that we cop from people like you that cause fat people to become depressed, suffer from anxiety and sometimes leads to suicide atempts.

    No one here has ever said to you that you have to be fat and join us. No one here has gone out of their way to stop you from doing what you want to do. Fat people don’t taunt you and abuse you because your body is different to theirs. What right do we have to do that? None. Therefore, what right do you have to abuse and be cruel to fat people? None.

    Fat acceptance is about equal rights for people no matter what size they are. Every person has a right to be accepted for who they are. Even you have the right to be accepted just the way you are.

    I will never agree with someone who uses hatred to abuse and belittle people because of a physical attribute, whether that be race, size, height, sex or whatever else. And I will always call bullshit on people who do.

    And to you, I call bullshit. You have no right to come here and sprout your hate. You have no right to come here and abuse fat people. I can think of no possible reasons why it is ok to abuse anyone. None.

  19. Awesome. Just awesome.
    I’d like the Dastardly Donut on a T-Shirt or necklace or something publicly wearable! :)

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