Kirstie Alley: Revenge of the BBW

Kirstie Alley is about to do for porn what Madonna did a few years ago.

BBW love and the public profile of BBWs is about to go through the roof, much like leather, bondage, tattoos and piercings sizzled across the gap between Alternative and Mainstream around the time of the Cicconne Epiphany.

She was one of the smartest, sexiest women icons on the tube. A boss-lady with sexy gams and a hand-hug waist who took no shit and gave where it needed giving.

Then Kirstie Alley got fat. Everywhere she went, her photo was taken and tabloids published only the most face-squished sun-bleared, half-eyed grimaces she made, annoyed by their presence. Until recently.

Taking a page from the No Publicity is Bad Publicity handbook, Alley took to turning full-on to face papparazzi and give them the finger. Laughing.

What happened was she got a great idea, and kept it a secret, and made them come after her. She must have made more magazine covers than younger, thinner stars, as she turned the Hollywood hate machine on itself. Because she came up with a t.v. show called fat actress.

In the mould of the reality comedy mode, but with seriously brilliant fuck-you attitude, the show manages to be a shameless Hollywood gimmick as well as the shameless self-revelation of a woman who has to deal with the youth and beauty industry cults. In the process of spoofing Hollywood, Alley even subverts the very notion of what is and isn't "appropriate" to laugh at.

Alley's adverts and credit sequence for fat actress feature her fully made-up in curve-hugging dresses moving, dancing, acting coy and sexy and beautiful.

And confident.

Note that the show is NOT called "Ugly Actress". It's about a BBW, baby.

The BBW niche, which was a soft, undermarketted sub-niche until very recently, will never be the same again.

From now on it's going to be OK to love Big Beautiful Women. More than OK. It's going to be normal, the way coming out or piercing your nipple is normal. Or much more, perhaps as normal and as much of a "standard" as skinny chicks are now. Plump women maybe return to the status they enjoyed for hundreds of years, from Earth Goddess types to Renaissance Painting porn, before societal biases squeezed big fat charms into a cultural closet.

And that will be good. The (North) American Psyche needs all the healing and balming it can get right now. After 9-11, George W. Bush, Columbinesque massacres, the relentless guilt inducement of doctors, nutrionists and filmmakers everywhere proclaiming the shame of the tv/fast food diet, something had to give. And it certainly wasn't going to be Donald the Burger Pimp.

The guilt and shame of our fatness and our lust will implode over the coming year, and the twain shall cease to exist in their present form. And by the time Alley gets skinny again (come on, like she won't) it might be too late for the BBW niche - it will swell and spike, then take a dive and could lose much value. As a market.

But oh, those beaches in summer...

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