Kathy Griffin vs. Bristol Palin: One fat joke too far?
Bristol Palin may not be the greatest role model when it comes to teens and sex, but she's right about body image.
After comedian Kathy Griffin targeted the 20-year-old mom during the VH1 Divas salute to the troops this weekend, Bristol Palin shot back: "I hope people didn't have to pay money to hear her negativity and criticisms."
"She's the only contestant in the history of the show to actually gain weight," Griffin said during the show, referring to Palin's performance on "Dancing With the Stars." The audience booed, but Griffin -- who also strutted the stage wearing a skimpy bikini and joked that she was showing off her "starvation body" -- kept going. "No, come on, come on. She gained like 30 pounds a week, I swear to God, it was fantastic," Griffin said.
"She's like the white Precious," she added, comparing Palin to the 350-pound character in last year's hit Lee Daniels' movie.
"The audience's reaction to this comedian spoke volumes, and the decent people I know would probably have booed her, too," Palin told Fox News.
Though it's worth remembering that all the world's a stage to the 50-year-old Griffin, slamming a 20-year-old for possibly gaining weight is hardly a joke. The rest of the VH1 show was packed with young performers (and "performers," like Snooki and The Situation from "Jersey Shore"), making it an obvious draw for teens who are wrestling with body image themselves. And the message they may have heard was that healthy = fat.
Ironically, Griffin has struggled with her weight and body image for years. Though earlier this year she jokingly complained that she maintains her concave abs and boney bod by being perpetually hungry and cranky, the actress has also admitted to having had plenty of plastic surgery in the past. She had a nose job when she was 26 in order to improve her appearance, she's said, and has been known to exercise obsessively. In 2003, she allowed Entertainment Tonight to tag along as she underwent more than eight cosmetic procedures, including liposuction, Botox injections, and hair straightening. She suffered near-fatal complications during a 1999 liposuction, and still went back for more. ("The doctor who did my lipo the first time was a total idiot," she told Entertainment Weekly. "He was really an eye guy, and that was the problem.")
Palin's no professional dancer, but while her moves may have been lacking, her looks seemed fine to us. Take a look the "Dancing with the Stars" clip (below) and decide for yourself: Is that a fat girl shimmying in the fringed red mini? Or is Griffin way out of line?
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