Wait… if thin people are ‘easier’ to kidnap doesn’t that amount to thin privilege. After all fat (or alternatively proportioned, horizontal to vertically differently proprotioned people) have a right to be kidnapped just as much as skinny people. I defend the right to be kidnapped on an equal opportunity basis!!!
I think it’s funny. However, the ‘micro aggressions’ delegation has additional job security.
I’ve seen something similar, but it said, “Skinny people are easier to kidnap. Stay safe. Eat cake.”
It doesn’t offend me.
While I agree that the term “coed” is old-fashioned, it is really “offensive”? I still see schools that indicate that they’re coeducation to indicate that they’re not a single sex school. Yes, the term coed refers to female students, but is it “offensive”? It just seems to be out of step with the times, but if some older person used it, I would just chalk it up to what they’re used to.
I guess I’m dense but I don’t even get the joke, and therefore can’t figure out if it is offensive or not. Why the reference to kidnapping? What relationship is there between kidnapping and weight, actual or humorously? And what’s funny about the calories in pastries? Sorry, i don’t getvit.
It’s saying heavy people are harder to pick up and put in cars to kidnap vs. skinny people. They also add the pastries as a humorous way to encourage weight gain in order to lessen chances of an abduction while promoting their pastry business at the same time.
“However, the ‘micro aggressions’ delegation has additional job security”
Oh God! Spare us all from the micro aggression police!!
EVERYONE needs to carefully read, in its entirety, this recent article in the Atlantic. For the sake of your children…
And stop being so bloody sensitive!!
sheesh…
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
I can’t decide whether to be mildly amused, or mildly offended. So, meh…
I think the espresso and puppy one is funnier
I’m an overweight person and I think it’s a dumb joke, but I certainly wouldn’t associate it with college kidnappings and I see absolutely no connection to victim-blaming at all. The latter seems over the top.
@mom2collegekids, the term “coed” was considered sexist as far back as the 1970s. It strongly implies that the real students are male, and females are an afterthought, an add-on. You know, going to school to get their MRS degree.
At Wellesley, in the 70s, we ironically called the male exchange students on campus “coeds.” B-)
I agree with tom1944. The puppy one is funnier.
I didn’t find it offensive. Not sure it makes a difference…but I’m not overly thin or fat.
I will admit there are some things that are offensive to me based on background or issues of the moment. For example, on a work blog about brainstorming I once gave feisty feedback when asked thought on the the term “trigger”. Generally I’m not a fan of guns. But that week our town had experienced a tragedy where a mentally ill man killed a policeman. (His mother said he was locked in his room distraught, and she was unaware of the gun).
Co-ed is fine as an adjective to describe a school. It’s not fine as a noun to describe female students.
I would never have associated that sign with the kidnapping of students. I live in a town with more than one college, but I don’t think of it as a college town, though the businesses closest to colleges clearly are geared to the college crowd. I think it’s a mildly offensive joke, like many jokes it plays with stereotypes. I’m not a big fan of this whole trigger warning culture. “Warning! You might not want to read this bad joke!”
My favorite sign on a business was a travel agent whose sign said, “Please go away.” I chuckled every single time I passed it.
I once read of this fun sign at a cafe in Michigan, mentioned in an article about Lee Iacocca (Ford / Chrysler fame) - “Our hotcakes are selling like Mustangs”.
I think it’s funny. Not outrageously funny but amusing. It’s a common trope. I don’t think it’s offensive at all and I think you’re being overly sensitive.
I saw a humorous article about twins that I forwarded to my own set of twins.
My S sent it back with the note that a trigger warning should have been included, because the author of the piece had (jokingly) said that fraternal twins dont count as they aren’t real twins (and obviously my boy/girl twins are fraternal) - and how dare his twin status be marginalized and oppressed and considered inferior to identical twins. (Of course this is all tongue in cheek.)
But really, one can get all ridiculous over oppression and marginalization and trigger warnings. It was a common joke being used to entice people to indulge in caloric goodies. No more, no less.
I think the OP would have a point if a kidnapping in the very same town had JUST occurred. Then it would be in poor taste. But to link it to a kidnapping in some other town 20, 30 years ago is ridiculous. Kidnappings aren’t specific to college towns.
This is an interesting conversation to follow. So it’s in poor taste if an abduction happened in that town recently, but if a young person missing in a suspected abduction was from a neighboring town then it’s okay? How much time are we giving families before we’re no longer going to be sensitive to how they feel? Weeks? Months? The families of those who went missing 20 or 30 years ago somehow hurt less than those of the recently abducted? I don’t think time matters much. There was a very famous NY case that went to trial a few years ago (over 30 years after the abduction) and I don’t think the parents were any less devastated than they were at the time of the disappearance.
Abductions do happen everywhere. As a shop owner, you’d have no way of knowing whether or not an incoming college student is the sibling of someone who’s missing or how recently s/he was taken. I don’t think the family (or their friends) would find the sign funny no matter how long ago it occurred. Sadly, the owners don’t actually have to look too far, or in the distant past, to find a family suffering such a loss.
So no one can ever make a joke about kidnapping, ever? how about other tragedies - car accidents, fires, etc?
My father freakin’ DROWNED. That doesn’t mean that the world is obligated not to make drowning jokes. My immediate family won’t make those jokes, but I wouldn’t be “offended” if a bakery said “skinny people don’t float as well and are more likely to drown. Be safe, eat our pastries.”
Shari, I actually have a girlfriend who was the victim of an attempted kidnapping at a nearby mall when she was 5 or 6 yo. The guy took her when her mother’s back was turned, mother notified mall security, but he was caught at the store exit. She remembers this incident. I’ll ask her if she’s offended by this sign.
I still think it’s context-driven. Insensitive if there was a recent situation, but otherwise it’s just a moderately amusing trope.
Everything happens everywhere. In order to never offend anyone, we would all have to stop talking.
OP-
Its upsetting to you because you had a personal experience that causes you a different reaction that probably many others experience. I don’t find the sign terribly funny, but its witty and in context for the bakery. Doesnt bother me. Nor do I think it is insensitive to overweight people (speaking as a person with more than a few lbs to lose).
I used to pass a dry cleaners that had a sign in the window that said “drop your pants here”. I always smiled at that one.