Howard Stern dissed Gabourey Sidibe

Howard Stern criticized Oprah for giving Gabourey Sidibe unreal expectations of her future in Hollywood. This provoked a storm of criticism of Stern on various websites' comment threads.

But.

Howard Stern’s character or lack of it is irrelevant to whether Gabourey Sidibe is too big to get work in Hollywood.

The real question should be whether she’ll live long enough to have a real Hollywood career.

If you compare Ms. Sidibe to big (in both senses) Hollywood stars like Queen Latifah and Mo’nique, you’ll see she’s in another category. They’re big, handsome women. Ms. Sidibe is morbidly obese. If she remains at her present weight she will almost certainly die of a heart attack before middle age—as happened to other talented celebrities like Mama Cass Elliott and several morbidly obese male comedians.

Humans perceive morbidly obese people as unattractive, because we’re genetically programmed to be attracted to healthy people. Duh.

People like Ms. Sidibe rarely look the way they do because of a “hormone imbalance.” It’s because they have an eating disorder—a mental illness that’s the mirror image of what anorexics like. Karen Carpenter had, and just as life-threatening.

Any true friend of Ms. Sidibe should urge her to get into therapy--to honestly confront her life-threatening mental illness. Her bravado on the red carpet showed evidence of the kind of denial anorexics show, and the support Oprah’s giving her makes Oprah an enabler.

An old Chinese saying goes “He who eats more than he needs digs his grave with his teeth.”

Her true friends need to tell her that.