Evening Standard refers to painting of older woman as "this ancient crone...ghastliness of ageing flesh... this repellent body."

[Bidisha]

www.bidisha-online.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/this-ancient-crone.html

And B. S. never said anything about extended lips, which, AFAIK, don't cost the NHS a penny, unlike fat people.

To use your own body as a reference point when describing racial characteristics is perfectly acceptable. If I was in Africa and black person described me as having thin lips, pallid skin or pale eyes I wouldn't start crying about the 'racial abuse' I was being subjected to, because relative to them their statements would be wholly accurate. It would be different if the motive behind the statement was an abusive one. But as I've said, B. S. hasn't made any racial comment that can be equated with being 'fat', as racial characteristics are not choices.

Oh, good lord.

Are you deliberately missing the point?

Using your own body as a reference point isn't ok, actually. I don't go around saying 'ooh, you do have blackened skin, don't you?!'.

And it's not actually the "fatness" Sewell has focussed on, it's the age.

A) I don't go around saying that either, because, apart from that being quite rude, black skin doesn't cost the NHS money and even if it did skin colour is not the responsibility of the individual. Given the lower rates of skin cancer amongst the Afro-carribean population it's proabably cost-effective, relative to caucasian skin.

B) This is in contrast to being a fat git. Or a (formerly white, now orange) sunbed-tanned-skin-cancer-volunteer dickhead. Both of these are irresponsible choices and worthy of criticism.

Are you incapable of seeing the difference between A and B?

That is a really disgusting thing to say.

You are happily peddling racist ideas, but you get riled up about fat people (when no-one has remotely denied that being fat is often partly down to choices and being black is not). Clearly you simply want to go on the wind-up, as you're making straw man arguments.

seeker
"And it's not actually the "fatness" Sewell has focussed on, it's the age."

The ageing process is shit and Sewell is old, so he should know. I doubt he'd have high praise for the image of a fat old man, whose gut was acting as fig leaf for his saggy undercarriage. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Brian Sewell is an exceedingly unpleasant person. It does not surprise me.

LRDtheFeministDragon
"You are happily peddling racist ideas..."

That's utter nonsense. I've said people should not be criticised for ethnic features, and that there's nothing wrong in on enthic group using itself as a reference point (because there's nothing inherently malacious about that) when describing the morphology of other ethnicities, my own ethnicity included.

Please point out where the "racist ideas" lie in the above statement. Who exactly in the above statement is being singled out for race-based discrimination?

For my two pennith, i think that painting is stunning.