Godzilla, stomping into theaters next weekend, is bound to headline one of the summer’s biggest movies. But some folks from the monster’s homeland think he might be a little too big.
Some Japanese daikaiju fans believe their favorite monster got a bit … chunky for his role in the American Godzilla. “He’s so fat, I laughed,” one fan posted on a Japanese forum, according to Time. Other critics have called the Americanized Godzilla a “calorie monster” and “Godzilla deluxe.”
It’s no secret that Americans have been known to struggle with their weight. About a third of us are deemed obese—the second-highest obesity rate in the world. Japan, meanwhile, has about the lowest, with just 3.2% of its residents classified as obese. Has the monster, in the process of making this American movie, succumbed to the charm of American fast food? Has it developed a taste for KFC’s Double Down sandwich? We can’t be sure. The film’s makers aren’t talking, and rumor has it that Godzilla himself is busy filming a romcom with Cameron Diaz and was unavailable for comment.
It is, perhaps, inadvisable to accuse a 350-foot monster capable of eating whole cities that he should slim down a little. But it is another (albeit strange) sign of our preoccupation with weight.
For years, we’ve all been hearing about the global obesity epidemic. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults were overweight, according to the World Health Organization, with as many as 300 million of those being obese. The problem trickles down to children and teens, who are eating more fast food and exercising less. And obesity is said to be one of the biggest health problems in the United States, linked to diabetes, heart disease and a host of other life-threatening illnesses. Clearly, being healthy is a good thing.
But we’re also assaulted by story after story of perfectly good, healthy people—women, mostly—who’ve been made to feel guilty if their waists aren’t roughly the diameter of a toothpick. Models, super-skinny already, are sometimes Photoshopped into near oblivion. It’s nigh impossible for publications to mention certain startlets in headlines without also mentioning whether they’ve lost or gained a few pounds. Comedian/actress Mindy Kaling is asked more about her curves, it seems, than her work.
In her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) she writes:
I fall into that nebulous, quote-unquote, normal American woman size that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I’m a size 8—this week, anyway. Many stylists hate that size because I think to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic; or the confident, sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist.
All this focus on weight is obviously (and somewhat paradoxically) not at all healthy for girls coming into their own. They take to YouTube and ask random strangers whether they think they’re pretty. Some start dieting almost as soon as they’re out of diapers. It’s all rather dispiriting.
Listen, I’m not here to say definitively whether Godzilla is overweight or not. Perhaps we’ll have a better idea come May 16, when the movie is released. Does he seem to get winded after smashing just a handful of buildings? Does he gobble up more Taco Bells than Natural Grocers? But assuming that the creature exhibits the requisite stamina to tear through a large metropolitan area, I think we should all call a moratorium on trying to fat-shame Godzilla and let him live his life as he always does: largely.
And if Mothra’s reading this … hey, I’ve seen your pictures in the Weekly World News, bub. You might want to go easy on the mangos.
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