July 8: BBW

 I am so stoked to be writing about Banned Books Week. One day, I want to write a book that will be banned. The left and the right are both guilty of wanting to ban certain books. The left wanted to ban To Kill a Mockingbird and some of the Little House on the Prairie books because their author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, used racist language.

Yanno, it's kind of hard to disagree with that sentiment. Get a load of this line from one of the Little House books: "there were no people. Only Indians lived there." I went to junior high school with a whole lot of Indigenous kids and, although I wasn't the most empathetic of teenagers, I could imagine them all having a collective shit if they were ever forced to read that dehumanizing piece of claptrap. 

Now I am the furthest thing from a scholar of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have never read any of her books, though I confess that I used to harbor a secret love of the television show, especially when Melissa Sue Anderson was onscreen. Five seconds of Googling tells me not to dismiss the late Ms. Wilder so quickly. I am assured that, were I to read the books, I would find her body of work has a more "nuanced approach" to how it deals with the Indigenous and...

Oh jeez, I just found out that I'm NOT supposed to be talking about Banned Books Week. I'm supposed to be talking about Big Beautiful Women.

  That is a still of Ann Wilson, lead singer of the American rock band, Heart. She is singing a song called Never, which was released in 1985 when I was 12 years old. I remember the first time I saw that video. My best friend, Jason, and I were watching Video Hits, which was our after-school routine. I had never seen Ann or her sister, Nancy, before, so my first thought was that they were dudes. I could be forgiven for this because Motley Crue had taught me that it's perfectly normal for dudes to have long hair and makeup and to run around on stage in leotards.

But then I realized that Ann and Nancy were not transvestites; they were chicks. And they were hot too. I didn't know who I liked more - Ann or Nancy. But I did know one thing for sure, both of them were prettier than Mary Ingalls.

Sometime in there, the media got involved and started telling me that I shouldn't think Ann Wilson was pretty because she was fat. A website called famuse tells me this: "As Heart was selling millions of records, Ann was battling severe stage fright and panic attacks caused by the focus on her weight. After years of failed dieting the single mother of two decided to have surgery."

Rolling Stone Magazine once said that Ann Wilson was the second best female rock singer of all time; only Tina Turner places higher than her. This should be her legacy.