Niecy Nash Weigh: A Worthy Punchline?

As a general rule, I am usually supportive of any and all plus size women that desire to embrace their curves. This is even more true when the woman is a popular media figure. But I’m having a difficult time deciding how I feel about current Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) contestant Niecy Nash.

For those of you who don’t know, Nash was one of the breakout stars on the television series “Reno 911” and currently hosts and produces the Style Network’s “Clean House.” As a woman on television she is truly on top of her game. But as she competes on DWTS, I can’t help but wonder if she’s giving the plus size women she emphatically claims to represent, a bad rap.

You see, each week on the show footage of the contestants learning dances in rehearsal are shown just prior to each star’s live performance. While all of the rehearsal packages usually contain a certain amount of humor (too be expected when cameras are rolling 24/7), Neicy’s pieces are particularly hilarious because of her ability to poke fun at herself. But it’s the way she goes about it that has me perplexed.

While I think that making fun of your “jiggly parts”, as Nash refers to them, is fine and good, the way she portrays herself occasionally gets close to being dangerous and invites others to take jabs where none should be taken. She admits that she likes to eat and is never going to appear like some of her co-contestants or starve herself to be slim. But on this week’s episodes they jokingly showed her and her professional dance partner Louis Van Amstel in the courting phase of their relationship, where he would bring her hamburgers and share his food with her. And I will admit, her skits do get laughs and chuckles out of me. And they must be getting them out of other people as America chose to vote off Pamela Anderson instead of Nash even though Pam appears to have slightly better dance skills. But I wonder what the cost of the hilarity will be.

You see a few weeks ago, professional football player and contestant on DWTS Chad OchoCinco made a joke about Nash and her eating habits by saying all he would have to do to throw her off her game is steal her food. It was a joke that had me laughing, but also concerned. These days no one is spared ridicule in Tinseltown. Not skinny, bobble-headed actresses or women who’ve had too much work done. But because skinny women can be seen everywhere on t.v., there are a variety of different archetypes of what a skinny women is floating around.

With plus size women so underrepresented in the media, to display one on t.v. as an always hungry, food obsessed women whose list of major assets start and stop at jiggly parts, is to slowly ingrain in the minds of others that those are the typical characteristics of all plus sized women. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not going to stop supporting Niecy Nash or stop watching Clean House and DWTS or anything. But sometimes you have to question whether what makes you laugh is worthy of such praise.

A video of Niecy Nash on Dancing With The Stars: