So, a while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was, “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?” The story goes, a woman of unknown large clothing size answered with a long joke about whales being social, beloved, and productive, while mermaids are imaginary, lonely, and sexually impractical. The contrast was meant to mock vanity, but it also shows how people twist insults into speeches.

She keeps going by claiming she prefers being a whale because whales have friends, travel, sing, and raise children tenderly, while mermaids have no real life at all. The joke then turns crude, treating beauty, sex, and body size as weapons in a culture war. There’s sarcasm in every line, but also a familiar pattern: an attack on appearance gets answered with another attack, just dressed up as wit. The result is less a defense of body positivity than a performance of defiance and resentment.

At a time when the media tells women that only thin is beautiful, the speaker says she’d rather eat ice cream, stay home, and enjoy life than chase approval. She frames weight gain as wisdom and rejects gym culture, calling criticism oppressive. The logic is intentionally provocative: if the world demands one standard, she’ll declare the opposite. That makes the passage less about health and more about rebellion, using humor to turn shame into identity and to challenge the idea

The closing jab names the model in the photo and contrasts her with another model praised for being more conventionally attractive. It makes the same old argument in harsher language: some women are held up as ideals, others are mocked for not fitting the mold. Whether you read it as satire or cruelty, the point is unmistakable. It tries to expose how appearance-based judgments work by exaggerating them until they sound absurd, ugly, and impossible to ignore.