Voluptuous lady and the two kilos
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 7 talks
A woman is told her body would be perfect if she lost 2-3 kilos; Žižek advises her not to, the imperfection generates the fantasy of perfection, and losing it would make her 'just an average no one.' Illustrates how the obstacle is the condition of what it obstructs.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“You lose two-three kilos, you will not have a perfect body. You will be just an average no one. You need two-three kilos too much so that people dream.”
“these two three kilos precisely because they are too much create a kind of a retroactive illusion that if you lose them you would be perfect”
“only with this little bit overweight the illusion is created that she is almost perfect but if you take it away she would probably be just an ordinary lady”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
J. Doyne Farmer1Stathis Kouvélakis1Umberto Bossi1Elizabeth Angel1Mauro Carbone1Giolitti1Kazuo Ishiguro1Josef Krips1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
A woman is told her body would be perfect if she lost 2-3 kilos; Žižek advises her not to, the imperfection generates the fantasy of perfection, and losing it would make her 'just an average no one.' Illustrates how the obstacle is the condition of what it obstructs., illustrating capitalism without capitalism,obstacle as condition,objet petit a
A woman tells Žižek her last lover said she'd be perfect if she lost two or three kilos. Žižek launches into a Lacanian lesson: those kilos ARE the objet petit a, remove them and the illusion of possible perfection collapses with them., illustrating objet petit a,retroactive illusion of perfection,capitalism ohne zwei drei kilos
A psychoanalytic friend's patient is told by her lover that three or four fewer kilos would make her body perfect; Žižek argues the opposite: removing the 'imperfection' would not yield perfection but an ordinary body, the excess IS the cause of desire., illustrating objet petit a,the imperfection that works
~48:34 Slavoj Zizek: The Relationship between Mental Processes and Digital Devices2021-09-11 · 1:20:47
A woman’s lover tells her she has 'two kilos too much'; Žižek replies 'Don't lose those two kilos,' arguing that obstacles generate the perfection we desire., illustrating the absentials
25:00 Slavoj Zizek's "THE PARALLAX OF LACK AND SURPLUS IN POLITICS" (LACK V, 2025)2025-03-15 · 1:28:55
Žižek’s personal story: a woman said he was perfect except for needing to lose two pounds; he argues this 'imperfection' is necessary to generate fantasy., illustrating obstacle as condition of possibility,imperfection giving birth to fantasy
Žižek tells a vulgar story of a woman told by her lover that she would be perfect if she lost two pounds. He advises her not to, arguing that the obstacle (the extra pounds) creates the effect of beauty; removing it makes her ordinary., illustrating luxury communism,structural illusion