About

Thicker Than a Bowl of Oatmeal refers to a viral video of a scene from a 2014 episode of the TV series Lockup where a prosecutor reveals that a man, named Enrique Cruz, on trial hit on an undercover policewoman by saying, "Girl, you're thicker than a bowl of oatmeal." The clip was posted online that year and went viral, inspiring the catchphrase "thicker than a bowl of oatmeal" to spread over the following years, as well as the scene of Cruz becoming an exploitable in other memes.

Origin

On March 1st, 2014, season 18, episode one of Lockup aired.^[1] In the episode, Enrique Cruz, a member of the Bloods, is standing trial. At one point, the prosecutor reads the testimony of an undercover policewoman who Cruz tried to sell marijuana. According to the testimony, he tried to pick her up by saying, "Girl, you're thicker than a bowl of oatmeal." After the prosecutor reads the line, Cruz points proudly at her. The clip was uploaded to YouTube^[2] on July 23rd, 2014, garnering over 38.8 million views in eight years (shown below).

On September 24th, 2014, another clip from the episode was uploaded to YouTube.^[3] The clip shows Cruz behind bars. Someone behind the camera says to him, "Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal?" He replies, "Hey, she had a fat ass, you know what I mean?" The video gained over 1.5 million views in eight years.

Spread

On July 28th, 2016, an Imgur^[4] user uploaded the scene as a GIF, garnering over 4.5 million views in six years (shown below, left). On February 6th, 2017, Twitter^[5] user @brokeymcpoverty shared the episode of Lockup where the clip appears along with an image claiming that Cruz says he is the "minister of defense for the New Jersey Bloods," garnering over 150 likes in five years (shown below).

In 2019, a RedBubble^[6] user started selling a drawn version of the meme as a poster. On February 13th, 2019, Instagram^[7] user reaccmemes posted a Valentine's Day E-Card referencing the clip, originally from the since-deleted Instagram page valentinememe.s, garnering over 17,000 likes in three years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References