April 2015 – Bitch Flicks

Geraldine Granger, the Vicar at Large: Fat Positivity in ‘The Vicar of Dibley’

Because of their position in the church as a figure that facilitates human connection to a higher power, people usually disconnect priest, vicars, etc. from human emotions. Being sexless or promiscuous is also attributed to female characters in media who are fat, or overweight…

One of the exciting things about ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ is that Geraldine is not a sexless and humorless character—as a vicar and a woman with a fat body.

This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Audiences were first introduced to English actress and comedian Dawn French in various comedy series: The Comic Strip (1982), Girls on Top (1985), and as half of the comedy duo, French and Saunders (1987) with Jennifer Saunders, star of the beloved series Absolutely Fabulous (1992). However, it was The Vicar of Dibley (1994), in which French made her mark.

When the elderly vicar of the fictional small village in Oxfordshire called Dibley dies, the townspeople are appointed a new vicar by the bishop. However, they are stunned that upon the new vicar’s arrival that he is a she. Viewers are first introduced to the vicar, Geraldine Granger (Dawn French) at the same time as the characters. She is already perceptive, funny, and charming. Upon her meeting with the conservative Parish Council leader, David Horton, she says, “You were expecting a bloke—beard, bible, bad breath. Instead you got a babe with a bob cut and magnificent bosom.” When introduced to the vicar another character, Owen Newitt, says, “She’s a woman,” to which Geraldine responds, “Oh! You noticed! These are such a giveaway, aren’t they?” while pointing to her breasts. During her first sermon, the congregation, which usually yields three to four parishioners—all from the church council, has all the pews filled. Parishioners are curious about the prospect of a female vicar, but the congregation, as well as, the audience is charmed by Geraldine’s charisma, wisdom, and warmth.

Authority figures in religious factions, specifically in the Church of England or in Roman Catholicism are largely viewed as being devoid of desire, humor, or sexuality. Because of their position in the church as a figure that facilitates human connection to a higher power, people usually disconnect priest, vicars, etc. from human emotions. Being sexless or promiscuous is also attributed to female characters in media who are fat, or overweight. Either they are sexless, yearning for someone who is deemed to be out of their league, or they overcompensate by being promiscuous. Examples of this can be found in any Hollywood high school comedy. One of the exciting things about The Vicar of Dibley is that Geraldine is not a sexless and humorless character—as a vicar and a woman with a fat body. Geraldine is the funniest vicar on television, especially if we point to her bawdy jokes at the end of each episode–jokes that are hilarious and almost of the quality of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Geraldine’s ideal man is actor Sean Bean, whose picture hangs on the wall next to Jesus Christ. She is able to maintain a sense of being sexy, yet spiritual. There are occasions where Geraldine also finds herself swept up in romance. In Season 3, Episode 1, “Autumn,” David’s brother, Simon, visits Geraldine for a romantic weekend. Upon their first meeting in Season 2, Episode 4, “Love and Marriage” Geraldine gushes with flirtatiousness and wit. She resembles a high school girl with a crush. Geraldine even dyes her hair blonde because Simon is looking for a “buxom blonde” and considers moving to Liverpool where he lives. When they reunite for a romantic weekend, Geraldine and Simon kiss passionately and retreat to her bedroom for sex. Prior to that, the “eccentric” friend of Geraldine, Alice Horton (Emma Chambers), comments:

“You know all about eternal damnation and pneumatic drills in your brain tissue if you so much as look upon a man with lust. Especially as a vicar. God will probably have to strangle you with his bare hands.”

Geraldine is progressive in her thoughts and action on pre-marital sex. But, what is significant about this scene is that Alice and the townspeople assume that she will not be having sex, not because she is fat, but because of Geraldine’s clerical position as vicar. What is even more rewarding is when Simon descends Geraldine’s stairs, dressed in a bathrobe, declaring to three of the council members—David being one of them: “I’ve been waiting for this gorgeous creature for hours.” Geraldine is mortified, but the men quietly leave them and do not chastise her for having a sexual appetite.

Writer and creator Richard Curtis, best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and Love Actually (2003), writes Geraldine Granger, as well as the other characters, with good hearts. While audiences can look at Geraldine and see that she is not a size two, the writers choose not to highlight that fact, or make it a running joke. She indulges in her favorite chocolate bars, but no more or less than any other female character who is hungry or has their heartbroken. Her weight and self-esteem are not directly linked as Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001). In The Vicar of Dibley, her mind and body are embraced.

We can look to the Parish Council—consisting of all men with the exception of Geraldine and formerly Mrs. Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith)—as examples of men who embrace all aspects of Geraldine. While Owen sexualizes the vicar through his comments, Season 3, Episode 15, sees David Horton looking at the vicar in the new light. David begins to see that Geraldine and he are the only two in the extra-ordinary town of Dibley, who have brain cells. He declares his love for her and proposes. However, Geraldine accepts then rejects. While they are evenly matched, they are not in love. Geraldine gets her dream in the episodes, “The Handsome Stranger” and “The Vicar in White.”

“The Handsome Stranger” and “The Vicar in White” see Geraldine falling in love with an accountant and new resident of Dibley, Harry Kennedy (Richard Armitage). He is handsome and exceeds her expectations on a physical level—Harry is arguably more handsome than her ideal—actor, Sean Bean. Harry falls in love with her upon their first meeting and later proposes. Harry’s proposal funnily sparks the proposals of Owen, Jim, and classmate Jeremy (Hugh Bonneville). While Harry’s proposal to Geraldine may seem unbelievable to most because she is overweight, it is not for three reasons. The first reason being that Dibley is an eccentric village where the unbelievable occurs. The second reason being that so much of the show focuses on how someone unexpected, a female vicar, transforms the hearts and minds of the congregation. The last reason being, why not? Why can’t Geraldine be just as happy as Kevin James is with Amber Valletta in Hitch (2005)? As a viewer, the feeling of Geraldine obtaining her dream husband in looks and intellectuality is fulfilling. The vicar ends up getting married in her pajamas, and Harry still accepts her.

Dawn French as Geraldine Granger perpetuates a positive image of fat women/bodies in comedy. Her persona outshines her overweight visage and she is allowed to be herself. In Hollywood, the last time a woman in her late 30s-40s, who was overweight, and starred in her own television show was Roseanne Barr in Roseanne. The closest example in England is another British sitcom, Miranda (2009). While Miranda Hart in the television sitcom Miranda is not overweight, there are body image issues present. At 6 foot, Miranda Preston is 35 years old, single, socially awkward, taller than a majority of the men she meets, her clothes are unflattering, and she is dubbed “Queen Kong” by her friend Tilly. Miranda stumbles, bumbles, and is called “sir” by people. Yet, as the series continues through the end, Miranda builds her confidence up. The unconventional heroine trope is explored in The Vicar of Dibley and continues throughout to a show like Miranda. British television, especially sitcoms, demonstrates that there is so much more to comedy than the running gag of fat bodies as “messy, unattainable, or unlovable.” Boadicea (Geraldine’s first name in season one) is beautiful, bodacious, with a big personality.

Rachel Wortherley earned a Master of Arts degree at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, films, and Netflix. She hopes earn an MFA and become a professional screenwriter.

The Fat Stardom of James Gandolfini

What’s clear is that, in our contemporary society and culture, the male body is not invisible. Although the female body continues to be more heavily regulated and controlled, particularly in terms of weight and appearance, the male body is no longer removed from similar considerations. As we continue to look more intensely and critically at the male body, we can anticipate a time when new images of masculinity become not only realized but embodied.

James Gandolfini and his formidable body

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Early in his career, James Gandolfini starred in Tony Scott’s blood-pumping, adrenaline-rushing military action film, Crimson Tide. Like Scott’s cult-classic, Top Gun, the construction and display of the male body within Crimson Tide symbolises the “masculine” tensions centralised within the narrative. Set in an American submarine, the film follows Captain Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman) and Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington) who butt heads throughout a series of nuclear missiles crises. Particularly, through the racial dichotomy between the two lead characters, Crimson Tide explores the ideas and ideals of rationality, logic, nationalism, supremacy and power, inverting the traditional racist narrative of the irrational, brutal and animalistic black man through Lt. Commander Hunter triumphant ending. However, although the film challenges conventional depictions of racial embodiment, its investment in the young, slim, athletic body as the traditional symbol of (masculine) strength, restraint and power remains prevalent. Compared to Capt. Ramsey’s ageing and paunchy body, Lt. Commander Hunter remains slim and fit with key scenes depicting him running, skipping and boxing in the submarine. Despite the (literal) visibility of Gandolfini’s overweight body throughout his career, Gandolfini’s weight is not central to the role he plays in this film; another actor takes on the role of the “excessive” and “revolting” fat crewmember. Nevertheless, in this piece, I use the symbols of masculinity imbued in the male body, particularly the fat male body, suggested in Crimson Tide as the starting point for my analysis into Gandolfini’s stardom. Particularly, in the piece, I will look at the specificity and uniqueness of Gandolfini’s fat stardom, asking what his literal fleshy embodiment reveals about the masculine image portrayed on screen.

In his most famous role, playing Tony Soprano in the hit HBO series, The Sopranos, Gandolfini embodies the complex relationship contemporary Western culture has with male fatness. One the one hand, Tony’s fatness most obviously represents his over-indulgence and lack of control. He constantly eats, smokes, drinks and sleeps with numerous women. His body, therefore, is a reflection or extension of the excessive bodily desires in which he continually indulges. Gandolfini’s body was particularly used to represent this in the 2012 film, Killing Them Softly. He plays Mickey, an ineffectual hitman to Brad Pitt’s partner-in-crime, who spends the film a slave to his bodily desires, smoking, drinking and sleeping with prostitutes throughout. He fails to complete a single hit and make any money. He’s lazy, stupid and a slob – and the film represents this through Gandolfini’s body.

Mickey (James Gandolfini) enjoys a drink or three with Jackie (Brad Pitt) in Killing Them Softly — Mickey (James Gandolfini) enjoys a drink or three with Jackie (Brad Pitt) in *Killing Them Softly*

In contrast, Brad Pitt’s character, Jackie Cogan, touches neither drink nor women. He’s an effective and successful hitman who maintains his authority within the Mafia throughout the film. Although Pitt doesn’t display the slimness and athleticism of his body in the same way as Washington in Crimson Tide, Pitt’s stardom or, more specifically, the stardom derived from Pitt’s much desired and desirable body imbues the character with the symbols of power and authority. At its most ambitious, Killing Them Softly attempts to link this to the American dream. At the end of the film, Jackie claims, “[Barack Obama] wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own. America is not a country; it’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.” The ultimate self-made man, Jackie/Pitt literally and figuratively embody the ideal of the American dream. In the twentieth and twenty-first century, fatness symbolises defiance against the middle-class interest in constraint, discipline and moderation; as consumerism became the site of approved indulgence, fatness became the site of necessary restraint. Within this indulgence/restraint paradigm, then, Pitt/Jackie represent the successful image of masculinity through the very slimness of his body.

Yet, male fatness is not always disempowering. As the gangster genre demonstrates, the fat cats really do get rich. Although Mickey may not exploit his potential monetary earnings, Tony certainly does. Throughout the show, Tony maintains a powerful position because of, rather than despite of, his fat body. This is done in two ways. Firstly, through the figure of Bobby Bacala, The Soprano transfers any of the disempowering features of fatness away from Tony. A carer to Tony’s uncle, Bacala is domesticated, feminised and removed from the main action of the mobster activities. In contrast, Tony looks aggressive, powerful and masculine. Secondly, like other fat figures in the gangster genre, which was epitomised by Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, The Soprano’s foregrounds Tony’s body as a crucial indication of his excessive financial greed and the violent measures he will take to pursue them, enabling him to maintain control over the mob.

The Sopranos plays into the tradition of the fat gangster figure as epitomised by Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather" — *The Sopranos* plays into the tradition of the fat gangster figure as epitomised by Don Vito Corleone in *The Godfather*

Throughout the show, Tony’s embodiment of financial greed becomes embroiled with the complexities of class politics. Whereas Jackie’s embodiment of the American dream in Killing Them Softly was warped, Tony’s embodiment of the American dream in The Sopranos is completely corrupted. In the pilot episode, as Tony collects his newspaper at the end of his drive, his sloppy appearance – all dishevelled dressing gown and protruding belly – contrast hugely with the wealthy middle-class neighbourhood in which he lives. Tony may have the money to afford such a house, but his illegal and immoral mobster activities and the excess of his consumer consumption continually place him outside of this social order. The Sopranos makes clear that, rather than failing to embody the successful image of the self-made man, Tony, in fact, embodies it too much. Through the excesses of his fat body, Tony embodies the extremes of consumer and capitalist culture.

Tony Soprano's "excessive" body contrasts with the social values of restraint and moderation — Tony Soprano’s “excessive” body contrasts with the social values of restraint and moderation

The Sopranos also makes clear that, despite Tony’s fat body, he’s never considered undesirable by women. He never fails to get laid by women inside or outside of his marriage, and, in this way, never “fails” as a heterosexual man. Furthermore, when on display, the slim and athletic man has to deal with the potential feminizing and queering repercussions of his body; within traditional structures of on-screen looking, the heterosexual male body looks but is never looked at. The Soprano’s undermines this potential emasculation by refusing to position Tony’s fat body as something to-be-looked-at. Instead, through his fatness and male privilege, he has full autonomy over his body and sexuality.

In contrast, in Enough Said, the relationship between Gandolfini’s weight and desirability is centralised and discussed primarily by women. In a very different role, Gandolfini plays Albert, a divorcee who starts dating Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Eva. During the film, we see Albert’s body through Julia’s eyes as she starts off uncertain about him, claiming “he’s kind of fat,” to discovering she enjoys sex with him. Nevertheless, the problems that arise in their developing relationship are consistently linked to Albert’s weight. As Julia (unknowingly) befriends Albert’s ex-wife, Marianne (Catherine Keener), she lets Marianne’s fat-phobic opinions influence her attitude toward Albert and his body. Marianne was always repulsed by Albert’s weight, calling him a slob. Similarly, Julia jokes about buying Albert a calorie book which deeply upsets him. Likewise, Marianne always hated the way Albert picked the onions out the guacamole. When Julia sees Albert doing this, she can’t help but comment on it and remind him that guacamole has a lot of calories in it. By opening up a new space of (heterosexual) female desire and looking and by consistently linking Albert’s flaws to his weight, Enough Said refuses to excuse the male body, particularly the fat male body, as some thing not to be examined, as something not to be looked at.

James Gandolfini's body becomes subject to female scrutiny in Enough Said — James Gandolfini’s body becomes subject to female scrutiny in *Enough Said*

The representation of Gandolfini’s body on-screen continues to reveal and contribute towards the hugely complex and often contradictory image of masculinity within our contemporary culture. He is as much powerful as powerless, effectual as ineffectual, desirable as undesirable. His untimely death in 2013 demonstrated just how polarizing his body is. For every fat shaming response to his death, another person celebrated him for being an inspiration and an icon. What’s clear, however, is that, in our contemporary society and culture, the male body is not invisible. Although the female body continues to be more heavily regulated and controlled, particularly in terms of weight and appearance, the male body is no longer removed from similar considerations. As we continue to look more intensely and critically at the male body, we can anticipate a time when new images of masculinity become not only realised but embodied.

The Revolutionary Fatness of ‘Steven Universe’

It does my heart a lot of good to watch this show and imagine a world where no one gives two craps about my weight. But I can only dream of how much this must mean to the little kids watching it. I mean, bear in mind, this is a children’s show. It is meant to be consumed by children. And those children will be watching the wacky adventures, thinking to themselves, “These heroes look like me. That means I could be a hero too!”

Garnet, Amethyst, Steven, and Pearl in the first episode.

This guest post by Deborah Pless appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

I’ve never really been comfortable cosplaying. First and foremost, because it’s always seemed like a lot of effort, but I will admit that a huge part of my hesitance has always come down to one thing: I am way too big to cosplay as any of my favorite characters.

And I know that’s self-defeating and I’m not really because who cares about body type? But I still think that. I think that I could cosplay as Peggy Carter or Xena or Veronica Mars or Lagertha or Maleficent, but I wouldn’t really look like them. And there are loads of people who will do those cosplays so much better than I could. Why bother?

It’s taken me years to break this down and analyze it for what it truly is, because I don’t really like thinking of myself as being insecure about my weight. Well, my weight and my height. I’m a fat, tall person, and frankly, I’ve never really seen a character I wanted to cosplay badly enough to make me want to put my body on display like that. Until I finally watched Steven Universe and saw something amazing: bodies. All different kinds of bodies. Some of which actually look like mine!

Steven loves food and is never shamed for it.

See, what slowly dawned on me as I started watching Steven Universe in earnest is that this show is doing something genuinely revolutionary in children’s animation. Not only is it a really interesting show about space and fighting monsters and being a hero, but it’s also a show that takes representative diversity very seriously. It’s a show that has clearly been designed intentionally, with awareness of the fact that their audience is made up of little kids longing to see themselves as the heroes on screen. And that seeing those heroes look like them would change these kids’ lives.

So for those of you who haven’t yet made Steven Universe appointment television, it goes like this. Steven Universe (Zach Callison) is a little boy who lives with his three mothers (or two mothers and pseudo-sister, if you want to be more specific) in a temple by the sea. He lives with them because he and they are Crystal Gems, a sort of alien superhero species tasked with protecting the Earth from monsters that keep trying to attack it.

Steven’s parents, Greg Universe and Rose Quartz.

Steven is only half-Gem, however. His other half is that of his human father, Greg Universe (Tom Scharpling). Steven’s biological mother was a Gem named Rose Quartz (Susan Egan). Rose tragically died in giving birth to Steven (more or less) – a plot point that becomes more important as the show goes on – and now Steven is raised by Rose’s fellow Gems. The Gems, Garnet (Estelle), Amethyst (Michaela Dietz), and Pearl (Deedee Magno) adore Steven as their own son, even if his human ways confuse them sometimes.

The bulk of the show is your standard Cartoon Network kids’ fare, albeit much more imaginative than anything I remember from my childhood. In any given episode we might see Steven and the Gems fight a horde of centipede monsters or we might just see a whole episode of Steven trying to get his action figure back from another little kid. It’s not the action and storylines that are revolutionary here – well, they are but not in terms of body size and representation – it’s the way the universe is built.

See, in the world of Steven Universe, all sorts of people get to be heroes. All sorts of people who look all sorts of different ways. Steven himself is a chubby little kid with big bushy hair, and no one ever comments on this, says that Steven is fat and should lose weight, or in any way even acknowledges it. Steven is pudgy. So what?

In fact, there is an entire episode devoted to Steven’s desire to start working out and “get beefy” as he puts it – “Coach Steven” – never once mentions Steven getting thin. That’s not one of his stated intentions or even a side effect. Steven doesn’t want to be skinny or lose weight, he just wants to put on muscle so that he can be a better fighter. And though he does corral a group of friends to work out with him, none of them say they want to lose weight either. They’re there to get strong, which is a great message.

The humans of Beach City, where most of the action of the show takes place, are a pleasing mix of races and body types. And it’s clear this is not an accident. The animators have very definitely made a choice here to include body diversity. We can see this most clearly when a close-up shot of a secondary character, Sadie (Kate Micucci) shows her to have leg hairs. That means the animators and artists specifically drew leg hairs onto Sadie’s legs because they wanted kids to see that body hair is normal and okay.

Steven tries to teach the Gems about birthday parties.

But what really gets me is the Gems. Because while the show is unclear on how much control the Gems have over their base appearances, they have the power to shapeshift and can look like whatever they want. So this makes it really interesting that a lot of the Gems we meet are what we would call “plus-sized.”

I’ve already mentioned Rose, who is characterized at one point by Greg as a “giant woman” – she is apparently over eight feet tall and very heavy – but there’s also Amethyst, who although being a very talented shapeshifter (she appears as various animals and at one point a male pro-wrestler), chooses to stick to her main form as a short, heavy-set woman. Garnet is a tower of muscles and black skin, and while Pearl is the most “conventionally attractive” of them all, being tall and thin, that seems more likely to be because that’s an efficient bodytype when your preferred weapon is a fencing foil.

The Gems have complete control over how they look, and they choose to look, well, normal. Frequently plus-sized. Non-white in some cases. They don’t look like glamorous superheroes torn from the centerfold, but like actual people you could meet on the street. If you can get past Amethyst’s skin being purple, that is.

Clearly the Gems have no internalized crap about body image or weight, but what’s super cool is that in this universe, it kind of seems like no one does. No one tells the Gems they’re ugly. A recent episode revealed that one of the recurring characters had a big crush on Garnet and thought she was incredibly beautiful. Which is good, because she is. Rose is established as having been gorgeous and beloved, and no one ever says that she was too fat to fight.

Stevonnie – a fusion of Steven and Connie – overwhelms Sadie and Lars with attractiveness.

And it’s made perfectly clear that the Gems live in a world that doesn’t acknowledge body shaming. At one point Steven and his friend Connie “fuse” into one person, fondly known as “Stevonnie.” Stevonnie is about six feet tall, genderless, and not-white, and the general reaction in town isn’t “Ah, what the hell is that thing and where did it come from!” it’s one of jaw-dropping attraction and general appreciation.

No one in this world seems to care what anyone else in this world looks like, at least not any of the characters we’re meant to like. At one point another Gem seems on the verge of pointing out that Steven is the only boy Gem, but then doesn’t. In fact, it’s never really mentioned. That fact, like the fact of Rose’s fatness or Garnet’s blackness, is never relevant to the story.

I cannot emphasize enough how important that is to a little kid. But I probably don’t have to. Chances are, you remember what it was like to want someone who looked like you in a leading role. You wanted to be able to imagine yourself as the hero, and it’s always been easier if you can look at the screen and see someone up there who looks as fat, as Black, as hairy, as short, as ridiculously tall, as whatever as you do.

The Gems are also presented as historically having these same body types.

It would be massively overstating it to say that Steven Universe has solved all of our representation problems forever. It hasn’t. Representation is still an issue that needs to be addressed. But this show is a massive step in the right direction. Fat characters whose weight is never the punchline or even the storyline. Black characters who have natural hair and are called beautiful. Women with leg hair. Women with big butts. Little boys who cry and talk about their feelings a lot. It’s all there, and it’s all really important.

In a world where the most common representation of fat women is as a problem to be fixed, where we are generally considered sexually undesirable, and where our bodies are viewed as public property to be commented and acted on at will, Steven Universe is, well, revolutionary. It gives me hope. It shows me that I can be fat and beautiful and loved, and it makes me think that just maybe there’s a little kid out there who is going to see this show and never think that being fat means they can’t be everything good too.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and sandwiches. Also, she’s totally going to cosplay as Rose Quartz this year at GeekGirlCon.

Invisible Fat Women on ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’

Several sitcoms, however, rely not on the on-screen presence of a so-called “unruly body,” but rather on the imagined image on an off-screen one.

The casts of CBS’s How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory — The casts of CBS’s *How I Met Your Mother* and *The Big Bang Theory*

This guest post by Stephanie Brown appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Trevor Noah, heir to The Daily Show throne, recently came under fire for some fat jokes, (among others) that he made on Twitter, demonstrating once again that fat jokes, especially about women, have long been a staple of the comedy writer’s toolbox. Critics of Noah seem to forget that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been making jokes about Chris Christie’s weight for years, a disturbing trend that NPR’s Linda Holmes beautifully addressed in an essay last year. You would think Christie’s policies and actions as governor would provide more than enough material for satire, but comics have found that using fatness as a punch line is a reliable way to get cheap laughs.

Sitcoms, too, have frequently been guilty of using “fat” as a punch line. From Monica’s fat-suit flashbacks on Friends, to Mike and Molly’s poking fun at its main characters, to the Seavers’ constant ribbing of Carol about her weight on Growing Pains (made more disturbing by the fact that Tracy Gold suffered from a serious eating disorder), sitcoms have long made fun of characters for taking up too much space on screen. Often characterized as a moral failing, fatness is policed through ridicule. Such jokes tend to rely on the mere presence of an overweight character to generate laughs.

Several sitcoms, however, rely not on the on-screen presence of a so-called “unruly body,” but rather on the imagined image on an off-screen one. For instance, on NBC’s Will and Grace, Grace’s sidekick Karen consistently rattles off one-liners about her obese husband Stan. CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (2007-) continues in this tradition with its recurring jokes and storylines about Howard Wolowitz’s mother.

Howard is an engineer turned astronaut who lives for a majority of the series with his overbearing mother. The difference between Stan and Mrs. Wolowitz is, of course, that we hear Howard’s mother, played by the recently deceased actress Carol Ann Susi. Howard obviously loves his mother, despite their constant bickering, and the show deals with the death of both the actress and the character very poignantly. Regardless of any underlying affection toward Mrs. Wolowitz, though, the show generally mines humor from descriptions of her unseen obesity.

Throughout the course of the The Big Bang Theory, Mrs. Wolowitz’s weight provides an easy punch line for Howard and his friends. In “The Hawking Excitation” (5.21), Sheldon apparently sprains his wrist helping Howard’s mom into a dress when he takes her clothes shopping. Earlier in the series in “The Engagement Reaction”(4.23), Penny reacts with disbelief to Howard’s story of lifting his mother in order to take her to the hospital, joking that Mrs. Wolowitz’s own legs could barely lift her up. Not only is Mrs. Wolowitz characterized by her weight, she is also described as an overbearing, gluttonous nag. In her character we see the ways in which obesity is tied to morality and humanity, or rather, a lack thereof. And, because she never appears on screen, the audience is free to imagine an even more extreme version of this stereotypical character.

Notably, Mrs. Wolowitz appears briefly on screen during “The Spoiler Alert Segmentation” (6.15), walking back and forth through a doorway behind Raj while he sits in the dining room. Her appearance is meant to work as a sight gag not only because the audience has never seen her, but also because the mere presence of an overweight body is reason enough to laugh.

A faceless Mrs. Wolowitz appears behind Raj as he eats dinner.

While CBS’s How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) doesn’t have a defined invisible fat character to use as a punching bag, the show is similarly permeated by fatphobia. The series, centering on a group of five friends in New York City navigating their late 20s and early 30s, is told from the perspective of the show’s main character, Ted Mosby. For a show that was often wonderfully smart, funny, and sweet, the writers’ strange obsession with making fun of fat women was often infuriating and frequently baffling, as others have noticed and written at length about.

While most of the show’s characters get in a “fat chick” joke at some point during the show’s run, most of the fat panic stems from Barney, the show’s resident bro-y bachelor. While the audience was likely originally meant to read Barney as an entitled, misogynist jerk, because he’s played by likeable human Neil Patrick Harris, the argument that we’re meant to be disgusted by Barney’s behavior rings hollow. Indeed, this site has previously written about the show’s unsettling misogynistic streak.

Barney demonstrates his notoriously icky “Crazy/Hot” Scale.

Like his misogyny, Barney’s fat jokes span the entirely of the series. He feels the need to constantly assert that he doesn’t have sex with fat women, in one instance making his friends swear a “broath” not to interfere with his life unless “unless it is a matter of health, national security or I’m about to get up on a fattie” (“The Broath,” 7.19). He also feels the need to warn his friends not to have sex with fat women. In the season three episode “Third Wheel” (3.3), he makes sure the combined weight of the ladies Ted is about to have a threesome with is “under 400 pounds.” If that weren’t enough, he frequently makes proclamations that no one should have sex with fat women:

Minister: If you want to get married in my church, you’ll stop breaking the ninth commandment.

Barney: Uh, no fat chicks?

Minister: Thou shalt not lie!

Barney: With fat chicks?

(“Knight Vision, “ 9.06)

Rather than punish him for his sociopathic, misogynistic conduct, the show rewards Barney with clever one-liners and fancy suits.

Just one of Barney’s many proclamations of his own awesomeness.

His friends make half-hearted attempts at condemning his behavior, but even they join in on the show’s the panoply of fatphobia, like when Marshall tells Barney that he “sounds like a fat girl on Valentine’s Day” (“Not Father’s Day,” 4.7). Even Lily and Robin often join in gleefully mocking other women. This includes, of course, making fun of the mere idea of fat women. Robin joins in with Marshall and Barney in this lovely exchange after Ted tells them about a wealthy architecture client:

Marshall: He’s rich? Please tell me he wrote you a big, fat check. A check so fat, it doesn’t its shirt off when it goes swimming.

Barney: That is a big, fat check. A check so fat, after you have sex with it, you don’t tell your buddies about it.

Robin: A check so fat, when it sits next to you on an airplane, you ask yourself if it should have bought two seats.

(“Fast As She Can,” 4.23).

Like the characters in The Big Bang Theory, Barney and his friends don’t direct their cruelty at a visible person. They don’t direct their jokes at any specific person at all, but rather at all fat women. Their jokes construct fat women not as people with feelings let alone family, friends, or lovers. They’re either a joke or a disembodied threat to the main characters’ sexual pride. Nameless, faceless, and bodiless, these imagined, invisible women are, like Mrs. Wolowitz, treated as less than human.

An addendum to this point is the way the show treats one of the only fat characters, Robin’s co-worker Patrice. Patrice’s main function on the show was to be yelled at by Robin for no reason and, eventually, to act as Barney’s fake girlfriend so he can convince Robin that he has changed his philandering ways and is now marriage material.

Barney talks to Patrice as Robin, Ted, and Lily try to discern the true nature of their relationship.

This particular storyline shows us, once again, that a fat character’s only function is to act as comic relief and to help the traditionally attractive main characters find love. She may be visible, but her visibility is conditional on performing the one-dimensional supportive friend that so many underdeveloped, potentially interesting fat characters have before been relegated. As Michael Arbieter of Hollywood.com noted about the storyline:

“We can’t be left to forgive Barney and How I Met Your Mother, to subjugate and marginalize Patrice. The fact that we’re asked to do this so cavalierly is frightening.”

Indeed, the casualness and frequency with which the characters make fat jokes on The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, two series that frequently deal with themes of friendship and belonging, imbues them both with an unnecessary cruelty. While fat jokes are often wielded as a way police on-screen bodies, the ridiculing of absent bodies even further objectifies fat people. By not even giving the audience a chance to identify with the character or characters being ridiculed, all subjectivity is, in essence, taken away. Such erasure tells the audience, yet again, that thinness is the price of admission to our television sets. Not only are these characters deserving of ridicule based on their appearance, their appearance is so distasteful as to be banished from the screen.

As we’re reminded by anonymous online harassment or something as simple as talking badly about an absent friend, distance and invisibility often enable cruelty.

While film and television have historically mistreated and relegated fat characters to supporting status, How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory push their fat characters completely off screen. Such distancing brings the process of dehumanization to its natural conclusion, allowing fat-phobia to rage unchallenged.

As Lily once tells Ted, “If there’s one thing you never do, it’s call a woman fat right to her face!” (“The Mermaid Theory,” 6.11). Otherwise, you might actually have to take responsibility for those words.

Stephanie Brown is a television, comedy, and podcast enthusiaist working on her doctorate in media studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

‘The Foxy Merkins’ and the Uncharted Territory of the Fat, Lesbian Protagonist

That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

This guest post by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

This article contains spoilers for The Foxy Merkins.

Selected for the NEXT series at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival along with films like Obvious Child and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy by and about queer women with an episodic structure and humor fueled by social awkwardness and mundane absurdism (think Louie). Simply put, it’s part fish out of water comedy, part buddy film, and all lesbian hookers. Set in contemporary New York City, the film creates a world of sex work in homage to Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, but populated by women who have sex with other women. As with its progenitors, this subculture is scandalous, but hardly clandestine. These sex workers bide their time on the sidewalk in broad daylight until approached by other women, which occurs with relative frequency.

The film charts unexpected territory by merging stereotypes about seemingly disparate subcultures. Its narrative maintains the beats of taboo sex and danger expected from a story about sex workers, but does so through the filter of lesbian culture and stereotypes. In one exchange between the two main characters, Jo (Jackie Monahan) advises Margaret (Lisa Haas) to market her services by using the hanky code. However, the film’s version isn’t quite the same one used by gay men in the 70s to signify their kinky preferences: “A yellow bandana in your left back pocket means you have more than one cat… a red bandana in your right back pocket means you like women who have been through the Change.”

Jo and Margaret at work. “A lot of the girls hang out in front of Talbots.”

The film predominantly focuses on Margaret, a newbie sex worker with a degree in Women’s Studies who happens to be fat and butch. She is a pastiche of red-blooded hunk Joe Buck (Jon Voight) from Midnight Cowboy and sulky sylph Mike (River Phoenix) from My Own Private Idaho, but her size and gender expression set her apart from their more normative representations of beauty. That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

Margaret bumbles her way through interactions with clients, but this characteristic diverts from the standard depiction of fat and/or gender non-conforming women as undeserving of sexual desire. The Foxy Merkins uses a more nuanced approach. We do see glimpses of her as a sexual being, such as a scene that begins by implying she’s just had an orgasm, even if it quickly turns its focus on her awkwardness. This trait is partially inherited from Joe Buck, who isn’t genteel enough to seduce the rich Manhattanites he targets. It’s charming in its relatability: as someone who can barely navigate small talk in a professional setting, let alone a sexual encounter, I could easily see myself in Margaret’s shoes. But these scenes are also ground for meta-humor, as film trope clashes with cultural expectations. What happens when someone who looks like Margaret assumes the role of soul-searching hustler formerly and famously occupied by normatively attractive men? The Foxy Merkins’ predecessors supply setting, story, and characters, but like a Warner Brothers cartoon character running off their background onto a blank screen, there is a dearth of precedent for a fat, butch film character to communicate sexual allure, either to fellow characters or to an audience who has been groomed to lust after thin, feminine women. The energy that Haas brings to these scenes suggests an undercurrent of resigned bewilderment.

Margaret socially functions as a sexual being by virtue of existing within a subculture of lesbian sex work, but that subculture largely retains real-world beauty standards, rendering her body simultaneously unattractive and sexually commodified. Jo explains to Margaret how she is seen by potential clients: “You’re the type of lesbian they are mortified to be seen with… they do not want to be caught with you. So they’re gonna pay you extra to sneak around with them… honestly, you should have so much more money.” Thin, femme Jo takes on the role of Margaret’s docent, as well as her foil. Carefree (and often careless), Jo opts to do sex work as a way of rebelling against her wealthy upbringing. Despite repeatedly stating that she is not sexually attracted to women, she is more experienced and successful than Margaret in their profession. In one scene, the two walk down a busy Manhattan street as Jo casually claims to have slept with every woman they pass, while Margaret seems to barely keep up with mentally processing what her friend is telling her.

Margaret’s allergies are triggered while visiting a client’s house.

The film continues to grapple with the clashing expectations of Margaret’s profession and appearance through a sequence of encounters with a rich, conservative client (Susan Ziegler). During their first encounter, the client asks Margaret to take her clothes off. In opposition to the sexy tone she ought to set, she chastely removes her bra and underwear once she is under the bedsheet. (Her client coquettishly refers to this maneuver as a “magic trick.”) While another film might construct an erotic scene with gliding closeups and sensual music, this one involves a stationary shot of Margaret squirming and rocking under the sheet as her client waits patiently off to the side, amplified sounds of rustling cloth the only soundtrack. The scene self-consciously buys into the mainstream trope that “nobody wants to see” fat bodies or expressions of queer sexuality. The client obviously wants to see Margaret’s body and have sex with her, but Margaret remains in her culturally sanctioned role of chaste lesbian/unseen fat person to the point of absurdity.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a film that passes up a chance to satirize the right wing. Margaret’s aforementioned client has hired two men (Charles Rogers and Lee Eaton) to dress as cops, burst into her hotel room, and terrorize Margaret, who is unaware that the scene is staged. In the second of three scenes to this effect, Margaret is completely naked. Fat bodies in a state of undress are usually cause for a film protagonist to express disgust, with the expectation that the audience will empathize with that disgust. This time, however, the fat body belongs to our protagonist. She isn’t modestly positioned with her back to the camera or cheekily blocked by an object in the foreground. The audience sees her full frontal in the center of the screen, flanked by the two cops pointing guns at her. As with her “striptease,” the camera is unwavering. This static view heightens our sense of Margaret’s shock and embarrassment, but is also confrontational. This is a film that asks the audience to relate to a fat, lesbian protagonist: if a viewer has been trying to empathize with Margaret by downplaying her size or queerness up to this point in the movie, those characteristics have become starkly unavoidable.

The male gaze that reinforces standards of thinness and straightness and is ubiquitous in cinema, even if only present in a handful of scenes in The Foxy Merkins, is embodied in this scene by the two cops. They repeatedly tell Margaret to drop what she’s holding, despite her protests that she isn’t holding anything and attempts to placate them by making dropping motions with her empty hands. They even insist that she has “something tied around [her] waist” and is wearing “a collared shirt,” as if they have no sense of what a fat woman’s body looks like in the nude. An absurdist feedback loop is created of a command that cannot be followed and cooperation that is inherently uncooperative. This dynamic is reminiscent of the often frustrating relationship that queer and fat people have with a dominant culture that demands compliance even when attempts to do so are demonstrably futile. We still hear voices of authority telling us to “drop it” with regards to weight and desire for non-heteronormative love and sex, despite evidence that diets don’t work in the long run and sexual orientation can’t be changed at will.

But these two men have no genuine authority, they have been ordered to act as police by the client. As Jo later explains to Margaret, “It’s her fetish, it’s her kink. She likes to see people naked with the police.” The client watches these confrontations from behind the bedsheets, distancing herself from the situation by feigning shock and claiming that Margaret showed up in her room uninvited. This rich, white, thin woman who is hiding her own queerness to maintain her privilege actively seeks pleasure from seeing the oppression of marginalized people. Their third date even includes a Black woman, ostensibly the client’s maid, getting shot by the cops. Jo, who has the privileges of her appearance and wealthy upbringing, similarly benefits from the situation, as she has been paid to withhold from Margaret that the scenes aren’t real. The client’s fetish parallels the common use of schadenfreude in film to entertain at the expense of not only fat people, but people of color, sex workers, and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people.

Of course, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy, and the scenarios it presents are not as cruel as the realities it satirizes, or even the films to which it pays homage. The pretend bust is the closest Margaret comes to experiencing violence on the job, and even that ends with the cops and their shooting victim laughing and walking offscreen together. Nevertheless, the lighthearted humor speaks to real disparities in media representation. The audience is not allowed to forget that Margaret is occupying a position that the film industry did not historically intend to include someone of her sexuality, gender expression, or size. Both as a lesbian hooker and as a film character, her existence is a struggle. She ultimately realizes that she must move on from the former role, but as the latter, she is a quiet triumph.

Tessa Racked is a Women’s Studies major who makes a living as a social worker, writes about fat representation in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape, and dispenses witticisms @tessa_racked. They live in Chicago.

Fatphobia: What ‘Daria’ Got Wrong

She tells the girls she isn’t supposed to eat chocolate, but she’d like to buy some anyway. Then, she faints as a result of hypoglycemia and possibly exhaustion, the results of her being so large. Daria and Jane stand still for a moment, startled and clueless, and then Jane takes a picture.

This guest post by Maggie Slutzker appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Daria might be my favorite show in the entire world. In the last two years, I’ve watched the series straight through at least four times. I love almost everything about it— the way Quinn pimps high school boys, Ms. Barch’s misandry, Mr. DiMartino’s dry sarcasm, and everything about Jodie Landon. Helen Morgendorffer is my idol, and I long to spend a weekend with the Lane family. Most of all though, I love Daria and Jane’s friendship and how it survives every obstacle it encounters. Daria is the only show that makes me laugh, motivates me, and reminds me to appreciate my friends and family, all at the same time. But, since the very first time I viewed the series, there has always been one thing that made me uncomfortable. Through its five seasons, Daria was able to tackle so many issues with grace—being ditched by your best friend, alienation by your peers, sexism, racism, elitism, marriage, the true tedium of high school, and douchebag boyfriends. So what isn’t on this list? Fatphobia.

There is one notably fat character on the show, but if you aren’t an obsessive watcher like I am, you may not remember her. Her name is Mrs. Johanssen, and she’s probably diabetic.

Mrs. Johansen never appears for very long, but she’s always a source of comic relief. We first meet her in a season one episode (“Cafe Disaffecto”) in which Daria and Jane are selling chocolate bars for a school fundraiser. She tells the girls she isn’t supposed to eat chocolate, but she’d like to buy some anyway. Then, she faints as a result of hypoglycemia and possibly exhaustion, the results of her being so large. Daria and Jane stand still for a moment, startled and clueless, and then Jane takes a picture. Mrs. Johansen wakes up and insists on buying every single chocolate bar they have. When Daria and Jane leave without selling them to her, Mrs. Johansen calls up legendary principal Angela Li and complains. When Ms. Li suggests that maybe Mrs. Johansen wanted the chocolate for her family, Jane says, “She has no family. She ate them.”

In her handful of appearances throughout the series, Mrs. Johansen is always depicted in a very specific way: short, messy hair; usually panting, sweating or having some sort of physical trouble; always wearing a muumuu; and of course, always obsessively pursuing some sort of food, whether chocolate bars or cheese logs. This is briefly explained in the episode “Psycho Therapy,” in which she is speaking with a psychologist about using food for comfort her parents didn’t provide. There is emotional trauma behind her fatness.

One of the great things about cartoons is that they have a unique opportunity to make characters of literally all shapes, sizes, and colors, and treat every single difference, no matter how bizarre, as completely normal. The fact that Skeeter from Doug was blue or that Arnold and Gerald from Hey Arnold! had some non-standard head-shapes were acknowledged, but in the end these features were only background to the real problems characters dealt with. Daria too never ignored a character’s appearance, from Brittany’s chest, to Trent’s tattoos, to Jodie’s Blackness and related struggle. The show was excellent at revealing new sides and dimensions to characters, and seemed to take pleasure in showing hidden strengths and weaknesses. Mr. DiMartino had a gambling addiction and a sensitive side, and vain Quinn turned out to be pretty clever and even kind. Daria was excellent at showing that there was always more to a person than an image or stereotype. So why make the only fat character utterly one-dimensional, more a device than a person?

It’s also interesting to me that a show so centered around teenage-hood barely seems to mention fatness, something most teen girls hear about constantly. Among Daria’s own struggles with body image, weight is never mentioned, though a lack of curvaceousness is. The only other characters who discuss weight and fatness in detail are, of course, the Fashion Club. The Fashion Club quartet are beloved to me, especially Quinn, whose developmental arc in the series is one of my favorites. But they are— and of course, they’re intended to be— problematic and ridiculously, hilariously superficial, and the episode about weight gain is no exception. The episode in question, “Fat Like Me,” begins with the Fashion Club deciding whether to set a weight limit for its members. Just minutes after the topic is introduced, club president Sandi Griffin falls down a flight of stairs and breaks her leg. She manages to stay out of school for several weeks, and when she returns…she is “fat.” (If we assume all members of the Fashion Club are under a size four, then I’m guessing “fat” means maybe a size seven or eight?) At Daria’s thinly veiled advisement, Quinn becomes Sandi’s coach after the weight gain threatens to destroy the Fashion Club, and Sandi loses the weight. For Sandi, a fat body is an obstacle to overcome.

In writing this, I don’t mean to say that you’re a bad person if you laughed when Mrs. Johansen and Mr. DiMartino faced off over free sample cheese logs. Nor do I mean to claim that there aren’t fat people who are unhealthy or even whose lives are threatened by a condition related to their weight. What I’m saying is that this is not the only way fat people exist. There are plenty of of healthy, happy, stylish people who are also overweight or obese. There are fat people who exercise, and there are fat people who aren’t obsessed with food. To put it plainly, fatness isn’t automatically a problem. But Mrs. Johansen embodies every negative fat stereotype there is. Her fatness is a medical condition, a consequence of excessive and unhealthy living as well as possible abuse. When Sandi gets fat, it is a result of forced inactivity and again, something that she and Quinn have to solve. When, at the end of the episode, Quinn suggests the Fashion Club ease up on weight limits, it is another suggestion that weight gain is a consequence of unfortunate circumstances, another implication that fatness is a problem to be pitied.

For Daria to indicate that fatness comes solely from inactivity and junk food is particularly frustrating because Daria herself adores junk food. There are frequent mentions of cheese fries, and pizza plays a pivotal role. She drinks soda. Quinn chides her for eating hamburgers, chocolate cake (for breakfast), and a cartoon version of Pop Tarts. Quinn herself is an embodiment of popular beauty standards— one of her first priorities is “bouncy hair,” and though boys are constantly fetching her soda, we’re pretty sure that it’s diet. The show repeatedly uses Quinn and the Fashion Club to poke fun at all things superficial, and Daria to expose the hypocrisy behind the messages we send teenagers and consumers. But while Daria doesn’t diet, rarely puts on makeup, and never lets fashion dictate her wardrobe, she also never gets fat. So why the automatic connection between fat and food when the TV show itself acknowledges that skinny people can easily love and eat junk food?

Now, Daria may be a slightly older program, but its narrow depiction of fat characters is part of a problem we’re still dealing with today. It is rare to see a fat character whose fatness isn’t made into comic relief (think Bridesmaids), an embarrassing history (Schmidt from New Girl), or some sort of terrible consequence (Precious). It is nearly always a negative, something to be pitied. Daria strived to point out that nothing is perfect, not all is as it seems, and everyone is vulnerable. But sadly, for a show so determined to point out the absurdities of societal expectation, Daria really didn’t shed any light on fatphobia other than to contribute to it.

Maggie Slutzker is a writer, feminist, and fervent Daria fan. You can follow her on Twitter @SuchaSlutzker.

‘Steven Universe’: Many Dimensions of Fat Positivity

He is soft. He is round. He is squishy and loving and completely without pretense. There is no guarding wall around his heart, no desire to compete with other boys, no need to be seen as “cool” or “tough” or “edgy,” and no compulsion to become anything other than what he already is because he knows that “what he already is” has value.

This guest post by Anthony DellaRosa appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Steven Universe is a kids’ cartoon show that’s made a lot of noise lately, especially in circles having to do with feminism or social justice, and looking at even the most basic summary of the premise, it’s not hard to see why. For one thing, the show stars a radically non-nuclear family. For another, it’s a family made up partly of a son who totally disregards the conventional standards of modern American masculinity and three adoptive moms, all of whom are non-binary people who choose to use feminine pronouns, two of whom are strongly coded as People of Color, and one of whom is literally the physical manifestation of the unconditional love between two same-sex lovers who actually share a kiss on-screen.

Now, that’s a lot to take in, and if you’re not previously familiar with the series, it might already sound a bit overwhelming, but the important thing to remember is that any show that can help teach our kids about the diversity that exists in our world instead of flagrantly ignoring it — and, specifically, anything that can do that teaching in a colorful, exciting, adventurous way that can also spark their creativity — is something worth looking at. And that’s Steven Universe in a nutshell. Of course, we can dissect the show’s approach to diversity in any number of ways with any number of focuses, but the one that’s perhaps the most immediately evident, requiring nearly no specific in-depth knowledge of the lore and mythology, is the very visible presence of many, many fat characters in the show’s core cast. So, how does Steven Universe tackle weight?

Well, the main character is Steven himself (voiced by Zach Callison). Steven is a boy who sits right on the line that divides childhood from adolescence, and in the show, he’s specifically defined by his incredible empathy and his unparalleled protective instincts. Those are the elements of his character that make him a hero, the elements that allow him to see any situation through to the end with the best possible results, and those are the elements that his weight serves to underline. He is soft. He is round. He is squishy and loving and completely without pretense. There is no guarding wall around his heart, no desire to compete with other boys, no need to be seen as “cool” or “tough” or “edgy,” and no compulsion to become anything other than what he already is because he knows that “what he already is” has value. That’s not to say that he’s necessarily complacent – because he’s incredibly energetic and always eager to learn new things about life, about himself, and about the world around him. It simply goes to say that he is consciously aware that, whatever else happens, he has an intrinsic worth that can never be diminished as long as he keeps his mind open and his heart warm. He is effortlessly endearing and unabashedly vulnerable, and that is what makes him strong.

Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz (voiced by Susan Egan), is also fat. As a matter of fact, she’s canonically over eight feet tall, and she wears a 2XL T-shirt, which fits snugly, with pride. She is unapologetically huge in every possible regard — in height, in weight, in love, in mercy, in joy, in optimism — and she is completely and unflinchingly comfortable within her own skin. She is beautiful, inside and out, and that’s just not my own personal judgment. That is a fundamental fact of the series, an opinion shared by every character who ever knew her and every character that matters, including her most bitter and longstanding enemies. That belief is a condition of entry for any aspiring viewer. It is necessary. It is real.

Now, Rose is a lot of things in this show. She’s a mother, first and foremost. That’s how we’re initially introduced to her, more or less — as the saintly woman who, in the series’ backstory, traded her own life force to bring Steven’s into existence, and her weight does emphasize the cuddly, maternal aspects of her character. She’s pillowy and soft. She’s warm and round and comforting, without any sharp edges, devoid of all straight lines.

But she’s also a warrior. She’s fat, beautiful, feminine, maternal, and the cunning leader of a ragtag alien strike team who came to Earth over six thousand years ago to conquer and colonize it for an outer-space empire, but when she found the planet and its people too rich and too precious to harm, she turned traitor. She stood on the front lines of a war against her own kind as Defender of the Earth, and because she loved the members of her team, and because they loved her back, they stood with her, protected in battle by her legendary shield, and they won. She is fat, and she is beautiful, and she is cuddly and soft with a big, goofy smile and huge, expressive eyes, and she is also the glorious rebel queen who saved a planet from an imperialist regime, and the wonderful thing about this show is that none of this — absolutely none of it — is ever presented as a contradiction. It’s not “oh, she’s fat, but she’s beautiful” or “she’s fat, but she’s strong.” There is no doubt, no dismay, no disbelief, and no fanfare for the fact that she can be all these things at once. It’s a given. She’s fat, she’s elegant, she’s drop-dead gorgeous and wickedly silly, she’s a mother, she’s a commando, and she’s so much more all at once because, simply, why not? Why couldn’t a person be all those things?

Rose exists to show the kids at home that a person can be endlessly generous, magnificently compassionate, feminine, flowery, funny, principled, decisive, and completely kickass while also refusing to be ashamed of her curves, rolls, folds, and bulges.

Of course, if Steven’s mother is the kind of person we can all aspire to be like, Steven’s father, Greg (voiced by Tom Scharpling), is more like the kind of person we might see every day. Greg is fat. He’s also technically homeless, living in the same old broken-down, rusted-out hippie van he had when he was a teenager, and, frankly, homeless people and fat people do end up on the receiving end of a lot of the same stereotypes. They’re lazy. They’re dumb. They have no ambition. They have no drive, perseverance, or passion. They have no self-control. They’re pathetic, contemptible, a burden, or an eyesore. They’re an unsightly, unseemly, disgusting waste. But that’s a list of everything Greg Universe isn’t. It’s not that he has no drive, and it’s not that he has no passion. It’s that, in a world controlled by the wealthy for the wealthy, even the hottest passion and the hardest work in the world make for no guarantee of comfort or success. Unlike Rose Quartz, Greg Universe is a product of the planet Earth, and the planet Earth is not a meritocracy. People don’t just get what they deserve here, so Greg was chewed up, spit out, and left to pick up the pieces on his own, with no support and no safety net, by a series of institutions that were never designed to work in his favor, and his weight, like his living conditions, can easily be read as a function of modern American economics. Greg keeps his head above water — barely — by working every day at a car wash at the edge of town, and for people like that, for the working poor, meals, by necessity, have to be cheap, easy, and quick, and it’s not a coincidence that the cheapest, easiest, and quickest-to-make meals in the country tend overwhelmingly to be the greasiest and the most fattening. Healthy eating is not a privilege we can assume Greg has, especially when the only prominent purveyors of food in the show are a donut shop and a French fry stand, and that reflects a truth that affects millions of people every day, generation after generation.

Still, while Greg’s weight is a constantly present piece of his character, very little — if any — specific attention is actually ever drawn to it in dialogue. Instead, the show’s focus consistently rests upon his grief for his wife, his bombastic love for his son, and his tremendous (if not profitable) expertise in the fields of music and sound design. He’s a hardworking, vulnerable, sincere, and well-meaning man who tries his best to be there for the people who need him, and in a show full of sweet people, he’s one of the sweetest of all. He is fat, and he is kind, and his son wouldn’t have him any other way.

The only main character who ever gave me a bit of pause on a personal level is Amethyst (voiced by Michaela Dietz), one of the members of Rose’s old rebel team and one of Steven’s current guardians. Amethyst is short, stout, and pudgy, and at first glance, her character actually does seem deliberately designed to invoke a lot of the most degrading fat stereotypes. She’s wasteful, rude, crude, generally unmotivated, unorganized, full of obviously bad ideas, and low on impulse control. Now contrast that with her foil, Pearl (voiced by Deedee Magno Hall), who is a fastidious, relentlessly goal-oriented perfectionist with the rail-thin body of a ballerina, and it becomes more than clear why the creators of this show designed these characters the way they did: They were channeling one-dimensional stereotypes and the shallowest expectations of the audience to shape these characters and inform their traits. Of course the perfectionist is thin and the loud, immature, goofy slacker is fat. Of course they are — because fat is imperfect, right? Fat is wrong. Fat is bad. So, the perfectionist wouldn’t be fat, would she? The lazy one is fat. The gross one is fat. That’s what the audience expects because that’s what the old stereotype is, so that’s what the creators of this show did when they made these characters: They tailored them to specifically fit the stereotypes for maximum convenience in lieu of more creative, subversive, or interesting concepts.

That bothered me for a long, long time. It didn’t invalidate the good the show was doing, but it certainly accounted for quite a bit of bad, and it colored the way I saw the show and limited who I felt comfortable recommending it to, but then came an episode called “On the Run,” which honestly changed a lot about how I thought about Amethyst as a character. She was the star of the episode, which was all about her self-image, her self-esteem, her most deep-seated insecurities, her worst fears, and her biggest, proudest, most personal victories. The big takeaway from the episode was that Amethyst isn’t Rose. She’s not graceful. She’s not perfect. She isn’t always comfortable in her own skin, and she isn’t always okay with being who she is, with being born where she was, or with feeling the way she so often does. Deep down inside, she can actually be viciously self-loathing, and she does what she can, day to day to day to day, to be happy, to be comfortable, and to care for herself, and in the episode, the point is made explicitly that there is no one alive who has a right to try and judge her or make her feel bad for that. She is who she is, even if “who she is” isn’t always conventionally appealing or easily digestible to more quote-unquote “mainstream” sensibilities. Her fundamental rights to dignity and happiness are completely inalienable, and anyone who dares to infringe upon them is doing something unspeakably despicable.

In a way, she’s a lot like Greg — a necessary and more realistic counterpart for Rose and, to an extent, a counterpart for Steven. The way Rose is written and portrayed, she’s effectively a goddess on Earth, a perfectly balanced master of all things who demonstrates what we can all aspire to, and Steven follows in her footsteps. But Greg and especially Amethyst show us that we don’t always have to be like that and that it’s okay if we’re not. They show us that, as imperfect as we can be sometimes, we are still beautiful, loveable, admirable, and valid, and at the end of the day, even if Amethyst has a unique outlook on life and a bawdy sense of humor, she’s portrayed as no less heroic and no less worthy of worship and care. Steven looks up to her just as much as he looks up to Rose and Pearl and all the others, and she lays down her life to protect the beauty of the Earth and every single living being on its surface every bit as quickly.

And, after all, that is the key idea. In the end, Steven Universe is a show that doesn’t always get everything right and certainly isn’t always perfect, but it’s a show built around the idea that all life, regardless of where it comes from or what it looks like, is inherently precious and worth protecting, and the creative team’s steadfast dedication to building an emotionally complex, rich, and diverse cast is a demonstration of its commitment to that concept.

Anthony DellaRosa is an amateur critic and aspiring author with a particular passion for the stories we tell our children. He can be found on his blog, where he does informal reviews of movies, TV shows, video games, and books, and also on Twitter.

When Being Fat Isn’t A Big Deal: Jenny Gross on ‘Winners and Losers’

The default body size also extends to actresses who are not meant to be “decorative.” In writer-director Andrea Arnold’s powerful, excellent ‘Red Road,’ from the UK, star Kate Dickie has a nude scene which is neither meant to be nor is erotic, but her body has as little fat as that of a professional marathon runner. When women see these bodies as “the norm” in films and TV even those of us fortunate enough not to hate our bodies (and even those of us who are not habitually called slurs because of our size) have to fight against the tendency to ask, “What exactly did my body do wrong to be so unlike that of nearly every woman I see onscreen?”

This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

“Fat” isn’t just a loaded term when referring to actresses, but also a relative one. The late Joan Rivers infamously called Kate Winslet “fat” at red carpet appearances during the awards season for Titanic, even though Winslet seemed about the same size as she was in the movie, then the most financially successful of all time. Rivers’ pronouncement had enough power that Winslet was one of the few young women who came to the Academy Awards that year in long sleeves: to hide her “fat” arms. At the time Winslet was probably still well below the average size of women in the US (and the UK).

I grew up in the ’70s and although TV and movies then had more than its share of super-skinny actresses (especially noticeable in that era before most actresses had breast implants or muscles from working out), their bodies were much more in line with that of the general Canadian, US and UK population, since the average body size of those populations was smaller than the average body size (of both men and women) today. And the actresses on American TV, especially those who weren’t young (some of the most popular characters on the highest rated shows like Bea Arthur on Maude, Isabel Sanford on The Jeffersons and Jean Stapleton on All In The Family were in their 50s) weren’t expected to have the bodies (or faces or hair) of young teenagers–unless they were young teenagers.

As the general populace in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia have developed larger bodies than they had in past decades, most of the actresses from those places have shrunk. Although I was pleased to see Melissa McCarthy as the star of a film that makes good use of her talents (and is blessedly free of fat-shaming or slurs) in a preview screening of Spy (which I will review in full in June, when it’s in theaters), I couldn’t help noticing how sylphlike her equally hilarious Australian co-star, Rose Byrne, is. “Model-thin” has become the default body type for most actresses who wish to have a career in the English-speaking market and beyond: and of course fashion models now are also skinnier than they were in the ’70s and ’80s.

The standard ultra-thin body for an actress is common enough that when I saw the young actress Pauline Etienne topless in the French film Eden (a film I don’t recommend) I was surprised to note that not only did she have naturally large breasts (which are, after all, comprised mainly of fat) but her stomach, while flat was, unlike those of most contemporary actresses, not concave, let alone showing visible abdominal muscles. The default body size also extends to actresses who are not supposed to be “decorative.” In writer-director Andrea Arnold’s powerful, excellent Red Road, from the UK, star Kate Dickie has a nude scene which is neither meant to be nor is erotic, but her body has as little fat as that of a professional marathon runner. When women see these bodies as “the norm” in films and TV even those of us fortunate enough not to hate our bodies, even those of us who are not habitually called slurs because of our size, have to fight the tendency to ask, “What exactly did my body do wrong to be so unlike that of nearly every woman I see onscreen?”

The four main characters of "Winners and Losers" Jenny (Melissa Bergland) is second from the left — The four main characters of “Winners and Losers” Jenny (Melissa Bergland) is second from the left

The casual inclusion of a fat woman as one of four main characters on the soapy Australian TV series Winners and Losers feels like a triumph–especially because the body and weight of Jenny Gross (played by Melissa Bergland) are never the center of her storyline, any more than they are of the other leads: model-thin Bec (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith) and Sophie (Melanie Vallejo) and Frances (Virginia Gay) whose body is closer to average size. Jenny is, hands down, the most consistently well-dressed woman on the show, wearing vintage and faux-vintage fashions that look great on her and work well with her cherry-red hair and cat-eye glasses (which the actress wore to the audition and the producers decided to make part of her character). In a perhaps unwitting bit of verisimilitude the matching bridesmaid dress she was called on to wear with two of the other characters at the wedding of a third was equally unflattering to each actress (and body-type).

Although we in the audience are briefly reminded of the abuse fat women can receive, these moments never overtake the show, not even for one “very special episode”. At one point a “player” who is using Jenny refers to her as a “cash cow” (the four women were “losers” in high school but after their reunion became “winners” when they jointly bought a lottery ticket with a large payout) with a laugh on the “cow,” and as with the other three main women characters, we know Jenny was bullied in high school (with remarks centering around her size). In another episode Jenny confronts her older sister, when she briefly visits home, that she too needled Jenny about her weight (Jenny’s parents and other siblings do not and are very close to and supportive of her) but otherwise Jenny has similar problems to the other three main women. She dates the wrong guys (one of her early boyfriends came out as gay, which was my original reason to start watching the series). She was the center of a love triangle for some episodes, spent a period drinking and partying too much, saw her mother through a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and found out, in the most recent season, that she carries the gene that marks her as likely to develop breast cancer too.

Jenny waits with her sister to find out if she has a gene that will make her likely to develop breast cancer.

She’s also not always the fat girl who wants everyone to like her: she can be quite cutting (and Bergland has a great touch with these lines) as when she informs a boyfriend with whom she is on the outs that he can’t hope to recover the pants he misplaced during a drunken night out because, “You lost them along with your wallet, your phone, your keys and your dignity.” When Rhys, the boyfriend from several seasons ago confessed to her that he was gay, he said about Sophie finding out (after he tried to kiss a mutual gay friend, Jonathan), “I thought she was going to beat the shit out of me.”

To which Jenny replied, “I kind of wish she had.”

Although Jenny is something of a late bloomer who lost her virginity at 27 (to Rhys) and at that time still lived at home in her childhood bedroom, filled with stuffed animals, the show is free from “Woe is me, I can’t get a boyfriend because I’m fat,” speeches. The show also avoids the cliché in which the fat woman is the f*g hag with no sex life of her own: although Jenny remains friendly with Rhys after he comes out, Frances is the one who is best friends with a gay man, Jonathan (Damien Bodie)–and Frances has had boyfriends of her own too. In the seasons since Rhys (who eventually settled down with Jonathan), Jenny has had a number of love interests, equally, if not more, handsome than the boyfriends and husbands of the other main characters on the show.

So the question remains: why, when I know several such women in real life, do I have to look halfway around the world to find a main woman character on TV who is beautiful and fat, who wears the cutest outfits, has love interests and all sorts of concerns (each episode of this series never has just one crisis when it could fit five) that have nothing to do with her body size? Perhaps US show creators will one day have an answer for me.

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Sophie in Don Bluth’s ‘Anastasia’

Sophie is still exceptional among animated characters, and even live action characters. Though a fantastic character, she should not be the exception. She should not be a rare case of fat-acceptance. It should not be rare that a fat woman loves herself and is loved.

Written by Jackson Adler as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Don Bluth’s animated film musical Anastasia is incredibly historically inaccurate, and even offensive in how it depicts the Russian Revolution, its aftermath, and various historical figures. However, it also passes the Bechdel Test (and in more than one scene!), which is extremely rare for children’s films. It also shows the heroine and her love interest saving each other – with the heroine taking down the villain at the end. Possibly even more notable, the film also portrays positive representation of a fat woman in its character Sophie.

Before the audience meets Sophie, we hear of her from the character Vlad, who calls her “ravishing” and like a cup of “hot chocolate” after a “walk in the snow.” Sophie is indeed ravishing, and she certainly has a warm personality. Sophie (voiced by Bernadette Peters) is a fat woman who is independent, caring, sexy, confident, smart, savvy, sensitive, and powerful. She loves Paris, flowers, fashion, and the Russian ballet. As if she were the bubbly younger sister of Ursula, Sophie is confidant in her body, and seems to care little about respectability politics. If she wants to wear an off-the-shoulder dress that shows off her cleavage and has a very short skirt, she does! And she’ll roll her shoulder and shake her tush in it! And wear bright colors? Why wouldn’t she? She likes them! Eating good food and drinking champagne? Again, she likes them, so why wouldn’t she? She dances with multiple young and handsome men, and has lots of fun doing it. She takes Anya, Vlad, and Dmitri for a night on the town, introducing them to all the things she likes about Paris, and having just as much fun as them.

She deeply cares about family, especially her cousin, the Dowager Empress Marie (voiced by Angela Lansbury). She is supportive of other women, taking her cousin’s interests to heart, while also helping Anya. She enjoys luxury, but is willing to share her wealth with others, even taking Anya shopping for clothes in which to meet her possible grandmother. While a bit of a romantic, she doesn’t let the possibility of romance dictate her entire life. She has a short hair cut suitable for a “modern” woman of the time. She is her own human being, with her own interests, and who has pastimes other than supporting the skinny heroine in getting a make over or getting to the ball or getting the guy. She does not compete with or try to tear down Anya (or any other woman), either. It’s just that being kind to Anya, or “motherly,” is not all that she is. She is kind, but she has a personality and her own desires.

Sophie singing on top of the Eiffel Tower.

Sophie is neither fairy godmother nor villainess. She does not exist only for comedic relief. She does not exist to fawn over other people, nor does it occur to her to hurt anyone. She helps to reunite her cousin with her cousin’s granddaughter, enjoying her relationship with both, and enjoying doing things with both – whether shopping on the streets of Paris or attending the Russian ballet together. She supports the women in her life doing whatever makes them happy, tearing up when Anya chooses to elope with Dmitri instead of taking her place as Empress of Russia. By the same token, no one slutshames or fatshames Sophie or attempts to tell her not to do what she likes (as if she would listen to them!).

Sophie is a fun supporting character who keeps the story going. While there is nothing wrong with that, portrayals of characters like Sophie are incredibly rare, and viewers deserve to have more Sophies on their screens. While there have occasionally been other fat women in animated children’s films, they are side characters whose own narratives are rarely told, and who instead make their lives entirely about the skinny heroes and heroines, whether as mothering and mammy types or as villains. Sophie is not a fairy, like Flora or Merryweather or the nameless Fairy Godmother, nor is she a sea witch. Sophie is a human being who deserves to be seen and treated as such, which, in the film, is how she is seen and treated. She is not just respected, but admired. She is not just accepted, she is praised.

Sophie does not just move, she dances. She does not just talk, she sings. She does not just serve the heroine, she is kind to everyone and expects the same kindness in return. When someone is overstaying their welcome, she is not afraid to say “Out!” or “Bye, bye!” When a man isn’t what she wants, she finds another man, or even just dances by herself. Sophie’s confidence is rare for women on screen in general, but especially for fat women – and she’s not there to be laughed at (like Merryweather) or sneered at (like Ursula), either.

Ursula showing off her curves and celebrating "body language." — Ursula showing off her curves and celebrating “body language.”

When are confident fat women like Sophie going to get their own film? We have a Malificent, but where’s Ursula? When is Disney going to make that film? We have the live action movie musical Hairspray, but audiences deserve many more films that celebrate fat bodies. And what about fat Women of Color? There should be many more than Precious. What about fat lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, and genderqueer women of all ethnicities?

Sophie is a complex female character (which, alone, is still quite rare) who is also fat. She embraces and loves her fatness. She and her fatness are also loved by others. Not every woman has the same body type, and not everyone finds skinny to be the only body type worth admiring. In Hairspray, Edna has Wilbur and Tracey has Link, and Mercedes and Sam dated in Glee. Slowly, representation of fat women who are happy in romance is expanding, but in 2015 the Disney princesses are all still extremely skinny. Ursula herself has had skinny makeovers, or often been left out of Disney villain media. Dreamworks’ Home features a mixed race middle-school heroine who has hips, but her waste is still very small. Meanwhile, Disney is making a sequel to Frozen, further featuring White skinny heroines.

Don Bluth’s Anastasia was released in 1997. It’s 2015 now. Dreamworks and Disney have made small strides in showing complex female characters, and have had a (very) few female character of Color. However, by mainly depicting skinny bodies, especially as leading characters, these companies are participating in fatshaming. Sophie is still exceptional among animated characters, and even live action characters. Though a fantastic character, she should not be the exception. She should not be a rare case of fat-acceptance. It should not be rare that a fat woman loves herself and is loved. Sophie is still a “cup of hot chocolate” after a “walk in the snow,” only it’s not just because of her warm personality, but because she is a symbol of not just fat-acceptance, but fat-love. She knows that she is “ravishing,” and she and the characters who love her won’t let anyone forget it.

What They Did Right in ‘The Heat’

Her character may at first feed the stereotype that fat people are overbearing, belligerent and take up too much space, but the camera doesn’t make her body a joke (with accompanying thunder-thighs music). I like M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” as the song of choice, and they do look pretty believably badass, with a comic overtone.

I had barely typed anything in before I got this

This guest post by Rhea Daniel appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

The thing with fat-haters is, that even a fat person, man or a woman, trying to stay healthy is offensive to them. Anybody who keeps bringing up your body out of the health concern, it’s just an excuse, they don’t really want to see you jiggling around. To quote Junot Díaz, “You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin.”

The presumption is that all fat people are unhealthy and lead a sedentary lifestyle, never mind that with all this fat-obsession in the medical field, the health of skinny kids gets ignored.

So let’s see what is perceived as “fat”: as with my case, anything above a US size 6 or 8 and you’ve crossed the point of no return. A size 2 would be perfect (but a size 0 would be too thin). Even the plus size industry is guilty of false advertising, fat models with the voluptuous, “proportionate” ideal are a crock. The fact is that the perception of the ideal female body has changed several times over hundreds of years, and here’s my beef: if this is true, and we know that the female body ideal is somehow connected to food availability and wealth, and that our bodies are some sort of sounding board off of which these subconscious perceptions are projected, different ones for different cultures and classes, then it’s time to stop falling for this illusion. And it’s time for women to stop doing it to each other.

So to The Heat.

Melissa McCarthy plays an ill-tempered, foul-mouthed detective and I like that she’s incorrigible just because; also, her entire godawful family is like that. Her primary concerns are the welfare of her brother and eventually of her cop-buddy, played by Sandra Bullock, so she is something of a protective mommy-bear. Her character may at first feed the stereotype that fat people are overbearing, belligerent and take up too much space, but the camera doesn’t make her body a joke (with accompanying thunder-thighs music). I like M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” as the song of choice, and they do look pretty believably badass, with a comic overtone.

McCarthy’s character is literally a slob, and I see parts of this character in a lot of her movies—and yet it is her character who is comfortable with her body and sexuality, she couldn’t be bothered with romance (and no make-overs, thank goodness). The mantra in the media and the world in general is, that for a woman to have any substance, fat or otherwise, she has to be considered desirable, doesn’t matter by which demographic. If you really want to be inclusive (and I’m not talking Glee inclusivity—a fat person is either an object of pity or attractive to someone with a sudden, inexplicable fat-fetish), chuck desirability in the grinder. If you’re concerned about representing fat people, it’s time to dispense with the compensatory love interest, or some day someone will come along who loves you just the way you aaah…zzzz….. It’s patronising, and it’s tired storytelling.

Sandra Bullock’s character is a bit of a dweeb and its not the first time she’s played an FBI agent who has trouble winning the respect of her male colleagues. It is her character, of the more acceptable body-type, who feels the need to overcompensate, who wears Spanx and has trouble forming romantic relationships, or any relationship. Not exactly a subtle role reversal, but her reasons for being insecure seem pertinent as she grew up in foster care. Also, it’s not like even models who fit into an acceptable mold of beauty don’t feel insecure.

Now if you’re not used to seeing women in situations of slapstick violence, you might not like this movie. Consider those home videos where kids do ridiculous things and get their nuts hurt. Those are real people getting hurt. Slapstick comedy, on the other hand, is centuries old and a well-practiced art. The women in this movie express pain, stoically take it, and do their jobs. There’s a scene where they’re tied to chairs and McCarthy has to remove a knife lodged in Bullock’s thigh to cut their ropes and then shove it back in before they’re caught. I thought it was evil, comedic genius: Jackass for girls. No rubber super-maidens here. The kind of violence I dislike is eroticised violence and this is how to actually do it without insulting an entire gender.

Also see Jumpin’ Jack Flash, because I told you to.

So this is not a comedy a social critic would be comfortable with. How do you make an offensive comedy inoffensive toward minorities and without being obvious, actually turn the tables? Dan Bakkedahl who plays the albino DEA agent in the film specifically addresses the trope of the evil albino. While not completely off the hook, they tried and made some good decisions. I’m looking forward to a sequel where they might address any other issues.

And Melissa McCarthy…I’m sending you hearts and bouquets from this end of the world.

Rhea Daniel lives in Mumbai. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. She is trying to become a better writer and artist and you can find her at rheadaniel(dot)tumblr(dot)com.

16 and Healthy: ‘My Mad Fat Diary’ Is Teen Girl Fat Positivity Gold

This guest post by Ariana DiValentino appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Considering the number of things media aimed at teenage girls typically gets wrong, it’s refreshing to see a mainstream TV program getting it very, very right. My Mad Fat Diary is a British series about Rae Earl (played by Sharon Rooney), a 16-year old girl who is big in size and bigger in personality. Having just been released from a stay in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt, the show follows Rae struggling with mental health and body image issues alongside the slew of other issues that come with being a teenage girl: friends, school, sex, and family.

From the outset, the show’s approach to Rae’s weight is spot-on. She’s not particularly confident in her appearance (what 16-year-old is?), but she is trying her damnedest. Unlike the pitfalls many “lovable fat person” stories fall into, happiness and overall self-acceptance for Rae aren’t attached to her losing weight—not even under the common guise of “loving oneself enough to take care of your body.” Weight loss is rarely the question for Rae. Working toward her own mental health, with the help of her straight-talking therapist Dr. Kester (Ian Hart), constantly is.

What makes My Mad Fat Diary stand out is how it brings all of these topics to life in a way that is undeniably entertaining. For one thing, it’s set in 1996, with throwback outfits and a soundtrack to match. When it wants to be, the show is dead funny, and not in a slapstick or grotesque way centered around Rae’s size. When she makes genuine jokes at her own expense—on her own terms, it’s funny; when neighborhood hooligans do, it’s righteously nauseating. Rae herself is a clever, sharp-witted and outspoken character who pokes fun at everything and anything, making her friends laugh as often as viewers. Surrounded by a quirky band of friends and an unconventional home life (her flighty mother is harboring her younger, non-English-speaking, undocumented immigrant boyfriend Karim from Tunisia in the house), Rae may describe herself as “mad,” but she is often the sanest character of the cast.

Some of the show’s best jokes (as well as troves of heart-wrenching moments) stem from Rae’s fully budded sexuality. Here still, there’s much less temptation to laugh at Rae than with her. While Melissa McCarthy’s overt sexuality in Bridesmaids, for example, derives its humour at least as much from the idea of a horny but sexually undesirable woman as from McCarthy’s truly hilarious farcicality, Rae’s sexuality doesn’t position her size as the butt of its joke. Rather, her private thoughts read like a Cosmo column that’s more colorful than internet literotica and yet more relatable than either of the two. Anyone who’s been a sexually frustrated adolescent can appreciate phrases like “sculpted piece of testosterone wonder” and her general outlook on butts. If only we had all had Rae’s wicked sense of humour at 16, not to mention her complete comfort with her own desires.

Rae’s maturity is about on par for her age, and as such, we cringe as she blunders through conflicts with boys, friends, and worst of all, her mother, with youthful brashness. Her adolescent perspective is written to a T, best exemplified in the sixth episode of Series 2, “Not I,” in which Rae is forced to confront the events of the past several months through the eyes of her pretty, popular, but equally insecure best friend, Chloe. Rae may be naïve at times, but the show itself is far from myopic. Even older viewers will be along for the ride as Rae deals with anxieties—such as her aversion to eating in front of people—that are perfectly expressed and at times, truly heartbreaking in their honesty.

And therein lies what makes the show such a wonderful example of fat positivity and feminism—Rae is, per her own description, mad and fat, but it takes less than a single episode to make it abundantly clear that she is so much more than that. Rae’s character and her problems are just so real. It’s rare enough for teenage girls to see positive representations of themselves onscreen, and even less so for those outside the typical beauty norms. Rae Earl is an extremely well-developed, well-written character—one we could all afford to take a cue from now and then when it comes to speaking up for others and advocating for our own well-being. My Mad Fat Diary and shows like it deserve to flood the airwaves from here to Lincolnshire.

Ariana DiValentino is a lover and budding creator of all things film and feminism, based in New York. Catch her in action on Twitter @ArianaLee721.

‘Parks and Recreation’: How Fatphobia Is Invisible

I don’t think it would be quite the same barrel of laughs if the motto of Pawnee were “First in Friendship, Fourth in Poverty.” Fat shaming and fat jokes like the People of Walmart photos are often a socially acceptable stand-in for the classist shaming of poor people. Poor people are more likely to be fat, after all. We get paid less and we’re more likely to be fired. Oh, the comedy!

This guest post by Ali Thompson appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

I’ve been binge watching Parks and Recreation episodes on Netflix over the past few weeks, and I really wanted to love it. But every time I am about to decide that I do, Parks and Rec makes a fat “joke.” I have to put the word joke in quotes because the punch line seems to be that fat people exist.

It’s weird that a show that is renowned for its kindness and feminism would rely so heavily on fat jokes, but it also isn’t. The discrimination and microaggressions that fat people endure are invisible to the wider culture, and Parks and Rec is a good example of this.

Fatphobia is a consistent presence in the show. In the “Sweetums” episode Ann Perkins says, “Pawnee is the fourth most obese city in America. The kids here are beefy. They’re just beefy, big-boned, chunk monsters. I call ’em like I see ’em.”

This happens in the second season, and apparently the writers found the existence of fat people so hilarious that they never let up after. Pawnee’s motto is “First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity.” NBC is still selling shirts and bumper stickers featuring it.

There are plenty of times that Amy Poehler will say the word “obesity” as the supposed punch line of a joke, and then smirk at the camera slightly, like—“See? Fatties! Amirite??” The joke here seems to be that just the word “obesity” is funny.

I don’t accept the idea that this mockery is ironic or satirical. The assumption here is that the very existence of fat people is funny. That’s not subversive in any way. It’s “What’s the deal with airplane food” of making fun of what people look like. It is tired and lazy and hacky. And it causes real damage.

The word obesity refers to the mere existence of a fat body as a disease that must be cured. This medicalization of fat bodies has led to an increase in the stigma against fat people. Fat people are constantly confronted with microaggressions related to inaccurate assumptions about our health, even—and especially—at the doctor’s office.

Multiple studies have shown that the majority of medical personnel have negative attitudes about their fat patients and are more likely to see them as lazy and noncompliant.

Parks and Recreation seems to find this stigma hilarious. I don’t. If you had to wade through the never-ending cesspool that is being a fat woman in public and online, you probably wouldn’t either.

Parks and Rec also makes the tired old claim that all fat people have diabetes, which is not only fatphobic but is ableist because it frames diabetes as a punishment for being fat.

In the “Telethon” episode, the telethon is supposedly a fundraiser to end diabetes, but what they really seem to want to get rid of is fat people. The show repeatedly conflates diabetes and fatness and seems to find this incorrect and ableist conflation a source of high hilarity.

“Tonight we’re hoping the people of Pawnee will dip their big chubby hands into their plus size pockets and donate generously… Coming up, a very special video presentation called Even My Tongue is Fat: The Story of Pawnee.”

The existence of the Sweetums factory, which makes high fructose corn syrup, is supposed to be the reason the characters are concerned about diabetes, but here’s the thing: you don’t get diabetes from eating sugar.

Framing diabetes as the punishment fat people get for their laziness and lack of self-control drains the empathy out of any conversation about the disease. It actively harms people with diabetes because everyone, even their doctors, think they have the disease because they did something wrong. It’s hard to get decent health care when even your doctor blames you for being sick.

The “Soda Tax” episode is an example of some of the worst fatphobia and ableism of the show. It uses what Dr. Charlotte Cooper calls “the headless fatty”- images that show fat people as symbols of fear and disgust, removing their humanity so that they can be more easily turned into objects—because bodies without heads are bodies without minds or voices.

“Soda Tax” also continues to conflate fatness and diabetes and to present both as problems to be solved, proposing that a tax on soda could get rid of diabetes, which is wrong and also ableist victim blaming. The reality is that diabetes existed before soda did. It existed before refined sugar did. The idea that getting rid of a source of sugar will get rid of diabetes is profoundly ignorant.

What it does demonstrate is the current trend of the government increasing revenues by targeting taxes at despised groups. We can’t raise taxes on businesses or the wealthy anymore because that option has been removed by anti-tax partisans, but the government needs money, so who can they get it from?

Why not fat people? Or people who smoke or drink? No one will complain about targeting those people. If you really wanted to offset the harm you believe soda manufacturers are doing, why not target them for taxes, at the point of manufacturer? But politicians know they could never challenge large corporations that way. So they pick an easy target.

Fat people are the easiest target. We are framed as deserving of every bad thing. We are always available to scapegoat and target.

And then there’s Jerry—the ultimate target.

Jerry Gergich is fat, and he portrayed as stupid and clumsy. He is constantly the butt of mean jokes around the office, bullied by people he considers friends, but who openly talk about how much they hate him.

He is constantly farting. His pants rip when he bends over. He’s so stupid that he will eat anything placed in front of him, including a bowl of glue substituted for his soup. He lies about being mugged in the park, but he really fell into a creek because he was trying to retrieve a breakfast burrito he dropped.

You know fat people! They go WILD over food. Why, they’ll even try to eat food that fell into a dirty creek! Har har har.

Jerry’s wife Gayle is played by supermodel Christie Brinkley. The “joke” is how could a good-looking person could find something lovable in fat, unattractive Jerry? Fat people are only supposed to be partnered with other fat people. How could someone so low status and of such little value as Jerry be married to a conventionally beautiful woman?

Comedy!

It makes no sense to me that a show that uses imagery like this, and refers to fat children as beefy monsters, can still be lauded as the “comedy of super niceness.”

The perception of Parks and Rec as super nice, which ignores the show’s constant, mean-spirited mockery of fat people and people with diabetes, is consistent with the media’s general unwillingness to engage with actual fat people. Reporters are obsessed with getting the other side on some topics, but when it comes to publishing the most recent press release from the Fat People are Terrible Monsters Think Tank (funded by Weight Watchers and diet pills), they just copy and paste whatever and call it a day.

I am a fat woman and the constant positioning of the existence of my body as a huge problem for the entire world to butt in and have a say in solving is insulting and exhausting. My body is not a disease or a problem.

When was the last time you saw someone advocating for the rights of fat people and fat kids? Probably never. What about our right to not be bullied, discriminated against, and shamed by an entire culture?

Everyone talks about fat people, but no one talks to us.

To be fat is to be invisible. Most of the time, I won’t see anyone who looks like me anywhere in the media. And if I do, that person is the subject of mockery. I believe this contributes to the hatred of fat people and the discrimination against us. We are not considered people. We appear nowhere, except as a mean joke or as a decapitated image of a body—another fat body to be used as an object in the cultural panic that is the Obesity Plague.

The invisible fatphobia of Parks and Recreation is just a symptom of a wider cultural problem. And that problem is that fat people are not treated like people who have feelings and thoughts just like everyone else.

Ali Thompson is an artist, a writer, a fat activist, and an unapologetic weirdo. She is the creator of ok2befat.com.