Fat Positivity – Bitch Flicks

Does ‘Pitch Perfect’s Fat Amy Deserve to Be a Fat Positivity Mascot?

It’s great to see a character whose fatness is a part of her identity without being a point of dehumanization, but the films try to make Fat Amy likable at the expense of other characters, positioning her as acceptably quirky, in contrast to the women of color, who are portrayed in a more two-dimensional manner, or Stacie, who is unacceptable due to her promiscuity. Ultimately, the underlying current of stereotype-based humor puts the film’s fat positivity in a dubious light…

This guest post written by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. An earlier version of this essay appears on Consistent Panda Bear Shape. | Spoilers ahead for Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2.

I’ve been writing about film from an intersectional feminist perspective for a little over two years now; most of that writing is unpacking how fat characters function in film on my blog, Consistent Panda Bear Shape. Multiple patterns have been emerging from that work; there are three trends in particular that make it difficult for me to write from an intersectional and/or optimistic perspective. I don’t think, reader, that you will find them too surprising:

Fat characters existing to receive the audience’s contempt, disgust, and/or pity. Mad Max: Fury Road is a great example, where the fat characters are autocrat Immortan Joe and his villainous ally, the People Eater, and the Milk Mothers, who exist as a grotesque example of how Immortan Joe objectifies and exploits the populace under his control.
Likable fat characters having some workaround where they aren’t “actually” fat, so when the character finds confidence or asserts themselves, it can be a feel-good moment without leading the audience to question established standards of acceptable bodies on a broad social scale. Two common workarounds are embodied by Olive in Little Miss Sunshine. While her story revolves around her transgression of physical beauty standards, these standards only apply to the strict, hyperfeminine pageant world; outside that context, her body is within the range of social acceptability. Additionally, actor Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit for the role, further disconnecting Olive’s story from the lived experiences of fat people.
Fat protagonists who are “actually” fat being men, usually of the straight, white variety. Of the 62 films featuring fat characters that I’ve written articles about thus far: 41 of the predominant fat characters were male, 35 of those male characters were white, and only 3 of them were identified as queer within the text of the film. Of the 2 non-human fat characters referred to male in their respective screenplays, both were voiced by white men. (The films I write about haven’t been curated in an objective manner, so take this anecdata with a grain of salt.)

The movies that I watch utilize at least one of these patterns time and time again, if they include fat characters at all. Considering this, when I do see a film featuring a decently-written character in a plot-significant role who is played by a fat actor and isn’t a straight white dude, I start having hopes for a bold new cinematic vision wherein fat people aren’t treated like garbage. Pitch Perfect is a perfect example of the kind of film that will stoke the flames of my high expectations, featuring Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy. When it was making its way into theaters, I remember seeing this exchange all over Tumblr:

This exchange says everything about why I and many others were excited: a female character, played by someone who looks like she gets relegated to the same measly section of clothing stores that I do, being funny and unapologetic about how she gets treated based on her size. (And on a more personal note, Fat Amy is also the cover girl for an AV Club article about humanized portrayals of fat characters that was an inspiration for Consistent Panda Bear Shape.) However, I didn’t actually get around to watching Pitch Perfect until it and its sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, were already out on DVD. I’ve seen a lot of positive press around Fat Amy, but for me, the viewing experience of the two films back-to-back was overall a four-hour anti-climax to my hopes for a new approach to fat representation in a mainstream comedy.

It isn’t all bad. There are some significantly refreshing aspects to how Fat Amy is represented, especially in the original movie. Where a fat body is often employed as visual shorthand for incompetence, she proves her ability as a singer in her introductory scene, impressing Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow) with her voice despite their focus on finding women with “bikini-ready bodies” to audition for the Barden Bellas a capella choir. She is also the most self-assured of the Bellas by far. Her sense of humor is often outlandish but her deadpan delivery suggests that she gets more out of confusing the other characters than entertaining them. The majority of comments characterizing Fat Amy as fat are self-referential but, surprisingly, not self-deprecating. She casually remarks at her surprise that her “sexy fat ass” was chosen to be part of the Bellas. Fatness is part of how she sees herself, and isn’t a source of shame or something that needs to be sanitized; rather, it’s a part of her identity that she modifies appropriately to her mood and context. It felt oddly empowering as a fat viewer to hear her angrily threaten to “finish [someone] like a cheesecake.” Another detail that resonated with me was her fearlessness at calling attention to her body. She sprawls and flails. She has a habit of nonchalantly slapping a rhythm on her belly — a woman having fun with her fat! imagine! — or cupping her breasts during a performance. She inhabits her body and her personal space without apologizing or minimizing.

Beyond how Fat Amy is portrayed as an individual, Pitch Perfect also has progressive aspects to how Fat Amy functions as part of the Bellas. As opposed to what one might expect from a fat character in an ensemble cast, Pitch Perfect doesn’t put Fat Amy in a position where she drags the group down. There is a requisite joke about her avoiding physical activity (while the other singers jog, Aubrey finds Fat Amy lying down, or as she calls it, “horizontal running”), but her sloth seems less sinful in contrast to Aubrey’s drill sergeant seriousness about their shared extracurricular activity. Instead, both films focus on Beca (Anna Kendrick) as the problematic member of the group due to her lack of commitment. As a group, the Bellas have to deal with a change in their image from normatively attractive young women to one that includes singers who don’t meet stereotypical sorority girl standards. They are the classic rag-tag underdogs in a story focuses on competition. “I wanted the hot Bellas,” complains a frat brother who books the group to perform at a mixer, when shutting them down mid-song, “not this barnyard explosion.” Even the senior Bellas, thin and preppy Aubrey and Chloe, have bodies that defy expectations of femininity. It’s common to see fat female characters in comedies as a focal point of gross or bizarre body humor, but Pitch Perfect takes a more democratic approach. Aubrey struggles with stress-induced projectile vomiting, and soprano Chloe gains the ability to sing deep bass notes after a surgery to remove nodes on her vocal cords.

Although Fat Amy isn’t presented as more grotesque or cartoonish than the other characters, Pitch Perfect doesn’t extend the favor to other Bellas who aren’t straight and white, as Fat Amy is. The most glaring contrast is Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean), a Black butch lesbian (with an incredible set of pipes) who is also larger-bodied than the average young woman seen in a mainstream comedy. We first meet her at auditions, where she is immediately misgendered. She doesn’t come out as gay to her chorus mates until towards the end of the movie, although we get “hints” to her sexuality via shots of her leering at or groping other women, or other characters making snide comments about her sexual orientation and/or gender presentation. The audition sequence where we meet Cynthia Rose also introduces Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), who embodies the stereotype of the quiet Asian girl through a running gag where she says disturbing things in a soft voice that none of the other characters are able to hear.

Although all of the characters are part of the same underdog team, mining tired caricatures for humor reifies divides in the group via racism and homophobia. And while Fat Amy transgresses stereotypes about fat women, she is straight and white, which within the world of the film, puts her in an uncriticizable position to make snarky comments about Cynthia Rose’s sexuality and other uncomfortable remarks at the expense of marginalized groups (e.g. a clunky improv moment referring to her hairstyle as an “Orthodox Jew ponytail”).

The “fat positive” aspects of Fat Amy’s depiction aren’t just positioned against other characters who don’t share her privileged social identities. Stacie’s (Alexis Knapp) function in the group as the humorously promiscuous Bella complicates the praise Pitch Perfect gets for showing Fat Amy’s active sex life. Stacie’s sexuality is coded as excessive, a joke that becomes the majority of her screen time, whether Aubrey is trying to get her to tone down her dance moves or she’s referring to her vagina as a “hunter.” However, we never see Stacie involved with anyone. Fat Amy, on the other hand, is shown in the company of two hunks on her spring break and also makes comments about her own sexual prowess. So why is the line drawn between Stacie and Fat Amy, where one’s sexuality is the butt of jokes and the other’s is an empowering aspect of her character? When we see Bumper (Adam Devine) flirting with Fat Amy and getting shot down or hear Fat Amy talk about how she joined the Bellas because she needed to step back from her busy love life, we see her defying the expectations that we have for fat girls in movies, the assumption that nobody will want to have sex with her or that she won’t have the confidence to approach someone. Stacie, however, is thin and normatively attractive. The audience expects that she has no shortage of willing sexual partners and doesn’t restrain herself in the way she is expected to; thus, she is deserving of ridicule. The inconsistency between how the two characters’ sex lives are valued demeans Stacie and condescends to Fat Amy.

As Pitch Perfect 2 is helmed by a female director and writer with some skin in the game (Elizabeth Banks, who is in a supporting role in both films, and Kay Cannon, who wrote the original), one might hope that the sequel would amend the issues in the original, perhaps by giving more screen time to find some depth in characters like Cynthia Rose and Lilly. Unfortunately, the franchise loses more feminist cred by doubling down on the cheap stereotypes. Cynthia Rose is still a source for jokes about lesbians creeping on straight women, Lilly is still the quiet Asian girl, and now Flo (Chrissie Fit) has joined the Bellas, a Latina woman whose every comment is about how harsh and dangerous her life was in her unspecified Latin American home country.

Even the progressive aspects of Fat Amy’s depiction in Pitch Perfect largely erode in the sequel. The opening sequence is perhaps the most telling, where Fat Amy experiences a costume malfunction during a performance at President Obama’s birthday gala and accidentally exposes her vulva to the TV cameras and the concert audience. Typical to a comedy film, the audience reacts with disgust and terror, some even running away. Although unintentional, her body is deemed excessive and the resulting outcry nearly destroys the Bellas.

A similar scene of disgust comes later in the film, where a romantic moment between Fat Amy and Bumper (Adam Devine) causes his friends to run away in order to avoid looking at the couple. (While Bumper isn’t as outside the normative range of bodies seen on-camera, he is larger-bodied than the other Treblemakers.) The plotline of their relationship doesn’t meet the standards of a romantic partner that Fat Amy sets in the first film, where she brushes off his advances (though she raises the eyebrows of the other Bellas by having his number in her phone). In Pitch Perfect 2, she and Bumper are hooking up. He asks her to date him officially with a romantic dinner; she initially turns him down, saying that she’s a “free range pony who can’t be tamed,” but eventually realizes that she’s in love with him (for no discernible reason) and wins him back with a rendition of Pat Benatar’s “We Belong.” The main conflict of Pitch Perfect is the competition between the Bellas and the Treblemakers, which sets up Fat Amy and Bumper as well-balanced adversaries, both confident and ambitious. Fat Amy disdains Bumper’s advances and flirts with aforementioned hunks; Bumper quits school for an opportunity to work for John Mayer. However, in the second film, former antagonist Bumper has been humbled, now working as a college security guard and desperately trying to hang on to his past glory days as a college a capella big shot. It is at this point that he becomes a suitable partner for Fat Amy.

In Pitch Perfect, the Bellas achieve a competitive edge by using Beca’s mash-up arrangements instead of more traditional medley formats in their performances. This works as an apt allegory for Pitch Perfect as feminist films: there are some welcome updates, but ultimately it’s the same song. It’s great to see a character whose fatness is a part of her identity without being a point of dehumanization, but the films try to make Fat Amy likable at the expense of other characters, positioning her as acceptably quirky, in contrast to the women of color, who are portrayed in a more two-dimensional manner, or Stacie, who is unacceptable due to her promiscuity. Ultimately, the underlying current of stereotype-based humor puts the film’s fat positivity in a dubious light, compounded by the erosion of Fat Amy’s status as kickass fat girl, as well as any thematic content about female friendship.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Pitch Perfect and Third Wave Feminism

Tessa Racked can be heard as a guest contributor to film podcasts including Directors Club and Tracks of the Damned, on the Now Playing Network. They are good at modern dance, olden dance, mermaid dancing, and peppering the Internet with cleverness. You can follow them on Twitter @tessa_racked.

Fatphobia and Fat Positivity: The Roundup

Fat, Black, and Desirable: Fat Positivity and Black Women by Chantell Monique

If these women aren’t seeing any positive images of themselves on screen, how are they able to construct an identity of truth? Even though they can rely on their community for positivity, if it’s not reinforced through media representation then it renders that support useless.

Invisible Fat Women on How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory by Stephanie Brown

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.

Fatphobia: What Daria Got Wrong by Maggie Slutzker

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.

Steven Universe: Many Dimensions of Fat Positivity by Stella DellaRosa

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.

What They Did Right in The Heat by Rhea Daniel

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.

16 and Healthy: My Mad Fat Diary Is Teen Girl Fat Positivity Gold by Ariana DiValentino

Parks and Recreation: How Fatphobia Is Invisible by Ali Thompson

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!

Shallow Hal: The Unexpected Virtue of Mockery by Brigit McCone

Its challenge to fatphobia is covered in fat jokes and gross-out humor, tailored to trigger our prejudices. We can laugh, if prepared to question why. We can sympathize, if braced against an awkwardly half-choked, giggling snort. Humor strikes faster than self-censorship.

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

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?”

The Foxy Merkins and the Uncharted Territory of the Fat, Lesbian Protagonist by Tessa Racked

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.

The Revolutionary Fatness of Steven Universe by Deborah Pless

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!”

The Fat Stardom of James Gandolfini by Sarah Smyth

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.

Sophie in Don Bluth’s Anastasia by Jackson Adler

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.

Geraldine Granger, the Vicar at Large: Fat Positivity in The Vicar of Dibley by Rachel Wortherley

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.

What Your Doctors Really Think About You: Fatphobia on Medical TV by Elizabeth Kiy

Fat bodies have a curious position in medical drama, reflecting the fatphobia existing within the medical profession. Doctors tend to assume weight always a cause rather than a symptom and overweight patients are either lazy, uneducated or poor. The wealthier we are, the more opportunity we have to strive for thinness. As a class, doctors are incredibly privileged, both highly educated and wealthy, they have the privilege of deciding to be thin that many of their patients do not.

The Revolutionary Fatness of ‘Steven Universe’

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.

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

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.

‘Steven Universe’: Many Dimensions of Fat Positivity

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.

Sophie in Don Bluth’s ‘Anastasia’

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.

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.

Call for Writers: Fatphobia/Fat Positivity

Negative depictions of fat people are the norm throughout all of pop culture. Though fatphobia crosses racial, gender, and class lines, audiences judge women the most harshly. Fat characters are frequently shown as disgusting, sad, or unlovable. In the horror genre, fatness is frequently represented as terrifying and unnatural. In comedies, fat bodies are often the source of humor. Though few and far between, there are a growing number of fat positive representations popping up throughout TV and film.

Our theme week for April 2015 will be Fatphobia/Fat Positivity.

Negative depictions of fat people are the norm throughout all of pop culture. Though fatphobia crosses racial, gender, and class lines, audiences judge women the most harshly. Fat characters are frequently shown as disgusting, sad, or unlovable like Chrissy Metz’s Barbara/”The Fat Lady” in American Horror Story: Freak Show or Darlene Cates’ Bonnie from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Fat people are often cast as the villains, their bodies being a symbol of excess, shame, and/or nonconformity–examples being Ursula from The Little Mermaid or Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. In the horror genre, fatness is frequently represented as terrifying and unnatural (Slither and Crazy Fat Ethel II). In some cases, fatness is a punishment like in Drop Dead Diva or Mean Girls.

In comedies, fat bodies are often the source of humor, such as Melissa McCarthy’s character Megan in Bridesmaids or pretty much anything starring Chris Farley. The deplorable practice of donning a fatsuit to get some laughs (Shallow Hal, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and all The Nutty Professor movies) seems to be on the rise.

Though few and far between, there are a growing number of fat positive representations popping up throughout TV and film. Though sometimes problematic, these examples show fat people as multifaceted human beings (Girls), sympathetic (Louie), heroines/heroes (Precious), sexy (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency), and/or funny because of who they are and not their bodies (Roseanne). Are these samples of fat positivity the beginning of a movement? Are they enough to change the prejudice and fatphobia inherent in Hollywood and our culture?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, April 24 by midnight.

Shallow Hal

Gilmore Girls

American Horror Story

Matilda

Bridget Jones’ Diary

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Tammy

Game of Thrones

Precious

South Park

Crazy Fat Ethel II

Louie

Tommy Boy

Roseanne

Drop Dead Diva

Bridesmaids

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Austin Powers: Goldmember

Enough Said

The Nutty Professor

Death Becomes Her

Broad City

Girls

The Little Mermaid

Mean Girls

Shrek

‘My Mad Fat Diary’ and Finding Fat-Positive Feminism

The best shows are the ones that are silly enough to make us laugh, but deep enough to make us think. ‘My Mad Fat Diary’ strikes this balance perfectly in ways that are both clever and heartbreaking. The series chronicles the life of Rae Earl (Sharon Rooney), a snarky yet painfully insecure overweight teen, as relayed in her diary after a brief stay in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt. She begins the slow process of adjusting to life back in the outside world, forming new friendships and battling old demons. As an added bonus, the show could be classified as the fetal equivalent of a period piece, taking place in the mid-90s.

My Mad Fat Diary title card. — *My Mad Fat Diary* title card.

Written by Erin Tatum.

The best shows are the ones that are silly enough to make us laugh, but deep enough to make us think. My Mad Fat Diary strikes this balance perfectly in ways that are both clever and heartbreaking. The series chronicles the life of Rae Earl (Sharon Rooney), a snarky yet painfully insecure overweight teen, as relayed in her diary after a brief stay in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt. She begins the slow process of adjusting to life back in the outside world, forming new friendships and battling old demons. As an added bonus, the show could be classified as the fetal equivalent of a period piece, taking place in the mid-90s. Expect a kickass soundtrack and lots of denim-on-denim. I can’t believe the decade of my childhood is now far enough away to be considered fair game for a period piece. Anyway, no matter how old you were, My Mad Fat Diary will make you giddy with nostalgia.

It’s unfortunately rare to see a show with a fat female protagonist, let alone a teen show. I find Sharon Rooney fascinating because she encapsulates all the contradictions in the media’s perception of plus-sized women. Many interviewers express surprise at how strikingly she contrasts to Rae–whereas Rae is a quintessential wallflower, shy and sulking in oversized T-shirts and baggy jeans, Rooney often wears dresses and substantial amounts of makeup. She has all the self-assurance that Rae longs for. Now approaching her mid-20s, Rooney has spoken candidly about being passed over for roles when she was younger, including the glamour-obsessed Skins franchise (which, although incorporating a few characters who weren’t stick-thin, curiously failed to feature any plus-sized characters in the main cast, despite two full cast changes and seven seasons). It’s telling and ironic that an actress as confident as Rooney got her big break playing a character whose raison d’être is a self-loathing fixation on her weight.

Featuring an ensemble cast–bizarrely ranging in age from 17 to pushing 30, but all supposed to be portraying 16- to 17-year-olds–the crux of the show centers around Rae struggling to overcome self-consciousness to achieve an normal social life. Rae is also unabashedly sex-crazed and makes no secret of her about her lustful fantasies in the pages of her diary. You’re compelled to laugh at Rae’s antics not because the notion of fat women’s desire in itself is humorous, but because her libido is so expansive and imaginative. Rae is even shown exploring masturbation (and enjoying it!), marking all of three times that I’ve seen female masturbation portrayed onscreen. Predictably for the teen genre, she equates normalcy to hitting various romantic and sexual milestones. She winds up giving herself her first orgasm. For all of her self-deprecation, Rae views sexual expression as well within her grasp (no pun intended), at least in the abstract.

Chloe is basically "the hot chick." — Chloe is basically “the hot chick.”

Rae’s childhood best friend Chloe (Jodie Comer) simultaneously embodies everything that Rae wishes she was with everything she knows she shouldn’t want to be. The audience is repeatedly beaten over the head with how thin, pretty, and popular Chloe is. Chloe’s perfect physique is the inspiration for many a gloomy monologue from Rae, with the latter taking every opportunity to lament her inadequacy by comparison. Chloe reinforces Rae’s inferiority complex through subtle backhanded compliments and putdowns, firmly cementing her status as more of a frenemy than a friend. She’s actually quite a recognizable character in that I think we’ve all tried to maintain some childhood friendships that were drifting apart, only to realize that you’ve become two totally different people. Unfortunately, the show has a tendency to pigeonhole Chloe as the bitch and intertwine that with slutiness to indicate a lack of self-respect and moral depravity. She has a clandestine affair with the sleazy married gym coach (of course) and appears to be making her rounds among the boys of the gang. We’re supposed to pity her desperation, but also feel entirely unsympathetic towards her for bringing it on herself. Since Chloe serves to highlight Rae’s naivete and innocence, her characterization falls a bit flat. On one hand, Rae and Chloe illustrate that self-esteem and body image issues exist all across the size spectrum. Chloe may have the advantage of thin privilege, but her insecurities still lead her to squander the resulting opportunities.

However, it makes me uncomfortable that we are still encouraged to demonize Chloe. Why? Because she’s promiscuous? Rae is just as sexual as she is, “experience” be damned. Because she’s two-faced? Rae spends most of the first season lying to almost everyone about almost everything. Because she’s mean to Rae? Rae frequently insults and slut-shames Chloe in her diary, especially when Chloe unknowingly begins to pursue Rae’s crush. All I’m saying is that it smacks too much of the obnoxious “I’m not like other girls” Manic Pixie exceptionalism mentality. Rae and Chloe aren’t as different as Rae would like us to think. The narrative shouldn’t be using Rae as a vehicle to tell the audience what bad femininity supposedly looks like. Much like Chloe, she doesn’t need to put other people down to validate her own perspective. She’s a worthy protagonist in her own right. The whole idea of the plain Jane underdog is completely pointless if it merely flips the social hierarchy.

(Significant series 2 spoilers ahead)

Rae and Finn grow closer throughout the first season.

Despite some bumps in the road, Rae integrates with the gang and even starts a budding romance with softhearted bad boy Finn (Nico Mirallegro, my future husband, packing enough eyebrow game to kill a man). The opening scene of the second season cuts straight to the point and shows Finn fingering Rae. A sex scene between two teenagers focused exclusively on female pleasure, imagine that. Rae continues to grapple with poor self-image, exacerbated by the start of school. Her nagging anxieties force her to confront her biggest fear – how Finn, a traditionally attractive boy, could ever want to be with someone as allegedly undesirable as her. It’s definitely hard to watch her go through all the same triggering things over and over, but I guess that’s true to life when you’re dealing with lifelong psychological scars. She seems to be teetering on sabotaging her own happiness. After all the trials and tribulations of last year, it’s depressing to think of her stability as a flash in the pan. A mysterious new boy looks to be shaping up as a new love interest, because apparently a love triangle is mandatory to signify a female character’s ascension into Everygirl Protagonist territory. Barf. Romantic angst is the last thing Rae needs. Body insecurities and fear of vulnerability also prevent Rae from going all the way with Finn. On that note, I can’t think of a show that objectifies male characters as much as My Mad Fat Diary objectifies Finn. We don’t usually see the adolescent girl gaze and it’s really refreshingly weird.

Ultimately, fat-positive shows remain evasive. My Mad Fat Diary certainly has its pros and cons. Rae is indeed a smart, likeable plus-sized protagonist. Still, the message persists that self-acceptance for fat people (and fat women in particular) is only accessible by way of obligatory despair, self-hatred, and the need for constant outside validation. Hands down, Rae’s biggest obstacle is not the the prejudice of others, but her own internalized toxic mentality. It’s almost as if Rae has to admit society has broken her umpteen times before finally settling in to a niche of lukewarm tolerance. Give her some degree of agency, for fuck’s sake. The perpetual broken bird routine is wearing thin. Why can’t she just be allowed to like who she is? Rae appears to be challenging herself with that same question.

My Mad Fat Diary is a fun step in the right direction, but it still has a long way to go.