Written by Jenny Lapekas
I’m a 90’s kid, and I can vividly remember watching Disney’s Heavy Weights (Steven Brill, 1995) and cracking up over Ben Stiller’s performance as the deranged Tony Perkis. Stiller’s hysterical role as Perkis is clearly an early preface to his infamous role as White Goodman in Dodgeball (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004), a film that contains the same elements of fat-shaming and the subversive power of owning your own happiness. Brill’s film examines fat culture and American boyhood, a theme I don’t think we see enough in mainstream film today (more recently, see The Kings of Summer [Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2013]). When we invest ourselves in the cinematic experience of growing up as a boy in America, audiences can better understand how young boys relate to girls, and how gender expectations are developed and executed amongst characters who are attempting to become comfortable in their own bodies–a task many adults are still mastering. This Disney film provides this binary, along with plenty of campers who simply won’t be defeated due to their plus-size status.
Co-written by Judd Apatow, Heavy Weights contains many elements that are signature of his trademark humor, filtered by the film’s friendly Disney rating. However, the narrative flirts with solemn issues surrounding body image, gender relations, and American adolescence. Upon meeting, Roy (the still very funny “fat kid” Kenan Thompson) tells Gerry that at fat camp, “everybody’s the fat kid.” The camp allows the boys to avoid the stigmatization associated with obesity, which often results in bullying and issues with self-esteem. Here, we see boys rather than girls being fat-shamed and pressured to lose weight. In fact, in the opening scene, Gerry’s father refers to his son’s weight as a “problem” they need to “nip in the bud.”
Although Gerry’s fat and he knows it, he still claims he doesn’t want to spend his summer with “a bunch of fat loads”–pointing up the idea that even overweight people are quick to point to other “fat loads” as being undesirable company. The central idea behind the movie seems to be a male version of the 2010 ABC television series Huge (2010), developed by Winnie Holzman, who also created the amazing series My So-Called Life (1994-1995), starring Hairspray’s (Adam Shankman, 2007) plus-sized Nikki Blonsky. The show’s Camp Victory is akin to the Camp Hope we find in Heavy Weights, both names implying that obesity is a problem that must be solved. While Huge only lasted one season, and I was never a viewer since I found its previews to be alienating and overzealous, I’m assuming that Camp Victory was not governed by a fitness lunatic attempting to profit from child obesity.
The only woman of any importance we see throughout the film is Julie (Leah Lail), the camp nurse and love interest of long-time camper and counselor, Pat (Tom McGowan). Pat has the boys’ best interests in mind as he encourages them to adopt a healthier lifestyle rather than determining their identities according to their weight and ages, as Tony does. What strikes any vigilant, feminist viewer is that there are no portrayals of fat women in Heavy Weights either–provided, yes, it is a boys’ camp, but Pat’s girlfriend is a petite redhead, who merely serves as a prop to prove that a beautiful, thin woman can love chubby, run-of-the-mill Pat. Due to this noticeable absence, and after watching the film about a dozen times, I’m still mildly surprised to see a dance filled with beautiful young girls, along with our socially awkward bunch at Camp Hope.
“Tony’s arranged a dance with the girls’ camp so he can humiliate us into losing weight,” Gerry writes in a letter to his grandmother. The girls are visibly agitated, and body weight rests at the forefront in this scene. When one girl snaps, “Why don’t those guys just lose weight?” another girl quickly retorts, “Why don’t you tell them how to throw up after meals like you do?” This fleeting exchange points up the idea that these girls–and many girls and women like them everywhere–are no better than the boys of Camp Hope. Indeed, the negative feminine archetype highlighted here is one of denial and joylessness, yet the tone of this dance scene is comedic, not tragic. While bulimia is obviously no joking matter, Heavy Weights crystallizes the preference for a fulfilling life that includes go-carting, summer friendships, and yes, food, as opposed to an existence that’s based on appearances, defensiveness, and self-loathing. After Tony abruptly ends the dance after he sees that he’s failed at embarrassing the boys, he tells the girls, “I appreciate your efforts–I know this hasn’t been easy,” meaning that this group of girls is far too attractive to have any degree of fun with “a bunch of fat loads.”
While Tony advocates dangerous methods of fitness and weight loss, and represents many unattainable ideals in America, we laugh because he’s a harebrained caricature of that gym teacher we had in school, the family member we must deal with, or the misinformed fitness fanatic who can never get enough. I’m almost tempted to brand him an “anti-hero” because, quite honestly, I want to see him succeed. Combined with a balanced diet, we could all benefit from some Perkisizing.
What’s entertaining about Stiller’s dramatic character is that he’s essentially starving his new campers as the new owner of Camp Hope, while any sensible person knows that abstaining from eating actually encourages the human body to store fat so that it can survive. I think what also makes this film easy to laugh at is the fact that both our campers and villain are males. Just like my last post on Deuce Bigalow, I’ve spent maybe a bit too much time wondering how this movie would work if the protagonist and other cast members were predominantly female, or if it would work at all. Would our girl campers be caught eating fast food in the bathroom stalls like we see in Heavy Weights, or would we observe them sticking their fingers down their throats?
So, although 20 years old, does this Disney film reinforce today’s stereotypes about fat culture? Sure, it does. Fat people are jolly and likable while those who are beautiful with glistening abs of steel are shallow, like the boys’ rival camp across the lake, Camp MVP; thus, the stereotypes attached to those who are “fit” are equally damning and ridiculous. The film’s exclusion of women is not what I would call offensive, however. The marked absence of women by no means amounts to sexism on the parts of Apatow or Brill. Heavy Weights does not purport to be a feminist masterpiece, but it’s certainly not anti-feminist either; rather, it offers the idea that fat-shaming does not discriminate based on sex, gender, or age.
We can appreciate that the film’s message is not to lose weight if you are unhappy with your body. Instead, you should be mindful of nutrition, exercise, and a healthful lifestyle. Indeed, Gerry’s mother is happy to hear that her son “feels good,” while “he looks the same,” according to his mildly disappointed father. Although Heavy Weights focuses exclusively on childhood obesity in boys, this theme reflects on girls as well, and the female campers we meet are placed within the narrative to illustrate the quintessential boyhood issues–typically overshadowed by girlhood studies–of gaining and maintaining self-confidence, discovering one’s body, and navigating how to interact with the opposite sex, through the lens that identity, both adult and adolescent, is mistakenly constructed from digesting the bullshit fed to us by a body-obsessed culture.
Recommended reading: What’s Wrong with Fat-Shaming?
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Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on Pinterest and WordPress.