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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?”
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.
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!”
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
“Only a man this shallow could fall in love this deep.”
Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.
We are bad at multitasking empathy. When moved by Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning struggle with his stammer in The King’s Speech, you don’t want to recall cackling at Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. As you congratulate yourself for noticing the rather obvious sexiness of Emmy-winning Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, you’d prefer to forget laughing at Verne Troyer in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. It’s more comfortable having your heart warmed by the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, if you ignore that your ribs were tickled by Me, Myself and Irene. It’s easier to feel good about sympathizing with Jared Leto’s Oscar-winning trans heroine in Dallas Buyers Club, if you blank the comedy stripping of Sean Young’s trans villain inAce Ventura: Pet Detective. The result is that neither gross-out comedy nor award-winning pathos seriously challenges its audience’s comfort; the comedy, because we’re never asked to sympathize, and the Oscar-bait, because we’re never tempted to mock. In 2001’sShallow Hal, the Farrelly Brothers took Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow, dressed her in a comical fat suit and demanded sympathy. The result was downright uncomfortable, and I loved it.
Shallow Hal comes with no genre cues or award endorsements to aid in compartmentalizing our empathy. 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. The film has the boundless bad taste to remind viewers of their shallowness while daring to make them feel bad about it. The result can be a jarring viewing experience, provoking Rolling Stones‘ critic Peter Travers to declare “something condescending, not to mention hypocritical, about asking an audience to laugh uproariously at the spectacle of a fat person being sneered at and dissed as “rhino” or “hippo” or “holy cow,” and then to justify those laughs by saying it’s society’s fault.” Yet, is it truly hypocritical to remind an audience that they’re hypocritical?
The moment we see Jack Black’s Hal and Jason Alexander’s Mauricio hitting on “hotties,” the audience’s instinctive reaction is that they are too short and overweight to be justified in their shallowness. Hal is hypnotized into seeing inner beauty, and the hotties in fat suits and ugly cosmetics are utterly transformed into hotties without fat suits and ugly cosmetics. This premise allows Shallow Hal to become a forensic deconstruction of the fat joke. Do crushed chairs and giant meals remain funny, if acted by slim Gwyneth Paltrow? Or is it only the fat body that’s funny?
Many critics have pointed out that Shallow Hal uses tired, conventional fat jokes, without acknowledging how deliberately it targets thin bodies with those jokes. Left to imagine the fat body of Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) only from bystander reactions and glimpsed body parts, we build a mental image of something hyperbolically monstrous. When Rosemary’s fat self is finally revealed, it is not to be mocked, but to relieve Hal and expose society’s dysmorphia. Of course, the Farrellys can’t control the audience’s response, only confront it. As Katherine Murray says of Chasing Amy and Dollhouse: “the power and relevance of both of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that – the discomfort and uncertainty of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that.”
Paltrow’s sympathetic performance blends spiky defensiveness and vulnerability. Seeing such low self-esteem in a slim, blonde “hottie,” Hal perceives it as “cuckoo.” Of course, it should be equally cuckoo for a fat woman to suffer pointlessly lower quality of life because of irrational stigma. Separating the body and the stigma raises interesting questions. Would it still be a dream to date Paltrow’s slender blonde, if onlookers reacted with the same judging, mocking and disbelieving scrutiny applied to obese girlfriends? Where Louie‘s “So Did The Fat Lady” wallows in the pathos of a fat lady that men won’t hold hands with in public, Shallow Hal questions whether men would feel comfortable publicly holding hands with Gwyneth Paltrow, if she were associated with lower status rather than higher. Or are they, actually, more shallow than Shallow Hal?
Hair-raising trials
Hal progresses through each hurdle of deconstructed shallowness, from defying public judgment to accepting Rosemary’s body in its real form, with “love grows where my Rosemary goes, and nobody knows but me” becoming his anthem of social defiance. Shallow assumptions that short, overweight Hal is ridiculous for chasing girls “out of his league” are equally challenged. Hal can attract conventional “hotties” once his desire is proved more than superficial; it’s just that then he doesn’t want them. Shallow Hal joins gross-out classic There’s Something About Mary, and the non-FarrellyDeuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, as a romcom that dares to demand of men: “what is it about you that makes you deserve the girl?” It puts its hero through a trial of worth, without the usual, unquestioned entitlement to date whatever hottie the script provides (*cough* Forgetting Sarah Marshall). In There’s Something About Mary, a range of men try to seduce Cameron Diaz’s “hottie” using farcical exaggerations of classic wooing tactics: Matt Dillon’s sleazy Healy eavesdrops to discover and embody all her fantasies, Lee Evans’ emotionally blackmailing Tucker fakes a disability and an English accent to out-vulnerable the most vulnerable Hugh Grant fop, Chris Elliott’s stalking Dom manifests a passion so intense and persistent that it brings him out in hives, and hunky Brett Favre combines athleticism, wealth and fame. But it is only Ben Stiller’s continually humiliated Ted who, while making every technical error imaginable, loves Mary enough to place her happiness above his own desires, meaning he alone passes the film’s trial.
Conversely, the clients of Deuce Bigalow are farcical exaggerations of female anxieties: the narcoleptic fails society’s demand for women to be attentive; Amy Poehler’s Tourette’s violates expectations of ladylike behavior; the giantess is manly and intimidating; Fluisa is obese and unfit. Only by honoring the humanity and femininity of each of these extreme archetypes, and passing the final test of fully accepting his “hottie” girlfriend’s prosthetic limb, can Deuce prove himself worthy to be accepted and loved in his turn, as a flawed being. The shockingly honest self-scrutiny in gross-out comedy is one of the genre’s central pleasures. Farrelly Brothers movies are elevated above mean-spirited imitators (*cough* Norbit) by their dedication to conjuring and confronting anxieties on a path to purification. Though I didn’t include the Farrellys’ crude and absurdist Me, Myself And Irene in my survey of cinematic portraits of psychosis, and though it was slammed by mental health organizations, I must admit the film recognizes the psychosis of Jim Carrey’s Charlie Baileygates as his own responsibility, while allowing him to be a romantic and sexual being, which is as rare as it is refreshing. Since my psychotic break was flamboyant, I appreciate the Farrelly Brothers’ defiance of the respectability politics that plague mental health activism, just as Shallow Hal acknowledges and even exaggerates Rosemary’s overeating, while still challenging her dehumanization.
Rene Kirby as Walt
Crucially, Shallow Hal does not confine itself to the hypothetical thought experiment of imagining conventionally attractive actors as obese or cosmetically ugly, but introduces genuinely nonconforming bodies, including launching the acting career of Rene Kirby in a prominent supporting role. This tactic confronts viewers with the humanity behind the metaphor. Think of the audiences who empathized with Boris Karloff’s cosmetic monster in Frankenstein, but were appalled by the genuinely nonconforming bodies of Tod Browning’s career-destroying Freaks. Shallow Hal dares to sit Frankenstein and the real “freaks” at the same table, where all are celebrated as “one of us.” Does its casual conflation of fatphobia and ableism disturb some fat acceptance activists? The intense identification with nonconforming bodies that gay director James Whale showed in Frankenstein, or Oscar Wilde showed in “The Birthday of the Infanta,” faded from the camp aesthetic as gay rights advanced. The identification with Frankenstein shown by crossdressing director/star Ed Wood inGlen or Glenda, and transgender creator/star Richard O’Brien inThe Rocky Horror Picture Show, is fading from today’s trans* rights movement. Is the fat acceptance movement fighting to end body stigma, or merely to separate fat bodies from that stigma? Must every step of progress be accompanied by an act of exclusion?
The 1948 “race film” (that is, a Jim Crow era film with an African American cast, targeting African American audiences), Boarding House Blues, opens with Dusty Fletcher bringing a capering monkey into the boarding house to join his act. The monkey claims Dusty’s bed and forces him to sleep on the floor. It also bears a remarkable resemblance to King Louie, who would be talking jive and aping Louis Armstrong as the beloved “King of the Swingers” in Disney’s 1967The Jungle Book, fully 42 years before 2009’s The Princess and the Frog introduced Disney’s first Black princess (and, despite its jazz-age New Orleans setting, had less of Armstrong’s sound in its Randy Newman score than the ape did in 1967). It is uncomfortable to watch “King Louie” side by side with Dusty Fletcher, as it is uncomfortable to see Gwyneth Paltrow’s fake stigma side by side with Rene Kirby. It becomes even more uncomfortable when “King Louie” removes his head and reveals that he is another African American man, forced into a monkey suit to hustle a living. Good. Let’s be uncomfortable about that.
Erasure is too often the politically correct alternative to discomfort. By cutting blackface and Stepin Fetchit routines from classic films, we retain the sentimentalized self-image of racists, while erasing uncomfortably visible reminders of their racism (and groundbreaking African American stars, as collateral damage). Boarding House Blues also stars Moms Mabley, a middle-aged woman (and the major pioneer of stand-up comedy, whose taboo-busting routines were tamed for film). Today, her role would be played by Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry in drag and a rubber fat suit. How would Murphy’s Rasputia hold the screen against Mabley’s real deal? Doesn’t the safety of our laughter at Rasputia depend on Mabley’s substitution? One more star of Boarding House Blues deserves attention: Crip Heard. Crip is a dancer with one arm and one leg. Entering on a crutch, he tosses that crutch aside with a flourish and dances unaided. It is hard to imagine this celebration of Crip’s resilient body appearing in even the blaxploitation film of the 1970s, let alone the modern mainstream. Where could Crip dance today? If you’re honest, you know the answer: in a Farrelly Brothers movie.
There is no question that fatphobia is a vile, irrational and bullying stigma. But the commonly repeated mantra that it is the “last acceptable prejudice” is demonstrably untrue. From physical disability to mental illness to trans* status, there are numerous acceptable prejudices in today’s comedies. As Kathleen LeBesco points out, the Farrelly Brothers have “more than any mainstream moviemakers working today, fought hard against the devices of concealment, cosmetic action, and motivated forgetting, and as a result thrown into question the reassurance that public bodies are flawless bodies.” The runner-up? Jackass, of course. So, are we ready to embrace the anarchic Farrelly vision of squirming confrontation and broad-based solidarity? Or must our body politics become respectability politics?
Brigit McCone admits to having a thing for Jack Black and Rob Schneider. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and terrible dancing in the privacy of her own home.
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.
