Here Are The Media Depictions Of Fatness That Are Beyond Tired, As Well As The Ones That Show There's Still Hope

“Fat Monica is always doing a stupid dance, pulling a face, and spilling food. Then when she's Monica, she’s more together. It’s always played for laughs," director Jeanie Finlay told BuzzFeed.

We know that long-term weight loss is incredibly rare. We know that there are almost 60 different types of obesity (and that the term "obese" itself is outdated). We know weight is a pretty bad measure of health. Despite this, fatness is often seen as a pejorative in media.

20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection

The documentary Your Fat Friend, directed by Jeanie Finlay, follows fat activist, writer, and Maintenance Phase cohost Aubrey Gordon over six years of her life. It's a striking and gorgeous film that goes against a lot of what we've seen depicted on screen about fat people.

Jeanie Finlay / Via youtube.com

So, BuzzFeed sat down with its director, Jeanie Finlay, to talk all about some of the biggest media tropes about fat people:

1.

Warner Bros

Jeanie said, “There is this tendency, particularly in older films, that the fat friend is the funny sidekick who is the emotional midwife to the thin or conventionally attractive lead character. The fat friend is usually someone that's on the outskirts, the entertainer, the periphery of vision. They're not the star billing. Their size is always commented on. There’s an understanding that the fat friend lives on the outskirts, and that their weight is probably something to do with that.”

One of the first characters that Jeanie remembered seeing that fell under this trope was Jan in Grease: “They're constantly going on about how fat she is!” Another one that came to mind was “Fat Monica” in Friends. As Jeanie put it, “[She’s] always doing a stupid dance, pulling a face, and spilling food. Then when she's Monica, she’s more together. It’s always played for laughs.”

Of course, Jeanie’s documentary is called Your Fat Friend, the name that Aubrey used to write under. “I think it's interesting that a lot of people have misread the title, and lots of people think it's called My Fat Friend," Jeanie told BuzzFeed. "I think [Aubrey’s pen name] is a good name because it makes you think about the things that your friend may not have told you, or the things that they're really thinking about, rather than the assumptions about 'my fat friend.'"

2.

Fox

“The trope with the formerly fat person is that they have this makeover that is 100% positive,” Jeanie explained. “It’s always, Oh my God, it's the secret past where they weren't this hot iteration that you're seeing now” — such as Schmidt’s "secret fat past" in New Girl.

On the note of the Netflix series Insatiable, Jeanie said, “Insatiable is a really terrible example of [this trope], because the myth that it presents is that fat people are always a before photograph, that there is going to be a fantasy future where they will step into their full potential. That until they lose the weight and become ‘conventionally attractive,’ they haven’t reached their potential. I find it really sad. The characters that I love watching are people who very much live in the present tense and seem very in their bodies right now. They feel good about who they are, and there isn't a need for a makeover.”

3.

A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

“I think that The Whale is the pinnacle of the fat body as disgust. I love Brendan Fraser, and I want him to get all his flowers for his long career,” Jeanie said. “There was only one way to read that film, for me. We're being told that he's pathetic, out of control, sad, and lonely. Why would anyone love me? There's no other way of reading the way that his life is presented. All the hand-wringing discussion of what dignity was given to the role was rubbish.” 

Noting Aubrey’s writing on fat suits, she continued, “I think it perpetuates the idea that fatness is just something you can put on and take off. It's just a costume. It also extends into the idea of fatness as evil.” 

On the note of the awards-baiting that can ensue, Jeanie later said, "There is a special something that happens in a lot of those sort of Oscar-bait movies where actors are trying to enact the biggest sort of transformation. Acting ‘ugly’ or adopting a disability for the role. But what do they do to the communities that have been depicted? What's the lasting legacy and harm connecting in the minds of audiences?” 

She continued, “A lot of what Aubrey is trying to do in her work is to try and unravel the cultural reading of fatness, that they're unlovable or lazy, or have no willpower, or just eat too much. Like in The Whale, there are all of those scenes of him ordering an enormous amount of food, gorging, and engaging in binge eating disorder. There is an assumption that all fat people are fat because they engage in binge eating disorder, but that is certainly not the case.”

4.

Dan Smith / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Jeanie brought up a clip of Olivia Colman in 2022, where she discussed her character in Wonka. Olivia said at the time, “I played an evil person, which was really fun, with Tom Davis who was my evil chum. So I had a big fat suit. He’s really tall, and I was short and dumpy, with a great big fat suit, so we looked like a classic evil pair. That was brilliant.”

While Jeanie said that she loved Olivia’s work, she noted that her comments and much of Roald Dahl’s work “play into the ideal” of fatness as evil. “It's just very boring,” Jeanie said. “It feels lazy to me that you want to play an evil character, then you reach for the fat suit and the scar makeup.”

She continued, “This is epitomized in the Harry Potter films. The family that Harry lives with, they're slovenly, they're greedy. If you read the books, there's constant descriptions of their fatness, and it's absolutely intrinsically linked to their evilness.”

5.

Universal / Courtesy Everett Collection

The average American woman wears around a size 16 to 18. Despite this, far-below-average women have often been cast as the “chubby” or "fat" character whose weight is constantly commented on. Two that Jeanie mentioned included the titular role in Bridget Jones's Diary and Natalie in Love Actually — ”they constantly go on about her fat thighs,” Jeanie said of the latter. “It's like being gaslit. It’s a weird, upside down hall of mirrors.”

6.

Jeanie Finlay

This is more of a trope in the way that we see people on screen. Things like lighting, camera angles, or even VFX can all be used to make a person look thinner or fatter in ways that we don’t even notice as viewers. “I thought a lot about the ways in which I've seen fat bodies on screen,” Jeanie remarked, looking back on her nine feature films. “In my own experience as a filmmaker, there's usually a point either during the filming or in the edit where people comment on how fat they look. There's an idea that, Oh, you gave me the fat lighting. Or people start moving cameras and making restrictions on where I can film them from. Or there is a self-consciousness: Don't put the camera there because I'll look fat.”

She continued, “[What Aubrey] said very clearly from the beginning was there isn't a bad angle. ‘What are you going to do, make me look more fat? I don't care. You can put the camera anywhere,’” Jeanie recalled. “She wasn't going to have to be made up and ready. It could be real. And I thought about filming her body with real tenderness and showing the body in closeup.”

“If you think that fat is bad, if you think that fat is a terrible thing, rather than just the same as blonde or tall, a neutral descriptive word, you keep the camera at angles that are ‘flattering.’ If you completely sever yourself from the idea that fat is bad, then you can put the camera anywhere,” Jeanie concluded. 

Of course, it's not all negative representation.

20thcentfox / Courtesy Everett Collection

Jeanie said, "I absolutely love Spy. Melissa McCarthy, because she's a woman, because she's fat, because she has played some of the fat best friend roles, I think she's sidelined a bit. She's amazing. I think she's just an absolutely brilliant actress, hilarious. And really sexy and smart. She has great chemistry with people on screen."

Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Jeanie continued, "The queen of acting at the moment, a fat lady who is always just center stage in everything she does, is Da'Vine Joy Randolph from The Holdovers. She’s amazing in The Idol and Only Murders in the Building. Apart from just being a dynamite actress, she is just herself, and there's no comment made about her fatness. It's not a storyline; she just gets to be a whole person. That’s where we want to get to."

Elsewhere on her list of fat icons, Jeanie said, "I would say that Miss Piggy is a perennial icon. I went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, and they've got one of the original Miss Piggys there in a bridal costume."

Mike Coppola / Getty Images

"I really, really love Harvey Guillén from What We Do in the Shadows. He's great in that show, but also the way that he presents himself outside of the shows — have you seen some of his fashion shoots that he's done? They are pretty good! Very fat positive, great fashion, and an actor I want to see more of," Jeanie said.

"It's interesting in Shrill because the main character in that is obviously Aidy Bryant who's hilarious. But for me, the star of that show is Lolly Adefope. She's the queen in that show. She's brilliant because she's super confident, and she knows who she is in the present tense. She’s given space to be herself."

BBC

In the UK, Jeanie further highlighted Nessa from Gavin & Stacey and Alison Hammond from This Morning. She continued, "Jayde Adams was in the British show Alma’s Not Normal and Strictly Come Dancing. She caused a sensation by doing the Flashdance and allowing her thighs to be seen in public. I know that I didn't show my arms for years. And then there was a point in my life where I sort of realized, What is going to happen if someone sees my arms? I don't care."

Jeanie added, "With all of these characters, there is this understanding that you would never comment on their size or propose the idea that they are a work in progress. They've already arrived. That's what I want for more representation. For it to not be commented on all the time."

Jeanie and Aubrey will be touring Your Fat Friend in various theaters around the UK in January and February.

Note: Quotes have been condensed for length and clarity.