There's no doubt about it—the representation of marginalized people onscreen has vastly improved over the past decade. These days, we get to have Quinta Brunson pulling at our heartstrings as an earnest and overworked public school teacher, Michelle Yeoh kicking ass as a multiverse-bending superhero, and Billy Porter as the genderless fairy godmother of our dreams. Which is why it's such a disappointment that in one arena, there's been a marked lack of progress: body diversity.
With a few rare exceptions, the most visible depictions of fat bodies on television and film position them as slovenly, incompetent, or objects of mockery and pity. Often, those depictions don't even include actual fat people. Instead, they use thinner actors in fat suits to perform roles that further the idea that fat bodies are to be ridiculed.
At the end of 2022, there were two major films in which characters don fat suits. Both star well-loved actors: Brendan Fraser in The Whale and Emma Thompson in Matilda the Musical. In the first, Brenan plays a 600-pound man who is largely confined to his couch—a role that may earn him a Golden Globe on Tuesday night. In the second, Thompson plays Matilda's domineering villain, Miss Trunchbull. Both associate fatness with misery and disgust, casting bigger bodies as a moral failing.
Frankly, after years of these tired depictions—from Courteney Cox on Friends to Max Greenfield on New Girl—it's time to say it: Actors who wear fat suits on film should be subject to the same scrutiny and condemnation as those who have or continue to appear in blackface. And while it may seem like a stretch to compare the two, there is overlap in their social functions: to mock and diminish people who are already marginalized to begin with. It begs the question: Why do we continue to heap acclaim on actors wearing fat suits when we know that stories about any group of people should include buy-in from them?
There's no doubt about it—the representation of marginalized people onscreen has vastly improved over the past decade. These days, we get to have Quinta Brunson pulling at our heartstrings as an earnest and overworked public school teacher, Michelle Yeoh kicking ass as a multiverse-bending superhero, and Billy Porter as the genderless fairy godmother of our dreams. Which is why it's such a disappointment that in one arena, there's been a marked lack of progress: body diversity.
With a few rare exceptions, the most visible depictions of fat bodies on television and film position them as slovenly, incompetent, or objects of mockery and pity. Often, those depictions don't even include actual fat people. Instead, they use thinner actors in fat suits to perform roles that further the idea that fat bodies are to be ridiculed.
At the end of 2022, there were two major films in which characters don fat suits. Both star well-loved actors: Brendan Fraser in The Whale and Emma Thompson in Matilda the Musical. In the first, Brenan plays a 600-pound man who is largely confined to his couch—a role that may earn him a Golden Globe on Tuesday night. In the second, Thompson plays Matilda's domineering villain, Miss Trunchbull. Both associate fatness with misery and disgust, casting bigger bodies as a moral failing.
Frankly, after years of these tired depictions—from Courteney Cox on Friends to Max Greenfield on New Girl—it's time to say it: Actors who wear fat suits on film should be subject to the same scrutiny and condemnation as those who have or continue to appear in blackface. And while it may seem like a stretch to compare the two, there is overlap in their social functions: to mock and diminish people who are already marginalized to begin with. It begs the question: Why do we continue to heap acclaim on actors wearing fat suits when we know that stories about any group of people should include buy-in from them? |
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Yep, you read that right. |
| He thinks his son crossed all kinds of lines. |
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| You actually know her.... |
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It's not nearly as complicated as some other families on television.... |
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They are quite familiar with each other. |
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