Fatphobic Tendencies In the Media and Their Impact
CW: Mention of eating disorders
How many times have you seen a character in a movie, who fits the societal definition of “fat” and goes through a weight loss transformation that finally earns them love and respect and makes their life perfect? I’ve personally seen it countless times and I’m kinda over it.
Movies are meant to portray real-life and, sadly I must admit that this fat-phobic trope is something very common in our society. People who are seen as “fat” by society are always pitied upon and thought to be miserable. The other day I was watching Bridget Jones’s Diary for the first time. I always had the idea that this movie was good because people LOVED it! It is currently certified as 80% fresh according to Rotten Tomatoes. I was far from amused after watching it. Although it was fun to watch, it was also plainly problematic. Throughout the movie, we see a weight-centric narrative in which the main character’s mood swings and relationships vary around the number of the scale. Not only that, but the main character emphasizes her need to lose weight in order to find a partner. In Avengers: Endgame, we see Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, wearing what seems to be a fat suit. Thor’s arc in the movie bases itself on him being depressed after the events of Infinity War (Marvel fans will get it). In order to portray his depression, they change his personality to a “funny” one and show him drinking and eating his worries away. There is nothing inherently negative about emotional eating. However, using a fat suit to portray a man as depressed creates a harmful correlation between the two since one does not equal the other. I do not think these movies meant any harm. It is easy to craft a weight-centered narrative when a lot of society’s time is spent criticizing each other’s bodies and habits and selling thinness as an image of perfect life and happiness.
Then, we have actors such as Jonah Hill who have stepped out and comfortably talked about his issues with body image which have stemmed from “years of public mockery” by the press and interviewers as he expressed in a recent Instagram post. I admire people like him for being vulnerable about their experience with being uncomfortable with a taboo topic that makes so many people feel unseen. At the end of the day, the problem is not if someone else’s body is bigger or not. The problem is years and years of society praising a highly unattainable idea of what a body should look like. Diet culture is an industry that profits off of insecurities and comparison; therefore of course it is beneficial to a $72 billion industry to maintain crazy standards and provoke hatred and guilt towards looking a certain way. It is interesting to see how we, as a society, have been misguided by advertisements and marketing to think a diet will solve most of our problems when in reality statistics show that 97% of the time diets fail and people even end up gaining weight they lost back. This is because diet culture does not care about helping you achieve your healthiest self. Diet culture cares about your money and how it benefits them. Diet culture also causes significant harm to people’s mental health with eating disorders. Around 9% of the U.S. population will experience some type of eating disorder in their lifetime. That’s 28.8 million Americans. It’s time to put an end to this and the media’s impact can play a hugely beneficial role in doing so.
The media should altogether stop portraying fat people as a problem to be fixed and should start to represent their stories in a truthful manner. Movies should stop crafting stories around a weight-centric narrative. Tabloids should stop publicly shaming celebrities’ bodies. Celebrity news outlets should start shifting the conversation on celebrities’ perceived “flaws” towards body neutrality commentaries. The fatphobic trope of weight loss as the only way to attain happiness should have ended a long time ago. Happiness is not attained by losing a part of yourself through diets based on self-hate and insecurities. Happiness is attained by accepting altogether that one is beautiful no matter shape, size, race, ethnic background, or disability. Representation matters and it is time to start showing that in the media.
