What representation of fat people on the screen?

The representation of fat people on the screen seems to be more complex than it seems. In his documentary Marie's big life, journalist Marie de Brauer, who was our editor for a day, spoke on the subject. She mentioned the lack of representation of fat people on the screen. We wanted to develop the subject with it and consider the way in which pop culture has often left fat people aside, making them difficult to see or in a simplistic way.

An invisibilisation of fat people

When you grow up without being able to identify with those who are represented on the screen, accepting yourself becomes difficult. If today, we see an effort on the part of the current series to make the programs inclusive and to represent the maximum of all identities, fat people still struggle to find their accounts. Marie de Brauer denounces a lack of balance in this representation: "Either fat people are not visible at all, or when you see them it is with a lot of pictures." she tells us.

To explain his point, Marie de Brauer evokes the successful series Brooklyn 99. If she praises the inclusiveness and the social issues that this television program deals with, she regrets seeing fat and very stereotypical characters: "This series is great because we have a black character, very muscular but who is feminist. We have a homosexual character but who does not represent an archetype of this sexual orientation. On the other hand, the overweight characters are fat bacons who spend their days eating, napping all day long, do not know how to work and are stupid … All the worst shots we can have in a series are served by the big characters. While the rest of Brooklyn 99 is pretty good on the treatment of the other characters. ”

Then there is the eternal problem posed by Monica's weight in Friends, this disguise worn by actress Courteney Cox for example and the way the character is portrayed: during her adolescence, she was the good friend who spends her time eating. The cinema has not been deprived either with films like Big mama which, in the end, makes the body of fat people ugly. A vision “Absurd, sad and horrible” according to Marie.

A totally distorted representation on the screen

The clichés therefore remain stubborn today. The least tiring but to banish remains this image according to which fat people are“The good friends who make the gallery laugh” as Marie de Brauer mentions. But to his greatest regret, a fat person is very rarely the main role of a story, the one who will know a great love story or inspire the viewer for example.

Then there’s the way it’s all about weight when you see a big character on the screen. And women suffer more: "Often, we will discover a fat woman and everything will revolve around her physique: she must lose weight or she can seduce the popular guy from high school despite his morphology. This is sad because it is not the reality of things and, above all, it does not help fat people to feel more visible. "

It is the same for the sexuality of these women. It is invisible: "There are hardly ever big characters who make love in the cinema." And the few times this intimacy is represented, the public does not believe it. Marie takes the example of the series Empire where Becky, played by actress Gabourey Sidibe, sleeps with a man who, for his part, corresponds to the beauty dictates of society. The reactions were particularly violent. Viewers believe that a relationship between them two would be unimaginable in real life. The sexuality of fat women seems denied, if not impossible for the majority of people. The report is terrible: fat people are asexual on the screen but also by the public.

Are we really going towards a better representation in pop culture?

“Things are moving… but very very slowly” Marie tells us. According to her, the problem has to be explored at the source, long before the scripts are written and the films are produced, made: "Already, in acting schools, there are very few fat people because they are taught that you cannot do this job if you are overweight." So we see with Marie that the problem comes from afar, conditioning even the talents who wish to break into the screen. Fortunately, some works have the merit of having highlighted fat actresses in a realistic manner by tackling strong themes. The film Precious, directed by Lee Daniels, particularly marked Marie: “Already, having such an fat actress naturally is very rare. Then, everything does not revolve around that. We talk a lot about precariousness, violence, sexual harassment … Many subjects are interspersed. She's pregnant too and you rarely see pregnant women on the screen. ” If the film is sad, it is therefore not in the cliché.

On the series side too, Marie was pleasantly surprised by My Mad Fat Diary, Diary of an extraordinary teen in French : "The main character is a fat young woman who has psychological problems. We talk about the subject of size, we see that she has complexes. But she also experiences many other things, she has love stories for example. There are a lot of subtleties in the friendships she maintains. We don't fall into the cliché of Mean girls for example."

If the change is noticeable, it is still on the reserve. For Marie, it is time to give a realistic, positive and liberating voice to fat people. Pop culture should be a reflection of society. We all consume it, so it is important to ensure an inclusive and caring representation of everyone. Because without that, it remains difficult to build when no one looks like us on the screen: “I, who am a huge consumer of series and films. It’s very complicated not to see anyone who looks like me, or with such a stereotypical vision, as in all social constructions. We know that the white, thin woman who makes a 36 all her life does not exist. But not seeing it on the screen leads us to think that we still have to look like that because we only tell their stories. ”

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