Can Fat Girls Finally Be Popular?

For D.

Melissa McCarthy, winning her Emmy for Mike & Molly

During the past year, three women have risen above the rest and have made us cry, made us laugh and made us think. Adele, Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer delivered solid performances in the music, TV and film arenas. Not only did they deliver box office success, but also managed to earn critical acclaim, a rare overlap for most entertainers. Additionally, they crossed both, the generational divide as well the political gender line, surprising audiences with their talent.

Octavia Spencer, with her Screen Actors Guild award for The Help

At the timing of this blog, Melissa McCarthy has won an Emmy for her work on the CBS comedy Mike and Molly and was also nominated for an Oscar for her roaring delivery in Bridesmaids, in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role category. Octavia Spencer is nominated in the same category for her memorable work in The Help. And Adele is nominated for six Grammy Awards, including the Song, Album and Record of the Year.  She’s previous won two for her freshman album 19.

Adele won two Grammys for her first album 19; she's nominated for six more for her second album, 21

All three women changed the game of what it means to look like in a fickle industry that expects its women to be blond, size zero and, if necessary, cut by a surgeon to do so.  At least for now, they have stayed true to themselves and instead of hiding under their skin, revealed to everyone that genuine talent comes from within. This is in tremendous contrast with manufactured celebrity, which focuses solely on the package, where the essence of the spirit may or may not exist.

McCarthy's break-out Oscar-nominated role in Bridesmaids

These things are also not mutually exclusive and it would be foolish to assume otherwise. Lady Gaga, while tiny in size, is tremendous in her entertainment abilities and if she continues to play her cards right, will have a long and fruitful career path. But, what finally got people to pay attention to this musical prodigy, living in a city full of creative geniuses where she wasn’t getting noticed, was stripping down to almost nothing and emerging as a go-go dancer. And then the Lady Gaga  conversations began. Of course, she has real chops to back up all that attention.

Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis, both Oscar-nominated for their work in The Help

For fat girls, often called big, curvy voluptuous or womanly, getting naked in public in order to get attention is not an option. Not if they want to be taken seriously. On the flip side, as I often tell my film students, watching a movie where a fat guy falls down the stairs is funny. And numerous male actors know this, fully aware that the double standard exists.

Adele's 21, the best-selling album of 2011

Take for example Couples Retreat, a truly comical tale of what happens when four couples, in various states of their relationships, travel to a beautiful, remote location to face their partners’ concerns.  Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love and Jon Favreau play the male characters, teamed up with their significant others, played by Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis and Kali Hawk. There’s one specific scene where the men face the women and everyone is stripped down to their beach attire. Within one split second it becomes evidently clear that all the women are rockin’ size zero and size 2 bodies while all the men, sans Bateman, could benefit from months with a trainer if they wanted to match the physique of their female counterparts.

The cast of Couples Retreat; a contrast of body expectations

This scene made me wonder, how would the audience react if a film showed the exact same scene, where the body types were reversed: where the men were all in their physical prime and the women – thirty to fifty pounds overweight – made us laugh via their character delivery vs. their body type? Would we as the audience buy it? Would the actresses ever agree to it? Would a studio executive ever green-light it?

I’m not saying that fat isn’t a serious issue – America’s obesity epidemic is at an all time high and kids’ diabetes right there with it. Our food is over processed and over treated with chemicals. Our fruits and vegetables are picked too early and lack flavor, all the while have grown in size. Our animals eat feed full of hormones, which may be leading to premature adolescence in children.  Many of us spend way too much time in front of screens, giving our fingers and wrists the exercise that our bodies desperately crave. And right around this time, beginning of February, many Americans quit the New Year’s resolutions of weight loss, neglecting the gym in favor of evening tv and a bowl of ice cream. I know this first hand.

So, yes, we do have a weight problem and for those of us not pre-dispositioned with skinny genes that help us fit into skinny jeans, for the many of us for whom the size of our hips or thighs or stomachs have been an on-going issue since puberty, and for those of us for whom neither surgery nor diet pills is an option, weight is an ongoing issue, making us think twice about everything: from the sexy skirt we’re craving to buy to the confidence needed to make a great impression on a first date or a job interview.

The weight comes first.

Everything else we may bring to the table comes second.

It’s a pain and reality for many. We know the gym and a healthy diet is our responsibility, the world has done a fantastic job of reminding us, every hour, of this fact. And media, with Photoshop at its side, has altered how even the most thin, the most beautiful and the most ideal look to us. Only we know what it means and how scary the thought of just how much of ourselves we have to invest from a time and conscious decision-by-decision lifestyle (food, activity, company, lifestyle) of what it would take to make the body smaller.

Jennifer Hudson, winning her Oscar for Dreamgirls, 2007.

Jennifer post-Weight Watchers 2012

Jennifer Hudson did that. The woman has lost over 70 pounds and while there’s a part of me that would like to think that with her celebrity status, bank account and Weight Watchers, her food, trainers and support system pave the way for health success. Of course, it was Jennifer who did the work. And while she won her Oscar for Dreamgirls (also for the best Supporting Actress category) while still a full size and before her transformation, back then she was the homely looking girl with the voice: now she’s a superstar.

In today’s physically-obsessed standard, a woman can be a drug addict, alcoholic, adulterer, abuser or pathological liar. She can be selfish, uneducated, terrible with her budget, professionally irresponsible or even downright glib, but if she looks hot in a miniskirt, most of society will forgive all her faults and open their doors and hearts to whatever her legs will bring.

On the flip side, if she has super high IQ, is at the top of game at work, gives back to her community and is a wonderful friend to her social circle, and, simultaneously, a size 20, she’s outcast. We’ve outcasted her. The bigger she is, the more invisible we’ve made her feel.

No-one is rooting more for Adele, McCarthy and Spencer more than I am.  McCarthy also grew up around Chicago. And Adele’s album was produced by Rick Rubin, whom I once briefly met in Mexico, about fifteen years ago.  While I don’t share any personal connection with Spencer, as a Soviet immigrant kid living in urban housing projects for three years at the height of the Cold War, I have a sense of what it means to be an outsider, looking in. Additionally, I draw most of my life’s energy from television, music and film, so what these incredible three women do holds a very special space in my heart and mind.

Their individual paths, my guess, were not easy. They probably had to work (and still do) ten times as hard as their thinner peers to prove their worth in a package-focused business that values glamor above intention, the dollar above all.  But what they also managed to do was carve out a path for so many other women who wake up daily feeling insecure about their imperfect bodies first, what they can contribute to the world second. And for this, Adele, Melissa and Octavia, I thank you.

Photos: GoogleImages, Amazon