Free Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls by Jes Baker Page B

perfect example of the funny fat archetype can be found in another classic duo: Laurel and Hardy. One thin, one fat. The fat guy often becomes the main butt of the jokes. Other fat and funny characters include Fat Bastard from Austin Powers , Chunk from The Goonies , Harold from Hey Arnold , Peter and Meg from Family Guy (many MANYfat characters appear in multiple categories), Mikey from Recess , Eric Cartman from South Park , Homer Simpson of The Simpsons , and Miss Piggy from The Muppet Show .
    Â Â  •     The Evil Fat Person: And last but certainly not least is our evil fat villain. Some of these characters provoke moral outrage, some laughs, and others sheer disgust. It’s always easy to hate the nefarious fat person: Ursula from The Little Mermaid , Penguin from Batman , Slug from Marvel Comics, the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland , Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas , Big Dan Teague from O Brother, Where Art Thou? , Eric Cartman from South Park (the trifecta!), countless mob bosses, fat cats, and of course, the most gluttonous of them all, Jabba the Hut.
    It’s important to note that not all stupid, funny, and evil characters are fat; many are thin or fall somewhere in between. What is problematic is when we see fat characters, they fall into these negative stereotypes more often than not.
    Thanks to these common and prevailing tropes, we are repulsed/humored/angered by fat people because our reality has no other frame of reference in which to sort them out. For the most part they are not positively represented in the media, so when we see fat people happy, in love, feeling worthy, achieving success, or engaging in any positive activity . . . our brains break. A FAT PERSON WHO ISN’T MISERABLE OR TRYING TO BECOME UN-FAT? We don’t know how to process this information. We don’t understand. The unfamiliarity is uncomfortable. We feel confused . . . and this often leads to mockery, anger, and yes, hate.
    One of my FAVORITE (sarcasm) things I’ve run across on the Internet comes from the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity ( uconnruddcenter.org ). The Rudd Center focused on “reducing weight stigma” within journalistic coverage. Thisgallery, created to “humanize” fat bodies, contains 451 images of fatties doing elementary exercise (they can do wha?); gardening, shopping for, and cooking raw fruits and vegetables (how healthy of you, fat people!); wearing business casual clothing; and talking on cell phones (they hold jobs too!); and three images of a fat couple holding hands.
    While I appreciate that the Rudd Center is attempting to change the lens in which the world views fat people, not much is solved by encouraging the use of images that show fat people doing mostly things that are supposedly going to make them less fat, which has always been the ultimate goal. Do you see where I’m coming from here? I’m SO glad to not see the kind of degrading “headless fatty” images that are ubiquitous among stock photo galleries and other corners of the Internet, or pictures of fat people crying while holding their love handles. But even those who are committed to portraying fat people in a positive light have galleries where the majority of images shows them in the same tired and insensitive way. Instead of those 451 images of fat bodies doing limited activities, I want to see fat people holding hands with lovers of all sizes, enjoying coffee with friends, smiling, and maybe even one à la Julie Andrews singing in the fields and spinning while singing at the top of her lungs. You know, fat people doing a range of normal happy things, like they very often do.
    The majority of society isn’t capable of producing these images yet, but guess what? We are.
    A simple way to start to change the way fatties are represented is to take the narrative into our own hands and show the world what’s actually