Fat representation onscreen is finally starting to improve — but there's still a long way to go

When I hit "play" on Netflix's Survival of the Thickest, I was just looking for some light-hearted escapism. I had no idea what the show — which stars Michelle Buteau as Mavis Beaumont, a fat Black woman exploring her love life and career after a breakup — would end up meaning to me. After just one episode, I was struck with a warm realization: I had never seen anything like this before.

Where TV and movies often make fat people out to be bungling and incapable, Mavis is ambitious and creative. Where fatness is usually shown as undesirable, Mavis has an abundance of love in her life. Where the media suggests that fat people can't be happy, Mavis doesn't change herself to date or be successful. 

Survival of the Thickest offers much-needed brightness in an otherwise bleak landscape of fat representation. In an essay in the Handbook of Fat Studies, scholar Katariina Kyrölä writes that media images are part of what produces our collective understanding of fatness. "In contemporary Hollywood," says Kyrölä, "actors are considered 'fat' at much lower sizes than in the surrounding world, and such standards easily seep into everyday lives."

When what we see in the media contributes to collective understandings of our bodies, investigating fatphobia on screen feels necessary for pushing back on ideas of what is "normal" — especially because so many films and TV shows still employ tropes that uphold, and are upheld by, societal anti-fatness. 

Fatness as undesirable 

In her book "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, writer Aubrey Gordon discusses the myth of fatness as undesirable, writing that "the prevalence of anti-fat bias has led to a popular misconception that no one is attracted to fat people." Gordon writes about how fat people's sexualities are dismissed and obscured because of their weight.

"Anti-fatness regulates the kinds of bodies we see and trains us in who we are socially permitted or expected to be attracted to," explains Gordon in the book, discussing several fatphobic representations including The Nutty Professor and Shallow Hal.

While many of Gordon's examples focus on movies from the 2000s, her analysis has remained relevant because these tropes of undesirability are still present in recent media. The 2022 film The Whale, which was widely criticized for its overt anti-fatness, still went on to win multiple Oscars. Actor Brendan Fraser wears a fat suit to play Charlie, a 600-pound man who is portrayed in an egregiously repulsive manner by director Darren Aronofsky. In one scene, Charlie nearly has a heart attack while masturbating; in another, viewers see mold between the folds of his skin. Ominous music underscores scenes where he eats. 

Lindy West, writer and producer of the TV show Shrill based on her own essay collection, described this characterization as "a fictional character created by a thin person, a fantasy of fat squalor, a confirmation that we 'do this' to ourselves: that we gorge buckets of chicken like mindless beasts, that we never see the world, never let the sun warm our bodies, never step into the sea, never make art, never feel human touch, never truly live."

In the journal Fat Studies in Canada, Faith Adodo and Fardosa Warsame explain that "in the Global North, contemporary media representations propagate societal views of the 'normal' body type." The "abnormality" that is fatness is compounded upon by race, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of people's identities. 

Warsame, who is Somali and grew up in Canada, said that the framing of fatness as abnormal, or undesirable, had significant negative impacts on her self-esteem, mental health, and personal identity. Fatness is associated with health and wealth in Somalia, but is stigmatized in Canada. "When I speak on this issue with other Somali women living in Canada," says Warsame, "they too share the constant pressure to maintain a body image that is foreign to the ideals of their home cultures." Ideals of thinness and whiteness intersect for fat Black women, who Adodo and Warsame explain are facing even higher "stigma, assault, prejudice, and oppression."

Positive fat representation is scarce, and it's also very white. Given the complexity of racialized fat women's experiences, Survival of the Thickest stands out in the offerings of wholesome representations of fatness. It's encouraging to see a fat Black woman talk openly about race, womanhood, and fatness while navigating dating, friendships, and her career. Embracing fatness as normal "would help to liberate many women who obsess about their bodies and empower them to embrace their uniqueness," say Adodo and Warsame.  

Fatness as shameful

Another media trope suggests that fatness must be overcome because it's apparently too shameful to live with. This is seen in countless examples — shows like Friends, Insatiable, Pretty Little Liars, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and New Girl — where fat characters, all played by thin actors wearing fat suits in flashback scenes, are loveless and desexualized.

In these portrayals, fat characters only become confident, successful, and desirable after they lose weight, and all of them regard their past with deep shame. This perpetuates a slew of misinformation about fatness and weight loss, especially the thinking that weight loss is necessary in order to be happy — as though you can never be truly fulfilled if you're fat. If you're fat, media representations suggest that you'll have to settle for less, because your weight limits your options.

Yet, while Mavis in Survival of the Thickest thinks negatively about her body from time to time, she's not ashamed of herself and doesn't accept less than she deserves. She puts herself out there boldly, and finds love, friendship, and professional success without changing her body or the core of her personality. When faced with the possibility of getting back together with her cheating ex, Mavis comes to the brave realization that she doesn't have to settle for someone who treats her with disrespect.

"We're used to seeing representations of fat women being involved with men who have failed in some particular way," says scholar and professor Dr. Kristin Rodier. "And what we have with [Survival of the Thickest] is that [Mavis] makes a choice based on not just the availability of any interest, but who she wants to be." 

Survival feels special because Mavis has a level of dignity that is often not given to fat characters in film and TV. Media representations of fatness reflect the idea that fat people are responsible for their own unhappiness solely because of their weight, and this places the onus of anti-fat discrimination on individuals instead of locating it in structural biases. They suggest that discrimination would go away if you would just lose weight — but weight loss won't solve the problem of discrimination, and moreover, it's also not a moral imperative to be thin.

The perils and possibilities of fat representation 

A common argument against denouncing fatphobia onscreen suggests that media representations are not meant to be taken too seriously. But these representations don't exist in a vacuum — anti-fat biases exist and take shape in so many forms, including in healthcare, workplaces, architecture, fashion, and more. When you think of how pervasive fatphobia is, and how all those industries would rather see fatness eradicated than accommodated and understood, the cruelty of anti-fat stories becomes clear. So does the need for more accurate media representations. 

Better media representations can help to combat the misinformation surrounding fatness. But it's important to be wary of the audience of media that claims to be invested in positive representation. Representation, says Dr. Rodier, can be monetized and used for profit without a commitment to political change or any other tangible action (for example, companies that use body-positive branding without actually offering an inclusive variety of clothing sizes).

Ramanpreet A. Bahra, a PhD candidate and co-editor of Fat Studies in Canada — where Adodo and Warsame published their article providing an intersectional perspective on fatness — points out the lack of diversity in most of the so-called positive representations of fatness. Bahra asks, "On a daily basis, what types of fat bodies do we see?" 

Most of the positive representations of fatness that we have available to us are of white, straight, able-bodied people, which can normalize only a certain type of fatness. "To quote Kimberlé Crenshaw, to quote Patricia Hill Collins — Black feminist work — these are interlocking systems of oppression," says Bahra. "It's not separate entities making our reality; it is the co-functioning of culture, politics, and ideologies." We need to tell more authentic stories that aren't just about fatness, but also about race, disability, queerness, gender diversity, and everything else that dictates who we are and how we move through the world. 

While more positive representations can't always directly effect change, they can be life-affirming, especially when those stories are told by people who can speak on their own experiences. This is what makes a show like Survival of the Thickest feel so original, even essential: it's an opportunity for a fat, Black woman to speak on her own experiences, and showcase a character who is joyful, funny, beautiful, and smart. Mavis is written as a person, not a stereotype. It's no wonder we see her that way — Survival of the Thickest exemplifies the stories we can tell without the burden of fatphobia.