Читать книгу Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You - Sofie Hagen - Страница 12

I like to imagine all art as a house of mirrors. Most people when coming face to face with the way popular culture reflects them might notice that it is more or less distorted. We all know that television, for example, is not an accurate portrayal of reality. Even reality TV has been oxymoronically constructed and edited, with elaborately chosen clips, background music and leading questions from the producers. We know that very few people in real life can walk away in slow motion from an explosion behind them. That if you were to murder someone detrimental to your career in crime, you would not take up valuable time explaining to them your exact plan in great detail, giving them a chance to escape.^fn1 Deep down, we know these things. Yet art is often so similar to our lives in many other ways. The hero tied up and beaten in front of the villain is scared, the same way we would be if that happened to us. The woman kissed by Chris Pratt has a big smile on her face – the same way we would probably react in that situation.^fn2 How are we meant to be able to fully distinguish between the real world and the artificial reality that’s been manufactured to entertain us?

If art is a house of mirrors in which you see yourself reflected, it can be hard to tell which mirror is you – and which is slightly altered by Photoshop, a TV producer, the ad company or a camera lens. If you are a white, straight, cis-gender male in your thirties, you might see yourself reflected as a ‘strong and manly’ man. This is quite possibly not much different from how you have been brought up. You will often see yourself fight in wars, battle criminals in a big city, climb buildings, jump out of helicopters, save the fair maiden and kiss her passionately. You will see yourself as having a multifaceted personality – you can see yourself as the angry white, straight cis-gender man, as the happy white, straight cis-gender man, you can see yourself as the evil character, the goofy, the geeky, the nerdy, the good character, the intelligent character, the funny character, the sexy, the handsome, the ugly, the hero, the villain, the king, the president, the cab driver, the lawyer, the janitor. You can be thin, muscular, chubby, young and dating a young woman, or old and dating a young woman. (As a white, straight cis-gender man you can even see yourself reflected back as both black, gay and transgender, and Hollywood will even trust you to portray such a character more than people who live in this identity every day.)¹

You may not relate to all or any of the images reflected back at you, but at least you will have a choice. There is no stereotypical ‘white, straight cis-gender man’ in art. You can be it all. You are it all. A study has shown that among children, the only group whose self-esteem increases by watching television is white boys.² The other groups tested, white and black girls and black boys, all showed a decrease of self-esteem.

As soon as there is a segment of your existence that is not seen as mainstream – whether you are a woman, fat, a person of colour, visibly religious (wearing a headscarf, for example), trans, queer, someone with a disability – you find yourself limited by the representation of you. There is a lot to say – and there has been a lot said – about the stereotypes surrounding most of these labels, but I would like to dive into the representation of fat people in particular.

When a fat person walks through the house of mirrors that is art, the mirrors almost exclusively show you as a person who is unattractive, unintentionally funny, evil, lazy, unintelligent or unwanted. Ursula, the evil Sea Witch who grabs Ariel’s voice, Fat Monica in Friends, Hitchcock and Scully in the otherwise inclusive show Brooklyn 99, who are two dum-dums who can’t figure out how to do anything and just spend all day eating, Brad Pitt’s character in Friends who used to be fat and now is ‘hot’ (as it’s apparently impossible to be both), the fat characters in The Simpsons – Homer, who is unintelligent, Barney who is an uncontrollable drunk, Ralph, who is unintelligent and unlovable. And of course, in Family Guy, we have Peter Griffin who is unintelligent – alongside every single fat person that ever shows up in Family Guy only to be mocked horrendously. Like when Peter imagines that his son Chris is dating a fat woman, we see her needing to back into the garage, like a truck, after which Peter says, ‘So do you prefer Fatty or Miss Boombalatty?’ Or when Bryan is forced to hit on a fat girl and he does it by saying, ‘Is that highlights in your hair or potato chips?’ and she answers, slightly dim-wittedly, ‘Highlights!’ Then, in a slow voice, ‘You got me sweating above and below my ass.’ When she leaves his house the following morning, Stewie says that Bettina is way too fancy a name for her: she should be called ‘Thud or Oof’.

In New Girl, there are often flashbacks to the show’s hotty Schmidt being fat (where he is wearing a fat-suit). When he is fat, he is generally a whole other person. He is pathetic and sad all the time. He is clumsy and lazy. It is laughable that he used to be fat – like when the group of Friends look back at Fat Monica – where she was also a whole other person. Jolly and in no way obsessed with neatness and tidiness. It is almost as if it is impossible for television to portray a fat character with the same traits as a thin person.

We sometimes see ourselves reflected, but then the entire character will be defined by the fatness. The role of Kate as played by Chrissy Metz in This Is Us is exclusively built around her weight – her need to lose it is the only thing that we see in her life. Precious in the movie Precious, played by Gabourey Sidibe, is victimised by her class and by her fat body. Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect almost exclusively makes fat jokes about herself.

More often than not, we are not reflected at all. When I watch television, most of the TV shows seem to portray this science-fiction world in which all fat people have been eradicated. At some point you might be lucky to spot a fat person behind a cash register in the background and you start to feel empathy for this poor guy, who seems to have been the only one to survive the Fatpocalypse.^fn3 It is bittersweet that the upside to this is that, at least, they do not portray us negatively. We walk into the house of mirrors and when we look into the mirror, there is no reflection. It is like we do not exist.

It’s called ‘symbolic annihilation’. It’s a term coined in 1976 by George Gerbner to describe the absence of representation in the media. Basically: by not being represented at all, it sends the signal that you don’t matter. It’s a method of making sure that we keep oppressing the same groups of people. If, every time we look at a television, everyone who is not a white man feels a bit worse, it helps to maintain the current system: where the white man is in charge of almost everything. Representation is directly connected to self-esteem – one of the most important traits to possess when asserting yourself in the world. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you believe that you matter more than others, you will place yourself in that position. Likewise, if you feel like you don’t, you will let others assert themselves over you.

In 1978, Gaye Tuchman divided symbolic annihilation into three aspects: omission, trivialisation and condemnation, saying that it’s not just about lack of representation, it’s also the ridicule and trivialising of these groups – say, when a TV show or movie only places a fat person in the show as the ‘fat friend’ (Rebel Wilson in How To Be Single) or when a character is temporarily (very temporarily) put in a fat-suit to signify that they’re depressed (Andy in Modern Family, when he realises that he isn’t in love with his fiancée) or that they were a loser once (Schmidt in New Girl, Fat Monica in Friends). In a lot of movies, you will often see women getting murdered or raped. It seems like Hollywood’s go-to tool to get a storyline going. The woman is angry because she was once raped. The man is a bit of a bad guy, so he murders a lady. It trivialises something that is an actual issue and uses women’s lives as props to add excitement to a film. There are more naked (for no apparent reason) and murdered women on television and in films than there are women with multifaceted personalities.

There are more naked and murdered women on television and in films than there are fat women.

So, when talking about reflection and representation, it feels appropriate to look at the industry I belong to.