Imperfection as a Vehicle for Fat Visibility in Popular Media

Abstract

Fat people are often depicted in popular media as imperfect, their characters bearing negative features that can be attributed only to their non-idealized bodies. These representations imply not only that fatness itself is aesthetically and physically imperfect, but that fatness is caused by and causes character imperfections. Using the TV series Shrill as a model, I argue that in order to address our collective distaste for fat bodies—and, by extension, our shared anti-fat bias—we must create and engage with humanizing representations that show fat people as imperfect without blaming those flaws on their weight. By creating more complex fat characters, we can learn to love and accept fat people without reinforcing harmful stereotypes about fatness.