Now Jane Pratt has started a website, xoJane.com, and I am really digging it. Marianne Kirby (from The Rotund) and Lesley Kinzel (from Two Whole Cakes) are both writers there, and I think at least one of their other regular writers is plus-sized. That’s not just one token size ten contributor, that’s multiple people who are straight-up fat. (Back in the magazine days, there was one vaguely curvy girl named, I think, Katy (?), and I always felt like I could relate just a little bit more to her pieces.) The best thing about this is that THEY WRITE ABOUT ALL SORTS OF THINGS THAT DO NOT INVOLVE FATNESS.

Don’t get me wrong, they write great stuff about size issues. Lesley just wrote a piece called What’s Wrong With Fat-Shaming?, addressing those horrible billboards featuring sad-looking fat kids (I saw them in Atlanta last year, too, and I always wonder how the poor “models” feel, being plastered on a billboard, children, and being held up as some sort of example of what’s wrong with the world.) I also enjoyed her recent piece about Tim Gunn:

His comments are ultimately the same old body-loathing crap we hear all the time, wrapped up in faux sympathy, and therefore I must take issue with Gunn’s self-applied title of “advocate for larger women” as I believe his words do those women more harm than good. Especially when Gunn says of one woman on the new show, “…she’d been overweight her entire life and never known a normal, slim and sexy body.” (Emphasis mine.)

Check out the body politics tab for more (not just from Lesley, but from other contributors as well). But Lesley has also written about Downton Abbey and collecting things and tampons, and Marianne has written about eloping and fan fiction and Anne of Green Gables. I have no idea how the site works, but it doesn’t seem like “you’re our Fat Contributor, so please write about fat,” more like “you’re a contributor, please write about what interests you.”

I have to say tha I would love to see some more contributors of color, but the site is really doing something right by us plus-sized readers. So thank you to xoJane for having some real size diversity among your staff.

Until now, that is: one of the creators and stars of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rob McElhenney, has gained 50 pounds for season seven of the show, which premiered last week. McElhenney, who plays Mac, says:

I never wondered what it would be like to have a fat character. That’s just mean and it’s not funny. Ultimately, what was funny to me was the abuse on one’s body. Mac was always talking about putting on mass, so he decided to put on mass. His vision was that when David was sculpted, they started with a big slab of marble and then he was whittled down. So Mac created himself a big slab of marble, but it turned out he was just a big slab of beef and never trimmed himself down. That to me is the funnier aspect of it. It stemmed from watching a really popular sitcom where the actors were better looking than five or six years before and I was like they’re better looking because they have more money, they are more famous, they have better makeup and wardrobe people. Our show has always been about deconstructing the sitcom and not creating likeable or attractive characters. It wasn’t just about weight gain, but about making myself look as self-abused as possible. I tried to look as ugly as possible.

(Two things about this quote that jump out at me: first, Danny DeVito is in the cast, and he’s not a thin guy, so they do have a “fat character,” although I can’t off the top of my head think about any weight-based jokes at his expense. I’m also not sure why having a fat character would be “mean,” but I’m guessing McElhenney’s referring to the type of character who exists for the sole purpose of having weight-based jokes made about them–a character trope with which we are all familiar.)

We started watching Sunny a couple of seasons ago (the gang’s musical, “The Nightman Cometh,” is endlessly hilarious to me), and the characters do and say wildly offensive things, making jokes about everything from crack addiction to rape. I do appreciate the fact that the woman in the group, Dee, is allowed to be just as offensive and horrible as the men, which makes it a rich comedic part for Kaitlin Olsen (who is married to McElhenney in real life). The question each episode seems to ask of the characters is “how low can they go?”

Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day, the co-creators of Sunny, were on one of the podcasts I occasionally listen to, WTF with Marc Maron. According to them, the characters–in their racism, sexism, and selfishness–are always the butt of the jokes, which is the source of the comedy. Howerton says:

Even with this year’s premise of Mac gaining weight, we are not making fun of fat people. We are making fun of Mac, because he thinks that he’s this muscle-bound person, and he’s done absolutely nothing in order to actually achieve that goal… this is not a person who is naturally fat, this is a person who is destroying his body under the delusion that he’s actually creating muscle… and that’s the joke, not fat people in general.

I’m glad Howerton makes this distinction, because I feel a lot of comedians don’t see a problem with making fun of fat people, and I appreciate (having seen the premiere and as a viewer of the show) that there’s more going on here. However, the “fat = funny” equation still strikes me as problematic. Alan Sepinwall, in his review of the premiere, calls Fat Mac a “sight gag,” and says:

Okay, first things first: major, major, major props are due Mr. Rob McElhenny for having the random but brilliant (if not necessarily wise from a personal standpoint) idea to put on 50 pounds in the off-season. Fat Mac is just a marvelous sight gag – in a way, it reminds me of that “30 Rock” episode where Jenna ate too much pizza over the summer, only, you know, real – that makes me laugh every single time I see him, while also standing in nicely as a commentary on the state of the gang. They’re getting older, and dumber, and sloppier – and in Mac’s case, fatter – and while another show might take this as an opportunity for personal growth, “Always Sunny” mainly just observes that they’re all getting too old for this shit, then has them keep doing it anyway, cuz it’s really really funny.

I don’t watch 30 Rock, so didn’t see the “Jenna ate too much pizza” plotline (which sounds like a dumb plotline, if I can judge merely based on the description) but I will be watching Sunny this season and am curious to see what others think. Here’s a preview of the show featuring “Fat Mac.” So what do you think? Do you watch Sunny, and do you think Fat Mac is funny? Can fat ever be funny?

The premise was originally for a guy who gets his identity stolen by another guy, and it was written for Bateman and another actor. That changed after Bateman saw McCarthy’s scene stealing role in the summer hit Universal comedy Bridesmaids and he pushed for her to be the identity thief.

I have no desire at all to see The Change-Up, which stars Bateman opposite Ryan Reynolds. But McCarthy as an identity thief? This I totally want to see.

Via Monkey See.

Character: Megan, played by Melissa McCarthy

Credits: Before Bridesmaids, probably best known for Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly, though she started off in the Groundlings. As far as her reputation among comics goes, this interview is worth reading.

Plot points: Megan is one of the eponymous bridesmaids in this female-centric, Kristin Wiig-centric comedy. At first you might think she’s the obligatory token fat bridesmaid that is going to be the butt of a lot of fat jokes, but she is really an astonishing character who basically steals the movie. (Or she would, if Kristin Wiig weren’t also so good in it.)

Stereotypes: The trailer had me worried. She’s the one most excited about the food at the Brazilian restaurant, and the first one to have gastrointestinal distress (though it eventually strikes everyone, her “I’m not confident which end that came out of” line is the one in the trailer). But ultimately, the character defies stereotypes: she’s smart, she’s independent, she’s rich, she’s brave, and she’s sensible. She is the character who (literally and figuratively) knocks some sense into our mopey heroine, Kristin Wiig, in one of the movie’s best scenes. She is honestly a joy to watch.

Sex/Romance/Attractiveness: In the sequence on the plane, she’s shown aggressively hitting on her seatmate (played by her real-life husband) and this sexual aggressiveness is played for laughs. There’s also a joke in which sex involves a sandwich, although by the time this joke comes up, my sense is that the audience is totally on Team Megan, and you’re laughing with her, not at her.

Fat jokes: There are a few (like “I naturally just don’t bloat” at the restaurant, which is meant to be ironic). Again, the reason I found them forgivable is because fat is not the be-all and end-all of this character, and most of the jokes involving her (and there are a lot) don’t involve fat at all. (My favorite one is probably her driving past Annie after the bridal shower, which I won’t spoil.) Admittedly it’s been a while since I saw the movie, so if I’m forgetting anything, hit me up in the comments.

The bottom line: McCarthy is basically playing the Zach Galafinakis part in this movie, and she does it brilliantly. There are a few jokes involving size or food, but Megan never, ever feels like a generic “fat girl” character. She feels like a real comedic creation. In that same interview, Rose Byrne says, “Melissa is nothing at all like Megan. That’s not hiring someone to do what they do; that’s a real performance. Melissa’s beautiful and feminine, but Megan’s tone—it’s almost like she’s a coach. There’s no doubt in her voice. For me a lot of the comedy comes from the tension between the wildness of her ideas and the way she would say them with such authority and confidence and speed.”

Rating on the offense-o-meter (10 being Norbit): 2

But how’s the movie?: You can probably already tell that I enjoyed it. In fact, I laughed so hard my water broke! (Okay, that’s probably not true, but my water did break in the parking lot right after we saw the movie. I was really glad we’d made it all the way through; it would have sucked to miss it.) Really hilarious, and a terrific rejoinder to the “women aren’t funny” trope. I can’t wait to see Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids 2. And congratulations to her on her Emmy nomination! Now that I know what McCarthy can do, I almost want to watch Mike & Molly.

[Alley] recently bragged on her Twitter site that she’s lost 50 pounds with exercise and her Organic Liaison weight-loss program. But those close to her say she’s lost barely half that weight and that there’s no way she’s down to 180 pounds!

What’s more, a photo taken on Sept. 29…shows that the plus-size actress hasn’t lost nearly as much as she claims… The struggling star “has been goosing her weight-loss numbers” – insisting she’s dropped 50 pounds, when it’s more like 25…

In September, while in Italy, she tweeted that she had lost 50 pounds, posting a photo of herself surrounded by handsome men. But the picture appeared to be air-brushed to make Kirstie look thin, and she hid her lower body behind one of the hunky men.

As if weight-loss programs aren’t enough of a scam, hers doesn’t even temporarily work! I hunted down that picture so you can see for yourself. She does look pretty airbrushed, no?

2. Ricky Gervais has lost weight recently, and now feels like jokes about fat people are off-limits.

“Now I’ve got to stop making jokes about fat people, which is annoying. When I was fat, it was okay,” the creator of ‘The Office’ tells People. Gervais, 49, lost “20 or 22 pounds,” he says. “It wasn’t so much about the weight. It was more that I was a fat, lazy, out of shape slob, to be honest.”

Ricky Gervais shutting up about fat people is probably for the best, then, isn’t it? Oh, Ricky.

3. Kim Kardashian posed nude for W Magazine (photos at this link are NSFW) and the pictures are everywhere. There have been a lot of ugly comments that I’m sure you can find if you search for about ten seconds, but I liked this one:

I’m 5’1 and I love the way I look, and it’s nice to see more women with hourglass figures in the media lately, being unafraid to [bare] it all, like Christina Hendricks and Ms. Kardashian here. I’m not going to stop loving myself just because I have the figure of a cartoon character.

Stop the hate, people! There’s so much hate in the world, do we really have to tear each other down over how we perceive each others’ bodies?

4. Crystal Renn is a size 10, and Manolo for the Big Girl is over it.

There’s nothing wrong with being a size 10. She’s had a tough row to hoe body-image wise and if that’s where her body is happy then far be it from me to complain.

But she’s a size 10.

That’s not plus-sized, that’s not close to plus-sized and even though I am the biggest fashion industry apologist on the planet, I just can’t pretend that she counts as a plus-sized model in any meaningful sense and therefore she deserves no more and no less press or attention than any other model who doesn’t wear plus-size clothes.

I’m a big proponent for variety and I’d rather see a size 10 model as a staple than a size 20 as a gimmick every few years, but the days of breathlessly reporting on her every move as a victory for fat girl kind –inasmuch as I ever have– are over.

5. Via The F Word, celebrities who have struggled with eating disorders include Felicity Huffman, Elton John, Kate Winslet, Victoria Beckham, and Snooki.

For years she denied the rumors that she had an eating disorder, but Calista Flockhart finally admitted to her problem with anorexia. “I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn’t find time to eat.” Even though the actress hasn’t gained much noticeable weight she ensures, “I am much more healthy these days.”

I recently read Kathy Griffin’s Official Book Club Selection, where she talked frankly about her binge eating, her husband’s binge eating, and going to Overeaters Anonymous—as well as the botched liposuction that nearly killed her.

Gaultier is, of course, the same designer who used Velvet D’Amour in a previous runway show. More pictures at HuffPo, where they pair the slideshow with this recent quote from Ditto:

“It’s really interesting to me that people will look at a thin person and go, ‘That’s a healthy person’. I want to go, ‘Come open my refrigerator and look and then let’s talk about what you think is so bad’. To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes…some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That’s crazy. But that’s ‘okay’ because you look healthier.”

Thanks to Christina for the link! And thanks to Beth, and Jean Paul Gaultier, for being awesome.

1. From Feed Me: Fat women are paid less than men in the workplace. So obviously, we should lose weight. Wait, what?

Fat women are paid less than women who aren’t fat; fat men, on average, earn comparable salaries to men who aren’t fat. So women are penalized by employers for being fat… All the young women who don’t identify as feminists because they don’t have to fly that flag anymore should take note of studies like this one. Gender discrimination is alive and well in 21st-century America.

But that’s not where the writer of this story went. No, her conclusion was quite different. She wrote, “It’s bad news, but maybe it will help fund better prevention strategies and new treatment methods for this growing scourge.”

Excuse me? Did I hear you right? The answer to discrimination is getting rid of the quality that’s being discriminated against?

2. From Already Pretty: the problem with “she shouldn’t wear that.”

[S]tylistic shoulds and shouldn’ts reinforce the idea that there are absolute rights and wrongs in clothing choices, tastes, and body shapes. Saying a woman “shouldn’t” wear something because of her figure supports the idea that there is one way to look good. And there isn’t. In fact, women who push social comfort levels with their stylistic choices may gradually force the observing public to accept that. Although some may prefer that women with cellulite conceal it, women with bony clavicles mask them, and women with zits apply cover-up, each woman is entitled to make her own choices.

3. The theme of the comp class I’m teaching this semester is feminism (actually, I told them it was unofficially called “F the Patriarchy”—it’s led to some terrific debate and discussion) and I shared this tidbit from Shakesville with them the other day. A headline reads “Man badly burned when girlfriend’s house set on fire” when, in actuality, he was her ex-boyfriend and stalker. And oh yeah, he set the fire.

[A]n amazing example of how violence against women is minimized in news reporting… the violent stalker is badly burned. His intended victims, who merely were doused with gasoline and terrorized, are OK.

4. From Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as “Mammy.”

There can be no denial that there are some people who will look at Gabourey and see mammy smiling back at them both consciously and unconsciously, yet that is not a function of her, but a function of Whiteness. When we use fat hatred to claim that her success is obscuring the talents of other Black women, we are only playing into the divisive strategy that Whiteness has long used to control people of colour. Even the Black women that some believe are deserving of greater accolades, are still perceived by Whiteness as fitting into either the jezebel or sapphire trope, and therefore; the way to divest ourselves of these horrible caricatures, is not to further demean another Black woman, but to defeat the idea that any of these labels are representative of Black womanhood. The entity that needs to disappear is mammy and not Gabourey.

5. Terrific satirical essay from Lesley about the importance of the “suffering ween.”

The sight of fat women is a heavy cross said men must bear every moment they step out into the public spaces where people congregate, be they city streets or shopping malls or public transportation or the dentist’s office. Their eyes burning as though filled with a raging fire, their inability to control their speech — the inescapable, uncontrollable need to instruct the offending woman on the pain she is selfishly causing them — this is hardly their fault! They must say something, in the hope that their words will drive the fat woman back into the shadows and thereby cause the unthinkable torture being imposed upon their enfeebled weens to finally relent. They cannot be responsible for the things they say and do while in such agony. We cannot rightly blame them when it is men, and the relative rigidity of their supremely important peckers, who are being attacked here, attacked by fat women who dare to allow themselves to be seen.

Pretty awesome collection of links, am I right? Let’s discuss in the comments!

2. Levi’s has come out with new “Curve ID” jeans, with different cuts similar to the Lane Bryant Right Fit concept. They go up to a size 24.

3. Making space for all kinds of bodies when we talk about body image, from Disabled Feminists. The post also addresses the idea of making space for those who don’t love their bodies at all. A thought-provoking read.

4. 500-pound teen dies in a fire when fire crews are unable to lift her. Heather, who sent in the article, pointed out how hateful the comments are in response to this tragedy, with references to her “eating herself to death.” Ugh.

5. Shapely Prose officially shuts its doors, and Kate Harding talks about her plans for the future. The end of an era!

Want to talk about any of this stuff? I know I do! Let’s take it to the comments!

If I were to do a clothing line, it would be for sizes 16 and higher. Because I really believe that those women are truly a neglected population, and when I visit department stores and I go to the shop that’s called “woman,” I am horrified! Horrified by the awful, degrading, disrespectful choices that women have. It is mind boggling. I mean, selecting these gigantic prints, and it’s… I mean, who wants to look like a couch?

Thanks to Kathy for the link (and transcription)!

Millions of Americans go through this agony every day; 68% of us are overweight or obese. Yet we have few literary insights about obesity to help comfort us; zero provocative tales about the plight of the salad-muncher for us to identify with during bleak dieting times; hardly any entertaining stories about hitting the gym which might propel us to suck it up and go to pilates class after a long workday. We turn to Oprah, or The Biggest Loser, or Weight Watchers—but not fiction.

So yeah, he’s looking for “perceptive insights about struggling with obesity” in his literature. Not exactly what I’m looking for in my own literature about fat people, quite frankly. Some of the comments are noteworthy. Cynthia Hawkins says:

I can’t think of a work that might be about struggles with obesity … but even more interesting, I can’t think of a character who just happens to be overweight who isn’t also a baffoon, a source of comedy in some way, a sidekick, or a villain, etc.

James says:

It strikes me that ‘fat fiction’ would be quite a niche market with a limited appeal to people who haven’t struggled with weight. Our favourite characters tend to be ones we can relate to, or aspire to be like.

Really—if someone is fat, there’s no way we would ever “aspire to be like” them? Because any good qualities they may have are overshadowed by their fatness, I presume? Ridiculous.

And BuffPuff’s comment (worth reading the whole thing, but I can’t figure out how to link it; just scroll down) is just the bomb:

I would say that the reason there aren’t many books with fat protagonists in either literary or popular fiction is because we live in a highly fat phobic culture. If we didn’t, literary agents wouldn’t feel the need to pose questions about the commercial appeal of same to the readers of their blogs…

In all the books I’ve ever read featuring a fat protagonist, weight/self image has been an issue of some kind and self loathing writ large. Art, after all, imitates life and it’s near impossible, as a fat individual, to make one’s way in such an openly hostile environment and not have those issues come up. This is particularly true of women, who regularly bond over their perceived physical shortcomings, particularly when it comes to issues of food and weight and regardless of what size they are. Why do you think Bridget Jones’s Diary – a book about a neurotic, weight-fixated ninny, who isn’t actually fat – struck such a massive chord with the public?

This, however, is where art and life seem to part company. What there aren’t many of are novels in which a fat female protagonist is permitted to find love, happiness or success without losing weight by some means first, (broken heart leading to convenient loss of appetite/fortuitously timed sickness/Weight Watchers), or where they’re only permitted to find happiness with another fat person because, let’s face it, no one else would have them, (and, yes, this is sarcasm). I tend to avoid these like the plague. As a fat woman whose self-esteem improved in leaps and bounds the moment she decided to make peace with her body and quit the infernal diet-go-round for good, I have a major problem with that kind of tired, patronising pish. It’s not dissimilar to the state of gay fiction back in the pre-Stonewall dark ages – you could publish it, film it or put it on the stage … just as long as the characters you were portraying were shown to be wretched, embittered, lonely and seething with self-hatred, preferably enough to hang themselves in the final act.

That whole discussion weirdly made me think of Mike and Molly. Alan Sepinwall recently said that the show “is constantly at war over whether it wants to be laughing with or at its main characters. The ‘with’ parts I like, and Gardell and McCarthy are charming. The ‘at’ parts are nauseating.”

We want to see fat characters in TV and in books, and in film, but we don’t want them to be shown as objects of pity or (the dreaded Jemima J syndrome) people whose sad lives improve immeasurably once they are thin.

So, what are your favorite books with fat characters in them? And how do you want to see fat people portrayed in books?

Thanks to aych for the link!