Wanted to write you last month after I saw Ricky Gervais live — most of the show was amazing, but he did a solid 15 minutes of fat jokes that were just horrifying and they were all — ALL — aimed at fat women. He’s newly buff and living it up, which, you know, bully for him and all, but I sat there and tried not to cry for that portion of the show, and then listened to him explain how he wouldn’t apologize for making jokes like that b/c comedy was supposed to be edgy and push people. All I could think was truly edgy fare needn’t be explained as such, and since when the fuck are fat jokes “dangerous” and “taboo”? Sort of smacked of David Brent waxing on to the doc crew about his “comedy.” Was offended and made me sad.

Anyway, knew you were an Office fan, so I went home and looked up what you’d written about it, which made me feel lots better, knowing I wasn’t the only conflicted Gervais fan out there.

Sheila also discussed this with her friend, Entertainment Weekly PopWatch blogger Mandi Bierly, and this theme found its way into a recent interview Bierly did with Brooke Elliott and Margaret Cho, both of whom are on Drop Dead Diva. That interview is here, and it’s a really interesting read, and Bierly brings up Ricky Gervais, the Eat Less shirts, and plenty of other topics.

Margaret Cho on Ricky Gervais:

I haven’t seen it, but I always think he’s funny. The fact about his humor is that in his comedy, people always say that he’s fat. So it’s interesting, he’s the one who’s been hurt by it, too, a lot. So I wonder what that means… In any case, as a comedian, I could never make fun of it because I almost killed myself so many times as a younger woman. I took so many diet pills. I have a heart murmur because I took Fen-Phen in the ’90s. I have permanent damage to my body because I wanted to be thin. That desire to have a smaller body, to take up less space in the world, was so important to me that I don’t remember most of my twenties. I didn’t appreciate the young woman that I was, or my young beauty, because I was so obsessed with the fact that I felt fat. It’s never good to add to anybody else’s suffering.

Brooke Elliott on her character in Drop Dead Diva (a formerly thin model who ends up in the body of a plus-size lawyer):

I think the show treats this character with so much dignity and respect. That’s why this show’s so popular. She’s a beautiful woman, and it treats her like a beautiful woman. She’s got all these guys fighting over her. There’s so much drama in her romantic life. She feels beautiful, she is beautiful, it’s just about taking somebody [the real Jane] who formerly considered herself invisible and making her visible. Deb’s never been invisible, she doesn’t know how to be. So when she’s in Jane’s body, she knows how to be visible. That’s what this is about: Somebody becoming visible to themselves and to the world, which is powerful.

And finally, a recommendation!

Speaking of beautiful, confident big women on TV: you prob. know about this since you’re hip to the Brit coms, but if you haven’t watched, you MUST MUST MUST see Gavin and Stacey. BBC America is currently showing series three, but the first two are available on DVD. The title characters are the least interesting, actually. The two writers, Ruth Jones and James Corden, play the supporting characters and are fantastic. Ruth is a gorgeous voluptuous woman (also, she plays the bartender in Daffyd’s pub in Little Britain, if you’ve ever seen that). Hilarious, amazing cast, great writing.

I have actually never seen Gavin and Stacey but my friend Eliza loves it, and she has great taste, so I’ve been meaning to check it out. Thanks for the e-mail, and the recommendation, Sheila! And thanks for the interview, Mandi, it was a terrific read.

[*Chamein also kindly stopped by the comments to post the text of the original article. Thanks!]

I read your article about the rise in the number of plus size people on television this summer. I noticed the same thing but I can tell you that not all of us are happy with the current offerings. As a full figured woman, I enjoy Drop Dead Diva, Ruby and I’m very interested to see what More To Love has to offer. I know this isn’t politically correct but I hate Dance Your Ass Off and The Biggest Loser. It’s not that I have anything against trying to become more healthy, I just can’t stand that it seems they find the most misreable overweight people in the world. Let me tell you for every one person with a sad story I know at least 20 plus happily full figured people. I consider myself to be one of them, but I learned to be happy in my skin the hard way.

You see I entered this world big from the beginning. I weighed in a few ounces shy of nine pounds and then I spent the rest of my life trying to live down a tiny three lettered word ‘big’. I hated being the big girl. At one point in my life I had so much black in my closet I thought I’d hear the voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader at any minute.

She goes on to talk about how her battles with cancer and MS:

I can’t tell you how many hours and days I was in the bathroom floor green with nausea wondering how on earth anyone could want to make themselves sick just so they won’t gain weight.

As horrible as it was Illness was a epihany for me. For the first time in my life I wasn’t focused on losing something, I was focused on gaining. I wanted more minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years to spend with my children. I was desperate to see my toddler sons grow up and to make it to my 30th birthday. It took a diagnosis of cancer to make me realize what truly counted in life and it wasn’t size; it’s love. During my treatment I met couples going through the depths of illness together and the love they showed one another touched me in the deepest part of my soul. I still get choked up when I think about it now. It was a real testament to for better or for worse. It was then I decided to forget my obsession with size.

Thanks for taking the time to make your voice heard, Chamein.

I’m not bothered by the overeating though. I am 100% on the FA bandwagon, and I know fat can be caused by many things, but the knee jerk negative reaction to depictions of fat people in TV or movies who overeat ignores the fact that plenty of fat people DO overeat. I am one of them!

Granted, even when I ate healthfully and worked out a lot more than I do now, I was not thin, that’s just not my genes. But my current size 24 is absolutely caused by the fact that I’ve been avoiding exercise and eating WAY too much for the last year or so. So, maybe the Jane character is supposed to be like me–she eats when she’s stressed, struggles with massive cravings all the time (I tend to drool over donuts too, what can I say), and has a tendency to binge. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Actually, I am sometimes put off by comments on some FA blogs that are always offended by implications in the media that overeating causes fat. Sometimes…it just does, doesn’t it? I know it’s not the ONLY cause, but our tendency to fly off the handle about it sometimes makes me feel ashamed that I am one of those “bad fatties” who really DOES eat an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, or an entire pizza, etc.

I would never, however, eat squirt cheese straight from the can. Ew…everyone knows it requires wheat thins! ;-)

A follow-up:

Oh, and when I say “there’s nothing wrong with it,” I am not saying that I”m not aware that my eating is disordered….I obviously struggle with bingeing issues that I have yet to deal with. I just meant there’s nothing wrong (in my opinion) with portraying those very real issues in a TV show….especially one that has a chance to be so fat positive!

And M. Jinxx adds:

Sarah, I am TOTALLY with you on that point.
In fact , before I got to your comment, I was reading the others and I had the same impression and was going to mention it but you beat me to the punch. I have PCOS and have for years and I also come from a big family, so I will never be tiny, but my recent jump to a 24 from my usual 18-20 is completely because of overeating and lack of quality exercise.

What about people like us, with disordered eating ( I am also a binger and an emotional eater ) who really are fat(ter) because of overeating?

It is a bit disheartening to belong to the “bad fattie” group.

I wonder if the issues with the media portrayal are that it’s not being depicted as disordered eating, but merely playing into the “fat people are greedy” and “just put down the donuts” stereotypes. I recently ate a handful of Oreos at a family party, and I thought to myself, self, people are going to think you and all other fat people are fat because you can’t stop eating Oreos. And then I felt guilty about the Oreos anyway, not just residual good food bad food guilt, but also that I had let down my cause by playing into the stereotype. (This kind of crap is what leads people to binge in secret; I’m just saying.)

But what do you think–if we deny this reality, does this just alienate people who recognize themselves in characters who binge or stress eat? Do we want binge eaters to get help for themselves, or for the cause of fat acceptance, or both? And given, for example, the portrayal of Miranda on Sex and the City eating cake out of the garbage can, where does “normal” end and “disordered” begin? Do we all, at one point or another, fat or thin, sometimes pick up the donut, so to speak?

When we first heard about More to Love, meerkat said:

I expect that many of the women will eliminated for infuriating and anti-feminist reasons (if this works on the reality show model of eliminating a competitor every week). And I wonder how wide a range of body types there will be? And if there is a wide range, will the less-conventionally-attractive ones have a snowball’s chance in Hell?

And in our discussion of Dance Your Ass Off based on the previews, Bethany said:

On one hand, I love that there are fat people in hot, tight dance outfits shaking their groove thang for all to see. At least some of them seem to be sexy and talented and comfortable in their own skin. But at the same time…with all that focus on weight loss it takes it into “Biggest Loser” land where the bottom line is always losing pounds. And that’s an oppressive message.

It’s like with one side of their mouth they want to empower fat people to enjoy embodiment as they are, and with the other side of their mouth they want to make sure they know they will never fully be acceptable until they can lose the weight.

The Fatistician railed against the weight loss component of the show (there is a clip there also):

So essentially, no matter how well you dance, if you don’t lose weight you won’t win. Let’s totally ignore the fact that you’re working out constantly and potentially gaining muscle which weighs more than fat. But if you don’t lose lose lose you’re just LAZY. Nothing beats starving yourself while simultaneously working your ass off and causing injuries Healthy Weight Loss UR Doin it WRNG.

I also can’t decide if they think fatties are HILARIOUS or pathetic victims of their own gluttony, or really, anything? I mean, I guess I will never know because I will not be watching this show. (If I could get Oxygen taken off my cable, I would.)

It’s also been described as a new wave of “fatsploitation” television:

The appetite for “fatsploitation” entertainment isn’t yet sated. Earlier this month in the US, a new sitcom, Drop Dead Diva took the controversial step of casting a US size 16 (UK size 18) actress in the lead role. The series, in which skinny model Deb dies in a car crash and is reincarnated as plus-sized Jane, drew record audiences and has been applauded for showing a larger woman in the main role. Rosie O’Donnell, Liza Minnelli and Paula Abdul have signed up for guest appearances and the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times gave it rave reviews.

Earlier in the summer, reality shows More to Love (a plumper version of The Bachelor) and Dance Your Ass Off (a super-size Dancing With the Stars) were also hits. Although Drop Dead Diva goes some way to redressing the fat phobia balance, it still employs stereotypes to explain Jane’s obesity. The character drools over doughnuts and in a moment of despair, finds solace in a mouthful of squirty cream cheese straight from the can.

Well I’ll watch out for the donuts and cream cheese on Drop Dead Diva, and report back. In the meantime, are you watching More to Love or Dance Your Ass Off? What do you think?