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.

The Bitch magazine blog has a post up by Rachel McCarthy James examining fatness on my favorite show (at least the first few seasons), The Office.

It’s an interesting read focusing on three main characters: Phyllis, Kevin, and Stanley. (As well as an excuse for me to link to this picture of me on the Office set. I considered linking the vending machine one but it’s less recognizable, no?)

Quotes ahoy!

Phyllis (who we did a post about in 2006):

At the intersection of sizeism and sexism exists Phyllis Vance. Phyllis is active and healthy–she was a cheerleader and plays basketball and runs with the rest of The Office… Phyllis is framed as attractive, happily married to Bob Vance (Vance Refrigeration). She is sexual and seems to like her body a great deal; in season six, she refers to her breasts proudly, has a quickie with Bob in a bathroom, and brags about flirting with men in bars…

Phyllis does not reflect any of the stereotypes ascribed to older fat women. Phyllis is coquettish, not matronly. She is bossy and ambitious, not jolly. She is self-satisfied, not ashamed of herself. She is Phyllis Vance, and she’s happy to be that.

Kevin:

[H]e’s constantly shown to have cartoonish eating habits, sometimes forcing him into caricature and buffoonery. In one episode, the staff makes bets on the abilities and tendencies of other characters. Whereas talkative Kelly tells about her Netflix queue in infinitesimal detail, fat Kevin stuff M&Ms in his mouth. It’s not explicitly “haha look at the fatty”, and it’s somewhat absurd. But, it’s associating fatness with gluttony in a problematic way.

Stanley:

But unlike the other two fat series regulars, he is visibly unhealthy, having repeatedly voiced health concerns and experiencing coronary arrest, and avoiding activity (though he is sometimes physical). However, the show does not make a rhetorical point of connecting his fatness to his health problem beyond Michael being an ass about it, and showing him focusing on stress reduction rather than drastic changes in eating habits. Again, it’s important that while Stanley is unhealthy, two other fat characters have few to no health issues.

Overall:

The Office is not a radical critique of dieting and weight-loss culture. It centralizes size-privileged people, and reinforces some problematic norms. But The Office does exist within the context of a media culture that frequently erases and usually stereotypes folks of size. By having a variety of well-developed, individual fat characters who do not conform to harmful norms and stereotypes, and by portraying weight-loss culture as harmful and problematic, The Office is sending a valuable and subversive message to its viewing audience.

That’s what she said!

[She was told] she would be given a free gym membership and had 30 days to improve, and if she did not, she would be separated from the company. The company’s uniforms are offered in small, extra small and double-extra small.

Says Hooters:

“Our practice of upholding an image standard based on appearance, attitude and fitness for Hooters girls is both legal and fair. It is not unlike the standard used by the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders or the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.”

I’m not even sure what, as a feminist, to think about Hooters qua Hooters. That level of objectification of women is just gross, but do women know what they’re signing up for when they choose to work there? Is this story only a story because the woman is clearly not overweight? What if she were? Or are you like Michael Scott and my friends Carrie and Brian, who love the hot wings? What do you guys think?

Via @RevoltRealWomen on Twitter.

“In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt saves his wife, who’s in danger,” says [director Phillip] Noyce. “And what we found was when Evelyn Salt saved her husband in the new script, it seemed to castrate his character a little. So we had to change the nature of that relationship.”

O RLY, Phillip Noyce? “CASTRATED,” seriously!? And in the original script, the helpless damsel-in-distress thing was just fine? Because she doesn’t have, oh, BALLS? Blech.

Angelina Jolie is starring in an action film that was written for Tom Cruise. (The eponymous Edwin A. Salt became Evelyn Salt in the movie now called Salt.) Lucy Liu took on the role of Agent Sever in Ecks vs. Sever (which supposedly is awful but I’m sure it wasn’t Liu’s fault, because she’s awesome). The role was supposedly originally given to Jet Li and Sylvester Stallone. The new Battlestar Galactica made Starbuck a woman, in the person of Katee Sackhoff. (This has been called “fucked up” and “politically correct” of course.) And Jodie Foster has done it too, playing the role of Kyle in Flightplan (hey, they even let her keep the name!)

All of this is leading up to the tiny tidbit that I read in this week’s Entertainment Weekly about a new pilot called Kindreds, starring Kathy Bates as a “curmudgeonly former lawyer“:

How badly does Kelley want Bates to play the part? Well, it was originally written for a man, Harry Korn, but is being reworked for the talented actress who appeared on an episode of Kelley’s legal hit “LA Law.”

Oscar viewers just got a strong reminder of Bates’ acting ability when the horror montage showed her slamming James Caan’s foot with a sledgehammer from Stephen King’s famed movie “Misery.” She also had a recurring role on NBC’s “The Office,” playing Jo Bennett, the Marge Schott-inspired new owner of Dunder-Mifflin.

This is especially interesting because when I think of David E. Kelly, I think of Ally McBeal, a show with such a stick-thin cast that it drove at least one cast member to anorexia.

As to the specific shows, having watched 2 episodes of “Drop Dead Diva” and one of “More to Love,” I’d put the former at about 70% fat positive and the latter at about 20%. But shit, the fact that the 20% was even there in “More to Love” surprised me…in the introductory interviews, some of the women espoused basic fat acceptance principles. One talked about how she realized that she had to learn to love her body in order to be ready for a healthy relationship. Another one, identified as a fitness trainer, was like, “Look, some people just aren’t going to end up thin, no matter what they do” — and she said it in a very “whatever” way, not a “woe is me” way. HAES 101 might have just slipped into Fox prime time! Granted, more women than not cried about all the romantic disappointments they attributed to their weight, one wished she could lose 50 lbs., one said she rejects the label “fat,” one has some fucked-up antifeminist fantasy of being appreciated for her “wifey-mom skills,” and some of the ones who express confidence seem like they’re posturing. The flipside of 20% good is, of course, 80% suck. But I was so primed for 110% suck, the parts that didn’t make me cringe were actually impressive.

On TWoP, they celebrate the premiere with an article about their 10 favorite overweight characters on TV, including Hurley on Lost and Mimi on the Drew Carey Show. Not only do they leave out David Brent, they also throw in a tiny bit of, yes, gratuitous fat-bashing! (And it’s not even funny, but that… isn’t a big surprise in the new TWoP editorial content regime.)

Roseanne and Dan Conner (Roseanne)
It’s amazing to look back on this show and think about how, for a while, this couple played by Roseanne Barr and John Goodman represented the average American family. And how the series ended with Dan having a heart attack — how could America not change its eating habits after something like that?

Another thing worth noting in this list is that of the 10 characters listed, only three are women. It’s obviously more acceptable to be an overweight man on TV than an overweight woman. But then again, we already knew that.

Now she’s posting a little bit of behind-the-scenes info on the SELF magazine cover (the Fug Girls said that the people at SELF “appear to have photoshopped her face to the point where it looks like each of her eyes is from a totally different picture — and, indeed, perhaps a totally DIFFERENT PERSON.” They did not like the cover. Hee.) Jenna says:

I think one of the reasons you see actresses being so crazy about their weight is because, in this business, if you gain or lose weight – even just a couple of pounds – you don’t get to do it privately. Ladies, you know how much you hate trying on jeans or pants at a department store. Imagine doing that in front of a group of people all judging how you look – and watching whether or not you can fit them over your thighs.

Also, designers make dresses in something called a “sample size” – which is essentially a size 4. This is what they send to stylists for photo shoots. The dresses are often hot off the runway and not yet in stores so they only make a few and they make them all in this “sample size”. If you aren’t a “sample size” your choice of dresses goes way down. It’s the same way for award shows. For TV or movies it’s different because they buy most of the clothes in stores so you have more flexibility. Luckily Pam has the kind of wardrobe that can hide a few Christmas cookies, but imagine if you are on a show like Desperate Housewives where you have to wear high fashion outfits each day. So much pressure!

She also talks about the 10-day challenge that the magazine editors had her do, which I first read about on Crazy Days and Nights:

She did this thing for SELF magazine where she let them photoshop her to a point where her own family wouldn’t recognize her, and then made her follow some regimen which had her using a crock pot and how it improved her sex life because she and her boyfriend could come home and eat right away and still have time left over for sex after. I hate these kind of articles and am utterly dismayed and shocked that Jenna let herself be talked into one.

I love Jenna Fischer, which is why I haven’t picked up that issue of SELF. I know it would just piss me off. I mean look at the cover: two of the most promiment headlines are “LOVE YOUR BODY SECRETS (Feel Sexier At Any Size)” and “LOSE INCHES ALL OVER (You’ll Be Slimmer In Just 18 Minutes A Day).” I think I love my body more because I don’t read SELF. And Jenna doesn’t address the issue of being photoshopped at all, even though it seems pretty obvious that they did in fact photoshop the hell out of her.

Still, it’s refreshing to have a celebrity talk openly about her perspective on things like weight and magazine shoots, and I think in general, Jenna seems very down-to-earth and honest. And I’d rather not know if she’s faking it. (That’s what she said.)

I feel like we’ve talked about this before—his description of himself as a “fatty,” his standup routine where he mocks Dawn French’s weight, his self-loathing, and so much that I have tried to ignore because he is a comic genius.

Now, he’s defending some anti-WLS comments with more anti-fat comments. First, his comments about weight loss surgery:

“They have bits sliced off and tied up and sucked out. I want to say to them, ‘You lazy f—ing fat pig. Just go for a run and stop eating burgers. You might fucking die’. “Some things are not worth the risk… If your arse is too fucking fat, stop eating and go for a run.”

He’s defended himself with some follow-up comments on his blog (which are obviously intended to be funny, and NSFW if your W is very P about what you LA on the I):

I heard someone on the radio once say that they were tired of the prejudice aimed at the overweight. They said something like “you’re not allowed to make fun of gay people, so why are you allowed to make fun of fat people? It’s the same thing.”

It’s not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn’t work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat. Then, when they were fat they had to keep up the eating to stay fat. For gayness to be the same as fatness, gay people would have to start off straight but then ween themselves onto cock. Soon they’re noshing all day getting gayer and gayer. They’ve had more than enough cock… they’re full… they’re just sucking for the sake of it. Now they’re overgay, and frowned upon by people who can have the occasional cock but not over indulge.

When a doctor tells me that that’s how you become gay, I’ll stop making jokes about fat people.

Fatshionista responds to the idea of equating fatness with gayness in a thought-provoking way. As for me, I thought I’d talked about this somewhere—of course now I can’t find it, so maybe it was in real life, with some actual flesh-and-blood people—but whenever I think of Ricky Gervais and fat, I think of David Brent, in this moment from the series finale of The Office:

Gervais’s comedy has routinely included fat people, mostly making fun of his own weight, in the characters of David Brent and the “little fat man” Andy Millman. In this scene, like many of the scenes from the UK Office, it is David Brent’s own fat-hatred, and the hypocricy of that hatred, that is played for laughs.

David Brent goes on another blind date in this episode, with another woman who he thinks is too overweight and unattractive for him, and on top of that, has no personality. (“I thought she’d be one of those jolly ones.”) Again, the emphasis is on David Brent’s inappropriate attitude towards fat people. On the other hand, in the commentary track, Gervais is laughing at Brent’s total delusion—he says something like, what is he expecting?

Gervais does seem to buy into the notion that fat is unattractive, even though he’s not buying into the idea of “Hollywood fat” (Dawn Tinsley, after all, his romantic heroine, is much larger than her American equivalent Pam Beesly). He seems to feel that at some point, fat becomes inappropriate, irresponsible, mockable, and easily reversible—even though, or perhaps because, he struggles with weight issues himself.

As you might have noticed, at some point this post just became a brain dump. I’m a big fat fan of Gervais, and I can’t bring myself to hate him, I just can’t. Maybe you can, though! Tell me what you think. Just don’t take away my Office DVDs.

Hi Mo! Love the blog. I was just writing because you asked for ideas, and I know this is a tad bit frivolous but I’ve been waiting for someone around the fatosphere to talk about it, or even make an open thread for people to weigh in (hehe,) but I was totally fascinated by the season premiere of The Office. The episode was called Weight Loss and the whole office embarks on one of those biggest loser type programs and of course fails spectacularily.

Thing is, I’m pretty sure it was written by people who are very aware that diets don’t actually work. They show a lot of extreme diet behaviors that have been glamorized (Master Cleanse) but make sure to show just how silly and harmful they are (Kelly faints and has to go to the ER.) They show some of the behavioral side effects of dieting, such as secret eating and the Last Supper effect. They show how silly it is that everyone thinks weight loss is always a magic cure no matter what (Michael asks Angela to lose 5 pounds and she says her doctor told her to gain weight and he counters “do you want to die!?!”)

There is one part where Dwight tricks Phyllis into going for a drive with him and then he takes her purse and makes her walk back to the office through the bad part of town to try to get her to exercise, and it is a funny scene but you are very clearly meant to be laughing at what an asshole Dwight is and not at Phyllis. When she calls the company to complain about his behavior they back her up 100%. The only character who actually loses weight is Stanley, who doesn’t do anything extreme and does it for his own reasons and loses a very small amount. I guess some would say that any weight loss isn’t fat accepting, but the Stanley story line is really subtle and no one even notices his weight loss or congratulates him on it and no big deal is made of it- it isn’t portrayed as some great victory, just something he is personally happy about, which I think is a really appropriate attitude about weightloss.

Anyway, other people might disagree and not think the episode was very accepting and anti diet, but as far as I’m concerned it is one of the most accepting things I’ve seen on TV like… ever. Any negativity towards fat and eating and bodies is meant to be seen as silly and mean, something The Office has gotten really good at as they’ve addressed racism, sexism, etc.

In case you haven’t seen the episode, you can go see it at Hulu.com or below. For those of you who did see it, what did you think?

“I never knew I was fat until I got famous… Then I suddenly realised I was overweight. The papers can’t simply put ‘comedian Ricky Gervais’. They have to put ‘rotund comedian’ or ‘chubby fatster’.

“The other day, I was trying to keep fit by going jogging with my iPod, and the paparazzi leapt out a bush and got me. The headline the next day? ‘Ipodge.’ What can you do?”

Man, that bugs the hell out of me, too; certain celebrities often get some descriptive plus-sized adjective attached to them, even when it’s not relevant to the story. (I was Googling for examples and found this article where Nikki Blonsky not only escapes that fate, she gets referred to as “Golden Globe nominee” instead. She’s working on an album! Yay! Sorry, tangent.)

Anyway, Ricky Gervais pokes a lot of fun at his own weight in both The Office (him sucking in his gut for the benefit of the motivational speaker people) and Extras (oh god, the the girdle); in each case it’s not so much mocking the character’s weight, but his vanity. To sum up, Ricky Gervais is a genius. Wait, was that not the point I was supposed to be making here?