Is Harry Potter Pro-Fat?
According to Manolo for the Big Girl, Harry Potter is pro-fat. (Although I have to say, I hardly think giants count.) (Also, since when is Neville Longbottom fat? Is he fat?)
While I notice that, at first glance, a few of the overweight characters are stereotypically written as “bumbling” or “jovial,” on the whole the overweight good guys blend seamlessly into the good-guy group.
This reminds me of me, asking (a while back) is Harry Potter anti-fat? (I don’t know why I was anti the Fat Lady portrait, though. I’ll have to read it again to see if there really are Fat Lady jokes, as I guess I thought there were.)
And then, all of that notwithstanding, does Harry Potter have other problems? (Spoilers for Deathly Hallows behind the cut.)
Deathly Hallows also goes far beyond the previous books’ discomforting treatment of gender and into disturbing territory. Fleur is described as staring at Bill ‘slavishly’. When Ron feels uncomfortable about clutching the now-married Tonks in a non-sexual manner, it’s her husband that he glances at, not the woman herself. It’s automatically accepted that, only a few weeks into her pregnancy, Tonks will stay home with her mother rather than go to work. Finally, while it’s obviously very, very cool that Mrs. Weasley can wipe the floor with Bellatrix Lestrange, may I ask why the only role that the Order of the Phoenix could find for a woman with such mad dueling skills involved cooking and cleaning?
I did notice the Fleur-cooking-for-Bill thing, and it made me a little uncomfortable. Maybe if Hermione becomes head of the Wizangamot, I’ll feel better. But I guess the takeaway here is that I have more feelings about women’s roles in the books than about fat people. And also, the book is mostly totally awesome.
That last link is via Ceej.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Books, Fat Positive, Fatism, Harry Potter
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I am in the middle of it right now but I have been irritated by the fact that every wizarding mother is a stay-at-home mom without a career since book one. There are women at the ministry, and women who teach at Hogwarts, but they never seem to have kids. (Then again, the men who teach at Hogwarts don’t have kids, either.)
The Tonks thing also irritated me and made me hate Lupin. And of course Hermione is doing all of the cooking.
Harry’s Aunt, Uncle and cousin (the Dursleys) are portrayed in the most vile of anti-fat stereotypes I’ve seen in a long time. All three are fat and also stupid, mean, gluttonous and lazy. Was portraying them simply as mean just not enough to make the audience hate them?
I am still totally disappointed that Lupin/Sirius didn’t happen, and that’s why Tonks irritated me. I never bought the Lupin/Tonks romance, and I didn’t buy it in this book either. Because Lupin is in love with Sirius.
rsrott, actually, Aunt Petunia’s not fat. And while I don’t love the fat stereotypes applied to Dudley and Uncle Vernon, they aren’t, as M for the BG points out, the only fat characters in the books or the only jerky characters in the books. If they were either, I’d have a much bigger problem. (The movies also make it seem a lot worse than the books, I think. Gluttonous Uncle Vernon in OotP pissed me right off, but that’s not Rowling’s fault.)
Also, the piece they quote from Rowling’s website is pretty awesome.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t say the HP series is pro-fat; I just wouldn’t say it’s anti-fat, either.
And Hermione cooking for the boys the whole time in book 7 drove me MENTAL.
Hermione cooking for the boys pissed *her* off, too – she brought that up in one of their many arguments, if I remember correctly.
And yes, Aunt Petunia was described as being very thin.
The movies definitely played more on the fat than the books did. We saw the most recent movie, I noticed they made Uncle Vernon a lot bigger.
While Dudley is portrayed as being of limited intelligence, I didn’t see that with the aunt and uncle. Closed minded to the extreme, certainly, but not stupid. As for lazy, I didn’t see that either. Petunia’s obsession with household cleanliness could be considered OCD, but not lazy. And Vernon worked hard enough on the job to get promotions and a company car. The roles in the family seemed to be very purposefully stereotypical, since they were so concerned about impressing the neighbours. At least that’s the impression I got.
I thought Tonks went to her mother more for protection from anti-werewolf sentiments? Her being pregnant by a werewolf was pretty scandelous, wasn’t it? I think I’ll have to read the book again.
Spoilers,
spoilers,
spoilers.
Well apparently Ginny became a professional Quiddich player and then a writer. And Ron went into business with George! That’s exactly what I was hoping for.
Aunt Petunia was thin. And when I read the books, I never got the impression that Uncle Vernon was fat so much as… large. But there were a lot of jokes about the fat, lazy, gluttonous Dudley. I think Rowling might have come around on that though, because in book 5, Dudley becomes muscular but no less nasty, and I don’t recall any fat jokes about any characters from there on in.
I never got the idea that JK Rowling was “anti-fat.” Several of the so-called “good” characters are described as chubby. Some of the “bad guys” are very thin. And sure, some of the women are portrayed in more traditional roles – i.e., Molly Weasley – but then, you have to figure she likes taking care of her family and their friends. There are plenty of smart women who choose to stay at home and raise children. There are plenty of women in the books, though, in positions of power. The smartest person in the class is Hermione. Tonks expresses that she’s bad at “householdy spells”, and even though she did sort of go into confinement before she had the baby, I think that was more for her own safety than anything else. NONE of the Order were particularly going to actual jobs at that point. By the time the final battle took place, Tonks was right in the middle of it. Hermione did get pissed off at Harry and Ron for the cooking issue…and actually somewhat derided Ron for not being more self-sufficient, since he’s used to his mom or the house-elves taking care of things.
Overall, I think Rowling definitely portrays women as equal to men. When Ron or Harry try to act sexist in any way, Hermione puts the smackdown on them. In the real world, some women elect to stay home and raise families, some work, some have kids, some don’t. Of the kids in the books: Neville raised by his ‘formidable’ grandmother; Hermione’s parents are both dentists; Dean has a single mom; Seamus’ mom is definitely a dominant personality…
Rowling has also said that, in terms of her own kids, she doesn’t want them to see either her or her husband slacking off and not working, even though they are well off.
Correct me if I’m wrong- but isn’t Dolores Umbridge described as fat and “toad-like”? I thought I recalled a lot of stuff about how her simpering mannerisms and her pink bows contrasted ‘grotesquely’ with her size.
I enjoy the Potter books and it’s been good to see how her writing has become more subtle as the cast expands, but the early books especially have a lot of moments of casual misogyny and simplistic stereotypes. The movies only make them worse, of course!
Tonks staying home while pregnant didn’t bother me too much, although it did start a bit early in her pregnancy. It could have been because of anti-werewolf prejudice. Having a member of the Order of the Pheonix who, in addition to having a Muggle-born father, is also pregnant by a werewolf gives the corrupt Ministry plenty of excuses to bring her in for questioning (not that she’d go quietly, of course). In any case, I doubt Lupin forced her to do it, so it doesn’t make me hate him. His angsty fight with Harry irritated me a bit, but I can sort of see were he was coming from (I won’t get into why now because it would make this post even longer). The most important thing is that he went back to Tonks after the fight with Harry, showing that he’s a good man. My love for Lupin remains strong.*
Question: Was cooking and cleaning the only thing Molly did for the Order? I had just assumed that she did other things that we just didn’t hear much about. She did show up for the battle at Hogwarts, but then again didn’t other parents? Is there any mention in the books, even just in passing, of her doing anything else?
Don’t get me started on the Uncle Vernon ice-cream eating in the OotP movie! It was such an unnecessary, cheap fat joke! That wasn’t Rowling’s fault, but overall I think she could have had some fat main characters that didn’t somewhat fit a stereotype.
*As much as I love Tonks, I must agree with mo pie: in my ideal world, Remus and Sirius would have gotten together in, like, Book 3.
I think that Dudley’s character was actually the most cruel in book (and movie) 5, when he had actually “leaned up” a bit b/c of his boxing.
I think Rowling plays on stereotypes of all kinds, from the pinched parsimony of skinny Aunt Petunia to Dudley’s weight being code for “spoiled”, and so I don’t know that she’s any more anti-fat than the culture at large.
I’m glad you touched on the Molly Weasley thing, though. For all that I’m glad she kicked Bellatrix Lestrange’s ass, I hated her line there. It was totally Sigourney Weaver from the end of Aliens. I was half expecting Molly to magic herself up a power loader or something to beat Bellatrix up with.
Just… I almost would have rather they had just left her in the kitchen, than to have her only moment of badassery be such a cliche’d Protective Mother Bear moment. blegh!
Also, I hated that she killed Tonks. I loved her, for all that I didn’t quite get the Tonks/Lupin thing either. Just… way to kill off an asskicking female character who probably would have refused to give up her job (and hey, why should she have, aside from a few days a month, Lupin would have made an ideal at-home dad).
Mo… Sirius was dead well before Lupin and Tonks got together. I see no reason why Lupin couldn’t have been with both. Actually I figure Sirius and Remus were together all through Hogwarts and up till Sirius went to Azkaban.
And I had no problem with Tonks going into confinement when she found out she was pregnant, because her job at that point had a stunningly high mortality rate. Obviously she was right back out there once she wasn’t pregnant, given her death scene.
And I think everything else I would have said has been covered.
I thought that Tonks went into hiding because she was known as part of the Order, and obviously they were in super-a-lot-of-danger all the time. I thought that she just wanted the baby to live, and so she went away so that there was less of a chance that she would be killed.
I think that Mrs. Weasley is a great character. I wouldn’t chide her character for staying home. She has had seven kids to take care of, on a limited income. I don’t know how the wizarding world is with child care, but that would have been super expensive in the muggle world. And even if the Weasleys were more affluent, it’s her right to stay home if she wants to. I thought McGonagall was an inspiring and great character. Neville’s mom was a great and accomplished Auror. Ginny is amazingly strong. Hermione eventually goes high up in the Ministry, and she has children (I read about the Ministry bit in an interview with J.K. Rowling). I think that Rowling presents many social issues in the wizarding world in a complex, not-easy-to-solve manner, which rings true with reality.
I haven’t paid attention as much to how pro-fat or anti-fat the book is. I remember thinking that it was cool that there were good and bad fat and skinny characters, but I don’t remember what that was about. Neville, maybe? I’ll have to think about it.
Sorry this comment is so late in the day – I only read Deathly Hallows last week while I was on vacation. I can’t remember whether Neville is described as fat in any of the early books, but the actor who played him was a bit pudgy in the first two or three films, but that was probably just puppy fat, given how he looks now. He is a Yorkshireman (as you can tell from his accent), and I saw him being interviewed on my local news program shortly before Order of the Phoenix was released last month. He is exceedingly tall, and cute in an indie-band sort of way. They make him look a bit geeky in the films, and those sweater vests they put him in probably make him look chunkier than he is, thus playing to any sense the audience has that Neville as a character is “fat”. If the books do talk about Neville being fat/chubby, I think it is partly to set up the fact that everyone, including Harry (and ultimately Voldemort) underestimates him. Which, if true, would be rather a clever comment on the attitudes of society towards fat people.
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