Women Can Only Eat In Movies If They Look Like They Don’t
We’ve talked about how much we love Mindy Kaling here before. In this great interview, she talks about the problem with writing realistic women characters and the rom-com she’s writing and how much she loves You’ve Got Mail (me TOO! OMG Mindy Kaling, let’s be bffs!) She touches upon this interesting trope of the fictionalized woman, something that bugs me too:
How did you feel about The Devil Wears Prada? Did it bug you that the main character walked away from a good job at the end, to go back to her boyfriend — like that was the only way she could be happy?
I felt like they tried to buy it back by saying what she really wanted was to write political pieces at her temp job. That was a hokey part of the story. At least she wasn’t a klutz. So many comedies and TV shows make pretty, skinny women klutzes — they have no discernible flaws, so let’s make them a klutz!Like Liz Lemon.
Debra Messing was always doing that on Will & Grace. (Ed note–Also, basically any character played by Michelle Pfeiffer, J.Lo and more recently, Kristen Bell)It’s such an old trope.
The other one is actresses who clearly starve themselves playing characters who get picked on by the guy for eating too much.In Valentine’s Day, the Jessica Biel character does that. When she gets nervous she shoves food into her mouth. Of course, it’s okay for Biel to do that because she’s in the best shape of any woman alive, so shoving food in her mouth isn’t offensive.
It would be so funny if an actual fat woman shoved food in her mouth. People would be horrified! They’d want to kill her! Is that an Onion headline? Actual Fat Woman Shoves Food in her Mouth in Romantic Comedy!
She’s right! When did you last see a fat woman eating in a movie when it wasn’t a fat joke? Even in Shallow Hal (which I watched recently… so close and yet, so fucking far) when they show the fat character eating, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow not Gwyneth-In-A-Fat-Suit-Paltrow. How are we ever supposed to get over the idea of body shame when the very idea of us nourishing our bodies is clearly revolting to the rest of the world?
This is too depressing, so instead, I’ll just leave the rest to you guys in the comments.
PS. Marry me, Mindy Kaling?
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You’ve Got Mail is kind of cute, I suppose, but it’s nowhere near the original, Shop Around the Corner. Plus it sucks that he puts Meg Ryan’s character out of business! THAT SUCKS! Plus, AOL. LOL.
I do love Mindy Kaling, though!
I know! I just love it! It’s somehow comforting and silly, even though there are numerous reasons to not like the movie (come on, sexist much? Could it have been the same movie had Meg Ryan put Tom Hanks out of business? No, then she would have been emasculating him and he would never have forgiven her). I have no excuses. Steve Zahn! Parker Posey! Edith Bunker! “It makes my apartment smell mossy!”
I think there should be more fat chicks in leading rolls in movies , period . And the fact that she’s fat should have nothing to do with the plot of the movie . Id love to see Nikki Blonsky play a roll like , oh , idk ..off the top of my head , Polly in Along came Polly . There are plenty of fat girls out there just as talented , just as beautiful , just as *able* to play any role , yet its always some chick who looks like she hasnt eat’n in at least a month and it annoys the hell outta me . Shallow Hal is actually a pretty good movie in some of its message however it also erks me that in that movies fat=ugly . I mean come on , that is SOOOOO not the case . If a woman is beautiful , she just IS , rather she’s a 100lbs or 500lbs , beauty is beauty ! *straightens skirt and sighs* ok , that put me into a bit of a ”rant mode” . lol . Please forgive me , I feel better now !
Oh god I loooove You’ve Got Mail. I can’t stop watching it if I find it on TV. I love the old school laptops and dial up internet! It’s like a little 90s time capsule.
Also, I find the skinny women who stuff their faces trope SO tiresome as well, but it’s actually something I notice far more on TV. You mention Debra Messing, Grace on W&G was a huge pig. She constantly talked about food and was shown stuffing her face all the time.
Ditto the Gilmore Girls. Both Rory and Lorelai avoided exercise at all costs, stuffed their faces all the live long day, and both were likely about a size 2. It was ridiculous. Whole storylines revolved around their gluttony. In reality, between her junk food and coffee addiction, Lorelai Gilmore would likely be dead by now.
But it’s totes ok, because she was THIN!
Ugh, I hate our culture sometimes.
While I agree with you that nobody caring about the Gilmore Girls’ junk food diets because they’re thin is annoying, on the flip side of that, I kind of appreciated the “thin people eat junk food too” message.
I let the Gilmore Girls get away with it because Sookie and Miss Patty were never the “fat” characters, just characters.
YES. I love The Gilmore Girls, it is one of my favorite shows, but this always bugged me. It was cute and funny for them to be such unhealthy eaters because they never gained a pound or got zits or anything. They always stayed thin, wore cute clothes, had fresh pretty faces and nice shiny hair. However, I would much rather see two women stuffing their faces and condemning exercise than starving themselves and talking about how guilty they feel for eating pizza and ice cream. They never expressed guilt for how they ate, and while they were thin, I still appreciate that.
One of my favorite food porn movies is Big Night. One of the things I love about it is that there’s a gorgeous, fabulously dressed, bountiful black woman enjoying the hell out of all that brilliant food. I find this lovely lady mesmerizing.
Now if she only had lines. Sigh.
Maybe it’s time for me to start writing a screenplay.
I’ve never seen You’ve Got Mail, but then I’ve loathed Meg Ryan since she was playing Betsy Stewart on As the World Turns. I can’t bring myself to see any film she’s in because she makes my hair itch.
One more thing on You’ve Got Mail: Birdie was in love with Genearlisimo Franco!
“People do crazy things in foreign countries. They buy leather jackets for way too much money, they don’t fall in love with fascist dictators!”
Agree though, definitely not a very feminist flick. I hated that Meg Ryan’s character was a wimp who needed her liberal pundit journalist boyfriend to stick up for her to Joe Fox at the party. Why couldn’t she just stick up for herself? Hmph.
If I remember right, she was so flabbergasted by Tom’s character she couldn’t speak. Later on it’s explained she always gets tongue tied by confrontation but learns to overcome it.
Loved the interview, and am so happy that someone else is willing to admit their undying love for You’ve Got Mail. I do derive a lot of comfort (and hope, oddly enough) from that movie, and I don’t care who knows it. Ok, I care a little bit because I’m using my alias and not my real name, but you get the point.
SATC, anyone? It’s the same as in real life: a thin/thinnish woman stuffing her face is a sign of a certain joie de vivre. A fat or even larger woman doing the same is disgusting and evil and so on and so forth.
The double standard is also seen in the behaviour that’s acceptable for fat women and not their smaller counterparts. A thin woman who uses “thinspiration”, obsessively counts her food and hates her thighs would be sent to a doctor. For a fat woman, that’s just totally, like, normal. (Not that anyone has an obligation to like their bodies, but still, it’s a horrible divide.)
Some years back, I was eating my lunch at Subway. Said lunch was a tuna sandwich because that was the special. I was on my lunch hour; I had a front desk job. So of course that was the day that my sandwich chose to slowly come apart in my hands. I was trying to eat the thing neatly or at least maneuver it so that the assorted fragments would land on the desk and not on my office outfit . . . and then I bit into a hunk of lettuce that had somehow escaped the shredder and had no end, and I had no free hands to help myself with, so I had to eat it like a rabbit.
I was laughing at myself because it was that or get upset. So of course, because that’s what you have to expect if you dare to exist while fat, that was when some guy at a nearby table said to me, “Well, there goes my appetite.”
I pretended not to hear him. I walked right past him and got a fork to eat my impromptu tuna salad off the sandwich wrapper it had (luckily) fallen on.
I wanted to dump the entire thing on his head instead.
Whenever I eat ice cream in public, I make sweet, sweet love to it in memory of that jackass.
*land on the table.
“I wanted to dump the entire thing on his head instead.”
I would have, but then, I’m also the girl who dumped her drink on a guy who called her a “fat slut” because she wouldn’t let him dry hump dance with her. Which, I don’t recommend doing that unless you’re certain you’re ready to leave the establishment you’re in because it’s apparently the kind of thing that gets you kicked out. And once my sister had to pull me away by the neck of my t-shirt to keep from jumping a guy’s car when he shouted “move your fat ass” at my sister who was in the cross-walk while he was going through a red light. So yeah, I obviously am not the most in control of my temper.
I know this kind of action is not the best and promotes the idea that “fat” is a bad word and a woman should be ashamed of her supposed sexual history, but damn, I’m sick of along with being the butt of jokes, being the one who’s supposed to be the “bigger person” (no pun intended) and just take that kind of abuse.
“I wanted to dump the entire thing on his head instead.”
Don’t waste your sandwich like that.
If I’m being totally honest, I also love “You’ve Got Mail” for some unholy reason.
For plus-sized women who actually eat on camera, maybe try Queen Latifah, Monique, or Camryn Mannheim movies? They are all plus-sized women who are *usually* unapologetic about being larger than the average actress…
Agreed on Queen Latifah. I don’t like “you’ve got mail”, but I will watch Last Holiday over and over and over and…..
This is all well and good, but I object to the notion that actresses are “clearly starv[ing] themselves”. We don’t know them, we don’t know what they eat. That kind of criticism seems unnecessary at best and hypocritical at worst.
oh, my bad, that’s what Kaling said. Sorry! It still bums me out, as much as I love Kaling.
Oh, I also need to chime in as a You’ve Got Mail fan. When that movie was newer I rented it multiple times before finally buying it on VHS (I know, right?) and then DVD. I love it, it’s like a big movie hug. While I now see most entertainment with a more feminist perspective, I can still enjoy stuff that may not have the best feminist message.
Ooh, I was saying to my mum yesterday that one of the things I love about The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency film is that the main character is fat and is seen enjoying cake… but not in a humorous “look, fatty must be seen eating!” kind of way, just in a “this character enjoys cake” kind of way.
Not a movie, but during (still Hollywood fat at the time) Sara Rue’s short stint on Big Bang Theory she was shown partaking of food on a regular basis, just like the rest of the characters, without judgment, and without it being a gag. (The normal cast of the show is shown eating in almost every episode).
Also a second for “Last Holiday,” it shows a fat character going from dieting, and having shame about food, to eating what she wants joyfully as part of living life to the fullest.
Yes! “Last Holiday” is one of my favorites. She gets the hunky guy, stays in posh hotels, gets to cook with an internationally-renowned chef, AND can walk into a boutique and say “make me…international!” (that last bit always makes me smile — it’s a sweet departure from what would happen IRL.)
God yes, how much do I love “Last Holiday”? SO MUCH.
I started noticing girls not eating on screen when I was a teen (back in the 80’s). I first saw it in commercials; the guys would always be horking down cold pizza and wings, while their “girlfriends” would sit by and watch them. Or maybe chew a piece of gun once in a while.
Then I noticed how a lot of the guys on TV shows were hefty, but their wives were always skinny, even if their characters had given birth to 6 kids. If a woman DID have a piece of food, she’d break off tiny little crumbs, which she then slipped into her mouth one at a time. (One actress did this with an ice cream cone. It was so very sad!)
Finally, there’s the spoon trick; have an actress or model stick a spoon in her mouth, follow that with a look of ecstasy, as if she cannot believe how INCREDIBLY good that air tastes! (Of course, the fact that the spoon in spotless as she removes it from her mouth is a bit of a giveaway that there was no actual food on it, ever.)
P.S., I also love “You’ve Got Mail,” even though I feel guilty about it.
Alyssa I saw a bit of this on The Closer, when Brenda ate a bit of a brownie and acted like she was having an orgasm or something. After realizing that’s the dire tion they wanted to take the show, I stopped watching it.
Jackie, I HATE that!!!!! Hollywood is so dumb!
It’s probably unfair to pick on older sitcoms, but I decided to watch some old episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda,” and just abandoned the effort because of how obsessed they were with being single and being too fat and not eating. This was standard fare in every episode I switched to — even for Mary, who looked seriously underfed in that series.
I don’t remember being too bothered about those tired, unfunny jokes when I watched those series when they were originally on the air, which makes me wonder how many of those unhealthy messages insidiously informed my self-talk about body image.
I heard many years ago that they don’t show a fat woman eating in a movie because it discourages the audience from running out to buy the overpriced popcorn. The theaters make more money off the popcorn than they do from movie tickets.
I think one of the worst movies that has to do with the female body image is Bridget Jones’ Diary. I haven’t seen it for many years, but the main character is over-the-top obsessed with losing weight, and everyone in the movie acts like she’s obese and she’s like… 140 pounds. Gimmie a freakin’ break! If I weighed 140 pounds I’d be a stick!
OMG, TrueSouthernPeach, you are so right. Even if you go by bmi (which personally I don’t) Rennee Zellwegger went from underweight before filming to a healthy weight during filming. I had heard so much about that movie, I was actually expecting larger girl and then she just looked… I don’t know how to word it but, average.