The determined assistants and their domineering bosses; the stunned girlfriend and his crazy rich family; the quintessential girl next door and her love letters. From To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before to Set It Up to Crazy Rich Asians, 2018 has shaped up to be the revived age of the romantic comedy. But amidst the heart-warming scenes and aspirational tales of love remains one recurring question: Where are all the fat characters?
Television and film have a deep-rooted issue when it comes to representing diverse body types. Despite statistics that show that 39.8 percent of adults are obese and another 32.5 percent are overweight, this two-thirds of the American population is hardly portrayed onscreen. On shows that include one or two plus-size characters, their storylines largely revolve around dissatisfaction with weight and body image issues. Other times, actors like Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect are flaunted as comedic geniuses, reinforcing the age-old notion that fat actors’ sole function is to provide laughter. Characters like “Fat Amy” are the brunt of fat-shaming jokes, unable to escape their bodies and have storylines that revolve on substance rather than size. More recently, Wilson actually incited controversy last week for claiming she'll be the "first ever plus-sized girl to be the star of a romantic comedy" in Isn't It Romantic, which omits actresses of color like Queen Latifah and Mo'Nique, who've each starred in rom-coms in the past, and white actress Ricki Lake.
Looking at every rom-com released in the last year, this seems accurate. The plot of Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, for example, hinges on the problematic premise that a popular, chiseled young man, played by Noah Cenineo, would never date plus-size Sierra Burgess, played by Shannon Purser, unless he was tricked into it. To alter this dynamic by increasing the size of one partner in the relationship is to dismantle the familiar idiom of sweeping a woman off her feet. To many, apparently, a larger woman could never be swept away by a man of a thinner frame.
There have been a handful of instances in the past where this dynamic has been positively portrayed, the most popular being in the 1988 film Hairspray and the 2007 remake of it. In both, a strong, confident fat woman, played by Lake, is loved by a slim, conventionally attractive man who never views her weight as an issue. The film was a major leap forward for the plus-size community and young plus-size girls and remains to be immensely popular to this day, a clear indication that when Hollywood portrays fat romances correctly, the effects of those groundbreaking scenes are long-lasting.
It’d be foolish to insist that Hollywood hasn’t begun to take small steps in the right direction, even if hiring plus-size actors is just a ploy to appease scrutinizing audiences. But the fact that there has yet to be a truly great plus-size rom-com in 2018 is incredibly telling of the world we live in. It’s time society’s view of fatness alters enough that a fat woman can fall in love with a slim man, a fat man, or anyone of any size, without a second thought. What we direly need is a great plus-size rom-com that shows, once and for all, that life does not start after you get skinny; Love and happiness are attainable by all.
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