Diversity & the Fat White Woman

When it comes to casting female roles in Hollywood, it is usually One Size Fits All. And that size is 4. If she's a 2 or a 0 (or a 00!) then the actress is obviously an over-achiever. 6s are allowed if they look like they are 4s, and 8s are monitored like sex offenders living eleven miles from a grammar school. But that's it. Line drawn.

Until now...

Hollywood has listened to the wails of the American people, and after eight years of an African-American president, the powers-that-be have decided "diversity" on screen is okay. Well, okay-enough. For now. Until #OscarsSoWhite will die down, dammit. Or we can get another white guy into the White House and stop empowering all these Other people. Anyway, diversity is the catch phrase of the moment, and that is good news for white people! Specifically, white women. More specifically, white women over size 8 who are not Charlize Theron (which we all know is for a role, and she will starve herself to get back down to runway model shape. Calm down, gossip hags). Yes, white women are allowed to be "bigger" on TV now! Which is laughable considering the entire population of the United States has been a sexually repressed Rubens painting for the last two decades.

"Put some clothes on, ladies!"

Let's give credit to the rise of Melissa McCarthy, shall we? Melissa has been killing it. Go, Melissa! Melissa has made it safe for female actors to be over size 4 as long as they are funny. In other words, white, comedic, female actors are gaining parity with white, comedic, male actors. Kevin James, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill... the list goes on and on for funny fat guys, but prior to Melissa's ascendency, comedic actresses were thin. Tina Fey talks about having to lose weight in her memoir BOSSYPANTS. Something that John Belushi, Chris Farley, Horatio Sands or Bobby Moynihan probably didn't have to worry about on SNL or Frank Caliendo over at MAD TV. (For a acerbic take on this double standard, here is Tina Fey herself.)

Now that MIKE & MOLLY  is cancelled, and Melissa is free to explore the wonders of wholeness in the Paul Feig universe, there is room for another not-size-4 actress on TV.

But wait, we have two! Que?!

Say hello to AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE and THIS IS US. One comedy, one drama with comedic moments. Grab my smelling salts!

If you are the typical American woman who is between a size 14 and size 16 (American sizes, mind you, which are even bigger if you're European), then you are approaching these shows with trepidation. And we have a right to. I've tuned into both of these shows and waited for the inevitable fat-shaming/fat empowerment mixed messaging. And, alas, it resides in both.

THIS IS US actually has the easier task to accomplish. Because it is technically a drama and because it's an ensemble cast, the audience doesn't have to spend too much time with sad Kate and her self-hatred. THIS IS US actually created a Manic-Pixie-Dream-Guy to give Kate a Rom-Com aspect to her storyline, because what woman is complete without a man to validate her? The MPDG is going to teach Kate how to love herself! Or something. I don't know. I don't watch Rom-Coms with Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girls so I don't know how this trope actually plays out. But it is really painful to watch the flashbacks to Kate as a chubby kid and hear all the well-meaning but destructive things parents say to an eight-year old who is not doing a good enough job worrying about her weight. In "The Pool" episode (S1:E3), Kate was happy rocking her new Care Bear bikini only to be fat shamed not only by the other little girls, but also by her parents. While some have cheered the moment Jack came over to give Kate his t-shirt, they seemed to have overlooked that Rebecca's anxiety over her daughter's confidence was the baseline from which we were entering the story. Fat girls should not be confident. Worried Rebecca, played by the beautiful Mandy Moore, looks at her daughter and sees a target. But she is also the place from which Kate begins to see herself as damaged. Let's just say that every woman in America who has struggled with body self-acceptance will be watching this show with a glass of wine and her cell preprogrammed with her therapist's number waiting to be triggered. Kate is trying to live a "normal" life, but everything is viewed from her physical place in a world that sees her as a problem that she's not adequately solving. Kate tries to enjoy life but can't because she doesn't feel like she deserves to be happy. This is the character's arc which will be externalized through the relationship with her MPDG and, by the rules of episodic TV, she will not be able to resolve until the series finale eight seasons from now. Buckle in, America!

Why is the MPDG so thin in this picture? Uh-oh, Kate...

Then we have AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE. Full disclosure: I'm from Connecticut. Fuller disclosure: A family member lives Westport adjacent and works in the heart of Westport. In other words, I know this place, I know these people. Also, said family member is watching AH and says they are doing a good job of catching the mentality of the Westport Mommy. Maybe. Maybe not. But if only the population of Westport is watching this show, it's in trouble. AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE is the newest in ABC's Comedy strategy to hit every kind of diverse family out there: Black families, Jewish families, a Taiwanese family that is a catch-all for all Asian families. And now a rich, white family that is "diverse" because Mom is not a size 4! What will they think of next?! The concept of the series then is to show what it's like to be a fat woman living in a place where she is the outsider.

Let us take a moment to let this sink in: A white woman living in a white community is an outsider because she doesn't have an eating disorder. And let's be clear, AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE has illustrated that the trophy wives of Westport have eating disorders. In the pilot, the "normal" women are all drinking green smoothies and dressed in lycra ready to hit the gym. The antagonist is guest star Leslie Bibb who is called "Two Fit Bits" because she wears two fitness monitors like shackles on each wrist. The capper punchline is Leslie Bibb coming over to fat shame Katie (hey, another fat Kate!) while confessing that she used to be fat but she got over that by running. A lot. She's so damaged by her former fatness, the subtext says, she wears two exercise monitors. AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE is using the exclusive community of Westport to mock thin women. However, it also has it's protagonist fat shaming herself. (And I will not overlook Mackenzie Marsh's entrance in which they inverted the beauty shot to make a winking joke that her body is obviously not beautiful. No, AH, no!) AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE has a big problem -- pun intended. It wants to satirize America's weight obsession -- amend:  female America's weight obsession -- but it can't do it without making women's bodies the punchline to the joke. To take the pressure off the fat angle, AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE adds quirks to two of the three kids to highlight the family's Outsider status: the new Alex P. Keaton and a little girl with OCD. But Fat Mom is the star of the series, and therefore it is her challenges as Fat and Mom that are the basis for the show. (For the record, episode 2 leans into the SAHM angle. Hello, Mommy Wars! Oy...)

Two Fit Bits Smelling Chocolate because she can't eat it -- get it?! 

After watching the last installment of AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE, I was speaking with a plus size friend who made the comment, "why can't plus size actresses get just a normal mom role? Like, why can't [Katy Mixon] be Clare Dunphy [from MODERN FAMILY]? Most moms in America are plus size!" I thought about her question again after watching S2:E1 of THE REAL O'NEALS, "The Real Thang."

THE REAL O'NEALS is also part of the ABC Comedy strategy (family diversity sub-cateogy: Irish Catholic family with a gay son!). Mary Hollis Inboden is a secondary character on the show the rounds out the ensemble cast to the requisite six. (Six cast members means you can break down A-B-C plot lines into teams of two. See: FRIENDS.) Inboden is considered plus sized by Hollywood. I wouldn't have thought about it except the writers felt the need to point it out in the Season 2 opener: Inboden's character, Jodi, has to "come out" as plus sized when she's asked to model in a mall fashion show by a plus size clothier. The writers bungled the heck out of this story line. First, it's framed like Jodi had never looked at a clothing label or a fashion magazine in all her adult life despite being a hair dresser, so the necessity of her "coming out" is undercut by the fact that Jodi didn't seem to know she was plus sized. It was almost like the producers casted Inboden based on her merits as a comedic actress instead of a series creator writing into the slug line, "JODI - 30s, plus size;" however, this year, everyone in the writers room looked at Inboden and noticed that she was, in fact, plus sized, and said, "Hey, we need to point out that Jodi is a size 14 and make some fat-positivity acceptance message out of it!" And then, to top it off, the punchline in the tag was that nobody in the mall went to the fashion show because fat people don't care about fashion or plus size people are so rare in American malls or... something. I don't know. Second, let's not forget, that the older brother, "Jimmy," is -- was? -- an anorexic. The show seems to want to tackle weight issues, but can't seem to find a way to make it funny. I get it, THE REAL O'NEALS. I do.

The "Plus-Size Model" and the "Anorexic," or as the rest of us call them "Really Attractive People"

So far, THIS IS US is doing well. While AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE is not. The fact is, Hollywood can't seem to talk about weight in America in a funny or real way. It doesn't know how to because Hollywood finds fat aberrant. I try to picture the creators, producers, and writers rooms of these shows, and I have a hard time picturing plus size women among them. Hollywood is run amok by beautiful, thin women behind the scenes. Don't believe me:

Stacy Snider, left, Chairman/CEO at Fox

Donna Langley, Chairman of Universal pictures

Nancy Dubuc, CEO of A+E Networks

Kathleen Kennedy, uber-producer and president of LucasFilm

The diversity conversation includes the Behind-the-Scenes discussion because the people who have the power to green light projects decide what the rest of us see on our screens. Right, Matt Damon? It's their biases that play out across the media landscape.

Diversity is about inclusivity: Reflecting back to America a picture of itself. Hollywood is being responsive for now. I would caution, however, that this may be temporary. Please refer to Norman Lear's filmography. ALL IN THE FAMILY was the precursor to MODERN FAMILY. BLACK-ISH can look back at THE JEFFERSONS. MAUDE was an unrepentant feminist that can see herself scattered across the television landscape in Shondaland and anything produced by Tina Fey or Amy Poehler. But Lear's progressive concepts slipped backward during the Reagan and Bush years. While I don't think that TV will necessarily slip back into an exclusive Whites Only enclave with a token COSBY SHOW, I'm not too sure about this plus size try-out. Plus size women, white or POC, have never had their moment on TV, and I'm not sure that they can sustain their footing despite the sheer number of Americans that fall into this category who deserve to see themselves reflected, too. Maybe four to eight years of a female president might change the idea that white women are only supposed to be One Thing, but I'll be monitoring this trend like Two Fit Bits monitors her caloric intake and exercise output. Obsessively and with a tiny it of fear that it's unsustainable.