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Ever since a friend of mine linked to http://captainawkward.com/2012/06/28/282-making-plans-with-flaky-sister-isnt-working/ I've been reading through Captain Awkward's backlist, like you do. I just got to this:
I have a giant post about this in me somewhere, like how it makes me almost cry for joy when I see a fellow fat person on a TV show and he/she is treated like…just a person…not shown to be obsessed with eating, not ridiculed, allowed to have desires and dreams, what it means to me to see someone like myself on the screen, or how shows that have, like, more than one Person of Color or disabled people who are not completely defined by their disability[...] Story is real and important and it affects us, and it makes me cry to think of how marginalized people make feasts out of the scraps that mainstream culture gives us.
I was reminded of Eastwick. That show, guys.
I'm sure my experience of it was improved by having read the book: my expectations were really, really low. And it looked like it was going to use the most misogynist bits of the book and the movie. An assortment of women: one blonde, one brunette, one redhead. One big, one little, one medium. One kind of slutty, one kind of virginal, one whose sexuality was all earth-mother fecundity. Something for everyone!
The show was so much better than that. Real friendship between women. Real communication, friendly and not, between women. Relationships between women of different generations. Enmity between women over something other than a man.
And Penny. Penny is a, well, a Hollywood-fat person, and the show treats her as just a person. Not obsessed with eating. Not ridiculed. Allowed to have desires and dreams, and to be desirable. And when the guy she's interested in turns out to be using her, the show doesn't say that she's a fattie and he's a hottie, so she should have known.
I have a giant post about this in me somewhere, like how it makes me almost cry for joy when I see a fellow fat person on a TV show and he/she is treated like…just a person…not shown to be obsessed with eating, not ridiculed, allowed to have desires and dreams, what it means to me to see someone like myself on the screen, or how shows that have, like, more than one Person of Color or disabled people who are not completely defined by their disability[...] Story is real and important and it affects us, and it makes me cry to think of how marginalized people make feasts out of the scraps that mainstream culture gives us.
I was reminded of Eastwick. That show, guys.
I'm sure my experience of it was improved by having read the book: my expectations were really, really low. And it looked like it was going to use the most misogynist bits of the book and the movie. An assortment of women: one blonde, one brunette, one redhead. One big, one little, one medium. One kind of slutty, one kind of virginal, one whose sexuality was all earth-mother fecundity. Something for everyone!
The show was so much better than that. Real friendship between women. Real communication, friendly and not, between women. Relationships between women of different generations. Enmity between women over something other than a man.
And Penny. Penny is a, well, a Hollywood-fat person, and the show treats her as just a person. Not obsessed with eating. Not ridiculed. Allowed to have desires and dreams, and to be desirable. And when the guy she's interested in turns out to be using her, the show doesn't say that she's a fattie and he's a hottie, so she should have known.