Abstract

Fat people are often depicted in popular media as imperfect, their whole characters riddled with negative features that can be attributed only to their non-idealized body. These representations imply not only that fatness itself is aesthetically and physically imperfect, but that fatness is caused by and causes more robust character imperfections. Using Hulu series Shrill as a model, I argue that in order to address our collective distaste for fat bodies (and, by extension, our shared anti-fat bias) we must create and engage with humanizing representations that show fat people as imperfect without blaming those flaws on their weight. By creating more complex fat characters, we can learn to love and accept fat people without reinforcing harmful stereotypes about fatness.