Size Matters

Bechdel Test Canon: Fat Girl

Relative to Breillat's other movies, 2001's Fat Girl is fairly tame until its problematic conclusion. Documenting the misadventures of fifteen-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida) and her younger sister Anaïs (Reboux) while on a family vacation, the movie highlights the disparity between the girls' attitudes toward sex despite their shared virginity. The older sister, who is slender and conventionally attractive, is interested in entertaining men's spirited advances and harbors a romantic naïveté when embarking on a dalliance with Italian law student Fernando (Libero De Rienzo) that she mistakes as more than a fling. Though only twelve, Anaïs, whose beauty is often ignored because of her size, is far more cynical. She wants her first time to be with someone she does not love and watches in...

Size Matters: It's So Hard to Say Goodbye

Well, fats and nonfats, it's time for me to get my fat ass on a horse somehow and ride into the sunset. I hope you enjoyed this blog, or at least learned something from it. It would be great if you now have a better understanding of fat acceptance/size acceptance and how to treat fat people (as... Read more »

Size Matters: The Thing About Average

Sorry, y'all, but this blog has got two posts left! So you're not rid of me yet. I wanted to explore a subject related to FA that Alyx brought up in the comments on the last post—how do we determine what isn't fat? Where do we draw the... Read more »

Size Matters: Breaking it Down to Basics

Since we're nearing the end of this blog, I thought now would be a good time to answer a question several readers have asked and basically summarize some of the lessons I hope you've taken away from our time together here. These are just starting points—I would suggest you do some further reading... Read more »

Size Matters: Fabulous Fat Divas

Happy Monday! I wanted to offer something a little light-hearted to start off the week, so I decided to dedicate this post to a few fierce fat female recording artists that have rocked my world and provided a counterpoint to how fat women are viewed in society. These women are all in control of... Read more »

Size Matters: Celebrity Schadenfreude

Celebrities who have the “misfortune” of gaining a few pounds usually find pictures of themselves looking “fat” on the cover of a tabloid rag at some point. Americans, at least, seem to derive pleasure from this, as if gaining weight is some kind of comeuppance for celebrities, knocking them off... Read more »

Size Matters: Oh, the Horror

Continuing the conversation about respecting and accepting fatness as a choice, I thought I'd examine some of the reaction to a recent sensationalist news story about a fat woman in New Jersey named Donna... Read more »

Size Matters: Running the Hamster Wheel

The plight of the fat celebrity illustrates our expectation that fat people should be constantly fighting the battle of the bulge, and we get a kick out of watching their weight rise and fall. From Oprah to Kirstie Alley, we are obsessed with the constant attempts to beat back the inevitable... Read more »

Size Matters: The Carrot and the Stick

Size discrimination is an unfortunate fact of life for many fat people working in a corporate environment. Fat workers are often passed over for promotions, denied raises, and told outright to their faces that they are undesirable to clients. Not only that, fat employees on average earn 1 to 6... Read more »

Size Matters: The Fat Tax

It's become general knowledge that class influences weight. Working class families often don't have as much access to healthier foods as middle and upper class families do, and working longer hours means fast food can be an appealing option for those with little time. So if fat folks, and... Read more »

Size Matters: I'm Not Fat, I'm Big-Boned

“Death” fat, or “morbidly obese” people are going to experience more discrimination, more shaming and more insults than “in-betweenies” (those that fall somewhere between “normal” and “fat”). That's just the facts. There is privilege there, in being a smaller fat person, that must be... Read more »

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