(February 10, 2013 at 5:09 am)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: It seems to me there's a huge hypocrisy in the way overweight male characters are portrayed and the way overweight female characters are portrayed.
With the male characters, intelligence is not inversely correlated with weight. The character can be somewhat often portrayed as obese and smart.
And with the male characters, their obesity does not always define their character. It's not always vital to their role.
With the female characters however, I can't recall a single instance where they weren't portrayed as complete idiots. And very often their weight is the sole point of their character. The only reason they exist in the story is for cheap laughs about their weight. I can't think of any significant (extras dont count) fictional overweight female characters in tv or movies where they were portrayed of even being of average intelligence.
This obviously is not consistent with reality and I'm disgusted with how prevalent and accepted this stereotype is.
Hairspray: the fat girl character was smart, funny and got the guy.
But your right about movies skewing reality.
You hardly see a proper fat person even in the back ground of the movies but if you go out in any american town you see people waddling around that challenge sauropods for the title of largest ever land dweller.
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
