Shows about big people: step in the right direction or more jokes about fatness?

Glee's new hot couple: Puck and Lauren.

If you haven’t noticed, there has been a drastic increase in the amount of big people on TV lately. There are still very few medium-sized people (which is a problem), but the rise of big people is worth noting.

We now have numerous shows about obese or overweight people: Mike & Molly, Huge, The Biggest Loser, and Dance Your Ass Off are the most obvious examples.

The question is, are these characters being presented in ways that are helping us a society or hurting us?

My favorite of these shows is Huge, a smart and moving scripted drama about teens at a fat camp, which I've written about before. Not only does this show avoid the usual fat jokes, it also treats each character as a unique and interesting individual, something I’d like to see more often with characters of all sizes. Unfortunately, this might be the only show on television that regular depicts big people as real people.

I don’t watch the reality shows about losing weight, and I’ve only seen one episode of Mike & Molly, and that was enough to turn me off. As Slate's Daniel Engber says in his outstanding photo and video essay, “Tele-Tubbies: The Rise of the Obese Actor on TV,” “Each episode [of Mike & Molly] delivers an onslaught of rim-shot-ready, anatomical putdowns. (Hey, this shirt looks like it was made in an awning store, ba-dum-bum!) After [several] months on the air, the scripts still vacillate between sweetness and fat shame. So what should we make of Mike & Molly? Does the show reflect some new phase of size acceptance in America, or just the opposite—a growing appetite for weight-based minstrelsy?”

Engber raises a good point—are shows about big people just a way for us to laugh at fatness? And if they are, is it still good for us to see people of different sizes on television or not?

The answer is ultimately that the jury is still out.

The most recent episodes of Glee have brought an obese character—Lauren, played by Ashley Fink who also has a supporting role on Huge—into the spotlight, but I still haven’t decided if Glee’s treatment of Lauren is good or bad.

Lauren joined the show last fall, but her character has taken center stage since one of the show’s main character’s—Puck—started pursuing her this winter.

On the one hand, it's nice to see someone Lauren’s size being depicted as the object of desire.

On the other hand, it’s disappointing and frustrating that a show as envelope-pushing as Glee still falls back on so many clichés—Lauren eats all the time, she’s loud and a bit crass, she has attitude to spare, etc.

Still, probably the most off-putting thing about the introduction of Lauren as a major character is that Puck sang Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” to her while he was trying to seduce her.

Thankfully, Lauren told him what she thought of that, explaining that though she’d always wanted a boy to sing to her, she never thought it would be a song like that, adequately expressing her—and our—disapproval. And, as some people have suggested, maybe that’s WHY the writers chose to have Puck sing that song, to demonstrate how insensitive and cruel people can be.

So, yes, the show is laughing a little bit at the “fat” thing by including such a song and showing Lauren as a lover of chocolate, but her character isn’t taking the abuse either, and just by doing that, she’s pushing the envelope.

As Lauren explains, “I look like America. Deal with it.” One of my friends called the war between Lauren and Santana (Puck’s on-again-off-again super fit girlfriend) "a fight between ide0logies": raising the question, what makes us happy? Having our bodies worshipped by men or accepting ourselves the way we are?

Ultimately, Lauren is intelligent, mature, and thoughtful, and not just there to make us laugh, and since Huge is the only other show on television with obese characters depicted this way, that makes her characterization a positive to me.

Like I said, the jury is still out on whether the increase in big people on our TVs is a good thing or a bad thing, but I think we can all agree, we’ve got to start somewhere.

Mike & Molly premieres Monday, but still no show with people who look like this Molly

195 pounds

CBS is launching a new sitcom called Mike & Molly on Monday September 20th at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time.

In some ways, the show is not unlike all of the other half-hour comedies we've been watching for years—it's just a show about two people falling for each other.

But there is one unique thing about the show. The two main characters—played by Melissa McCarthy (formerly of Gilmore Girls) and Billy Gardell (My Name is Earl)—are both obese.

First, I need to give this show the credit it deserves. As I said in my "Couples Retreat" post, over the past ten or so years sitcoms have fallen into a big-guy-thin-girl rut that is not only trite but also offensive. So a show about a big guy and a big girl feels revolutionary.

Sure, Roseanne did it first, but that was a show about a family struggling economically, and since we all know obesity is tied to income, the stars' sizes seemed to be making more of a comment on their economic class than their romantic appeal.

On the other hand, Mike & Molly is a show about falling in love. The two leads meet in the first episode—unfortunately at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting—and the show goes from there. Two big people as romantic leads? That really is revolutionary.

It's clear that we're having some kind of moment where shows about bigger people are suddenly hip—look at Huge, More to Love, or Drop Dead Diva—and I'm absolutely thrilled about that. But my concern is that, though Hollywood is finally starting to show people who are bigger, they're still not showing anyone in the middle. There is still no one on my small screen who looks like me.

Nevertheless, I'm happy about Mike & Molly and look forward to watching it Monday night. But what I'm really hoping is that shows like this and the others I've mentioned are just the beginning. That they are opening doors that desperately need to be opened. And that though we only see two sizes on TV now—big and little—we will soon seen people of all sizes.

Why Huge is Huge

198 pounds

After seeing an ad for Huge that featured Nikki Blonsky (of Hairspray fame) in only her bathing suit, I had high hopes that this show about a bunch of teenagers at fat camp would push the obesity and body issue discussion into unchartered territory. And last night, Huge followed through on that implicit promise.

Not only does the show actually feature many, many people with real bodies . . .

curvy bodies,

lumpy bodies,

obese bodies,

—it also doesn't turn them into offensive fat jokes, which is what usually happens when we see overweight characters on film or in television, relegating them to being either the source of inane humor or the sidekick. Or—worse still—both.

But on Huge, "fat" people are real characters—fully developed people who are both likeable and fallible, making them incredibly empathetic and the show that much more interesting.

And let's be honest, a show about "fat" people—real, appealing, honest-to-God "fat" people—is huge in and of itself.

But, as we know from Tobey Maguire, with great power comes great responsibility. And this show has a huge responsibility as well: simply put, it must be honest about obesity. This is so important that I'm going to repeat it:

This show MUST be honest about obesity.

In other words, it can't convey the message that people are obese simply because they eat too much.

It's hard to say at this point which direction the show is going on this issue.

No, Huge isn't making offensive wisecracks about how much these characters eat, but it is showing them as kids who love their junk food. Blonsky's character—the wonderfully sassy Will (short for Wilhelmina)—keeps a stash of candy and snacks underneath the fake bottom of her suitcase, some of which she eats herself and some of which she sells on the fat camp black market. And after Will tries to run away from camp, the first thing she does is order a big plate of french fries and a large chocolate shake at a roadside dinner.

The message is clear: "fat" people like fatty foods.

And I don't really buy it.

I don't believe, for instance, that Blonsky is the size she is because she eats three times as much as the rest of us. I believe, instead, that she's that size because of her genes and because of the chemicals in our environment. (If you don't know what chemicals I'm talking about, be sure to read my "Rethinking Baby Fat" post.)

Still, I'm not ready to throw out the baby with the bath water.

And here's why . . .

Though camp director Dr. Rand—played by Firefly's Gina Torres—sends the message that Will is overweight solely because of the food she eats when she asks Will, "Don't you want to change your life?" Will isn't buying it. On more than one occasion, Will actively resists the idea that she needs to lose weight or that she shouldn't like herself the way she is, as do some of the other campers who post signs like this near their bunk:

Early on we also find out that Will's parents made her go to fat camp against her will. More importantly, she reveals that she doesn't even want to lose weight. "I'm down with my fat," she says during one scene, and later rolls her eyes with disgusts at one character's "thin-spiration" wall. And when Torres' Dr. Rand questions her in the diner, she responds by accusing Rand of wanting her to hate her body, something she is unwilling to do.

It remains to be seen whether or not Huge will fall in line with Will's take on her body or Dr. Rand's, but I can say this: as long as Will refuses to dislike herself the way she is, I'm there.