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.

Where have you gone, Molly Ringwald?

I hope that those of you who celebrate Christmas had a wonderful holiday. As for me, I took a few days off, which is why I didn't post anything new last Thursday. It's the first time I've taken more than one day off in a few years, so it was incredibly relaxing, so relaxing that it feels odd to get back to work.

But the new year is approaching fast, which means I've got to start working on appreciating what I have accomplished this year and getting back to my regular schedule.

The good news is that part of relaxing means watching more movies, and tonight I was lucky enough to find my way to a television broadcast of Sixteen Candles, the John Hughes high school classic.

Sixteen Candles was released in 1984, the year I started high school, so I have always felt a kinship with Samantha Baker, the main character who is masterfully played by Molly Ringwald with a heavy dose of teenage angst and longing.

I suppose another reason I connected with Samantha is because she seems so normal—she's cute but not perfect looking, attractive but not head-turner hot. She's just a regular girl—like the rest of us—and that's what makes her both likeable and relatable.

But as we were watching Samantha moon over senior hearthrob Jake Ryan tonight, Dave turned to me and said, "Would Molly Ringwald get this part today?"

He didn't have to explain because I knew exactly what he meant. Molly Ringwald was/is a regular girl, a girl who has perfect skin and big teeth, adorable freckles and a wide forehead, a button nose and a flat chest. And it is these contradictions that make her so beautiful.

But anymore we don't see young women like Ringwald in film or television. We don't see young women who look beautiful but still real and, more importantly, flawed. No, instead we get only young women who have perfectly straight capped teeth, flat-ironed artificially extended hair, plump collagen lips, flawless and perfectly powdered skin, and a facsimile of Ringwald's button nose.

And that's why I had no choice but to say no when Dave asked me that question.

No, as much as I hate to admit it, the young Ringwald would never be cast to star in a movie about teenagers today. (I'm not even sure that her male equivalent would be cast in his role either.) And what that means for our society is that teenage girls today are taught that there is only one way to look and one way to be: perfect.

I can't help but wonder what that will do to their self-esteem in the long run. I know that it can't be good, and I'm saddened to realize that though the Hughes' movies gave my generation an opportunity to watch characters with which they had things in common, this opportunity doesn't exist for kids today. Instead, when young people go to a movie or turn on the TV today, they almost always only see people they will likely never be.

Ruby Sundays

191 pounds

Ruby Gettinger is back for her second season on the Style network starting this Sunday.

I had never heard of Ruby until I read about her in Entertainment Weekly this week. What I learned is that Ruby stars in her own reality show about her attempt to slim down from a dangerous 716 pounds. (I believe she's around 300 pounds in the picture above.) She lost 100 pounds last season and is back to try to lose even more this year.

The reason I'm interested in Ruby is because she says she's trying to lose the weight without surgery, shortcuts, or "miracle diets." She's a woman after my own heart.

I also appreciate that Ruby says we should all, "Enjoy [life] no matter what size you are."

I have long felt that this is the first step to being healthy. If you don't accept yourself the way you are, I truly believe you will never lose weight and keep it off.

I'm also interested in what Ruby will learn about her weight gain as she tries to lose that weight. As Ruby says, "How I got to be so big is a question I would like answered on my journey. I have battled this a long time. I feel like I am always getting in the boxing ring with this beast that has no name. He always seems to win. I start off strong and determined, and in the first three rounds I take him down. But right before my eyes—yet at the same I'm blinded by him—he grows bigger. Before I know it, he has knocked me out of the ring."

Anyone who has struggled with weight loss can relate to Ruby's admission that she feels like she can't win. We all know that it's not easy to be positive about losing weight the right way—slowly and over a long time. I know that sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and eating all day long. It's on those days that I wonder if I too could end up severely obese. But I tell myself that if someone like Ruby can lose weight, so can I.

Entertainment Weekly says that "You might actually cheer out loud when Ruby Gettinger, the show's bubbly heroine who once weighed 716 pounds, pulls on her first pair of jeans . . . But when things get serious — like when she talks about her missing childhood memories — Ruby will feel like a friend you can't help rooting for."

Ruby airs on the Style network on Sundays at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and I know I'll be watching every week from here on out.