Why haven’t I seen a fat woman in a lead role?

[Guest You have a belly]

11 hours ago, Verlorener said:

I know she can’t get TOO big or they’ll make her lose weight to stay on the show..but after today’s episode, damn I really hope this trend continues. 

Thi isn't 2001 anymore. If you tell an actress to lose weight you can get canceled.

[maltesefalcon]

1 hour ago, You have a belly said:

Thi isn't 2001 anymore. If you tell an actress to lose weight you can get canceled.

Especially if she is a martial arts expert.

[steveblack341(2.0)]

I mean look how fat they let Amanda Fuller get on Last Man Standing. Unless weight really conflicts with a specific role, it's much less common for actresses and actors to be told to lose weight.

[Guest Verlorener]

On 12/5/2020 at 10:55 AM, You have a belly said:

Thi isn't 2001 anymore. If you tell an actress to lose weight you can get canceled.

If that’s true then why haven’t I seen a fat woman in a lead role (who wasn’t used for comic relief)...well, ever? 

[BigD88]

51 minutes ago, Verlorener said:

If that’s true then why haven’t I seen a fat woman in a lead role (who wasn’t used for comic relief)...well, ever? 

America Ferrera, Camryn Manheim, Queen Latifah, Octavia Spencer, Beanie Felstein...

[maltesefalcon]

5 hours ago, BigD88 said:

America Ferrera, Camryn Manheim, Queen Latifah, Octavia Spencer, Beanie Felstein...

Melissa McArthey, Shelly Winters, Mae West

[dragonageguy]

9 minutes ago, maltesefalcon said:

Melissa McArthey, Shelly Winters, Mae West

Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe. The list goes on.

[md2069]

56 minutes ago, dragonageguy said:

Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe. The list goes on.

Yeah and look at them now Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Melissa McArthey have all lost substantial amounts of weight in recent times........We will be seeing the end of this association with “body positivity” and being fat very soon..........I expect Gina Carano to drop her weight shortly also........It’s one thing to be an “action hero” type than to be a comedian or regular type actor.  The Rock is an action hero I’m sure his producers would not allow him to become fat and sloppy.........Him being in shape is part of his job.

[maltesefalcon]

1 hour ago, md2069 said:

Yeah and look at them now Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Melissa McArthey have all lost substantial amounts of weight in recent times........We will be seeing the end of this association with “body positivity” and being fat very soon..........I expect Gina Carano to drop her weight shortly also........It’s one thing to be an “action hero” type than to be a comedian or regular type actor.  The Rock is an action hero I’m sure his producers would not allow him to become fat and sloppy.........Him being in shape is part of his job.

Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Melissa McArthey  may have lost weight but none of them are thin. 

[Guest Verlorener]

Alright, let me amend that challenge. Name one time where a young (like mid thirties or younger), adult, fat white woman with a pretty conventionally attractive face and hair was a major character and presented as sexually attractive in a well known movie in the past 20 years, and not used for comedic effect.
(I only mention race because America has very different standards for what weights are attractive/acceptable depending on ethnicity, with white women generally being expected to be the thinnest). 
And is anyone seriously saying America Ferrara counts as a “fat” woman? Lol.

[dragonageguy]

2 hours ago, Verlorener said:

Alright, let me amend that challenge. Name one time where a young (like mid thirties or younger), adult, fat white woman with a pretty conventionally attractive face and hair was a major character and presented as sexually attractive in a well known movie in the past 20 years, and not used for comedic effect.
(I only mention race because America has very different standards for what weights are attractive/acceptable depending on ethnicity, with white women generally being expected to be the thinnest). 
And is anyone seriously saying America Ferrara counts as a “fat” woman? Lol.

Did you change the rules because you got proven wrong?

[maltesefalcon]

10 hours ago, Verlorener said:

Alright, let me amend that challenge. Name one time where a young (like mid thirties or younger), adult, fat white woman with a pretty conventionally attractive face and hair was a major character and presented as sexually attractive in a well known movie in the past 20 years, and not used for comedic effect.
(I only mention race because America has very different standards for what weights are attractive/acceptable depending on ethnicity, with white women generally being expected to be the thinnest). 
And is anyone seriously saying America Ferrara counts as a “fat” woman? Lol.

There are a fair number of occasions where actresses have been asked to gain weight, not lose it.

To be fair, let's eliminate the following as they were portraying real people:

Olivia Colman as Queen Anne
Ditto for Michelle Williams for portraying a plumper Marilyn Monroe. 
Ditto for Charlize Theron in Monster 

Let's eliminate Minnie Driver for Circle of Friends and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones, as it was to make the characters less desirable for plot purposes. Ditto Thora Burch for Ghost World
We can also eliminate Toni Collette for Muriel's Wedding, as it was done for comedic effect per one of your conditions.

That being said, a fair number of actresses have been asked to gain weight to make them more voluptuous. Note-I said asked; implying the director felt they were too skinny.

Gwyneth Paltrow gained 20 pounds for Country Strong
Salma Hayek gained 25 pounds for Ask the Dust.
Kirsten Dunst gained (and kept most of her) weight for Fargo.
Toni Collette again for In Her Shoes.
Eva Mendes for Ghost Rider
Heather Graham in Compulsion. They also used prosthetics to make her look even fatter.
Amy Adams wanted to lose (baby) weight for The Fighter, but she was asked to keep it on for her role to add authenticity
Jessica Chastain (15 pounds) for The Help

And who could forget Marisa Tomei's 25 -pound gain for The Perez Family

Honorable mention to Christina Hendricks director who insisted the already-plump actress not lose any weight during the show's run

Note: Most of these do not meet your age or filming date stipulations, but if you make enough conditions you can disprove anything.
 

[mister_bueno]

Right off the bat, even with all these moving goal posts, Queen Latifa checks all those boxes.

[maltesefalcon]

16 minutes ago, mister_bueno said:

Right off the bat, even with all these moving goal posts, Queen Latifa checks all those boxes.

I'm 100% with you. I only posted examples of white women because that was specifically mentioned in the challenge.

[md2069]

4 hours ago, maltesefalcon said:

There are a fair number of occasions where actresses have been asked to gain weight, not lose it.

To be fair, let's eliminate the following as they were portraying real people:

Olivia Colman as Queen Anne
Ditto for Michelle Williams for portraying a plumper Marilyn Monroe. 
Ditto for Charlize Theron in Monster 

Let's eliminate Minnie Driver for Circle of Friends and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones, as it was to make the characters less desirable for plot purposes. Ditto Thora Burch for Ghost World
We can also eliminate Toni Collette for Muriel's Wedding, as it was done for comedic effect per one of your conditions.

That being said, a fair number of actresses have been asked to gain weight to make them more voluptuous. Note-I said asked; implying the director felt they were too skinny.

Gwyneth Paltrow gained 20 pounds for Country Strong
Salma Hayek gained 25 pounds for Ask the Dust.
Kirsten Dunst gained (and kept most of her) weight for Fargo.
Toni Collette again for In Her Shoes.
Eva Mendes for Ghost Rider
Heather Graham in Compulsion. They also used prosthetics to make her look even fatter.
Amy Adams wanted to lose (baby) weight for The Fighter, but she was asked to keep it on for her role to add authenticity
Jessica Chastain (15 pounds) for The Help

And who could forget Marisa Tomei's 25 -pound gain for The Perez Family

Honorable mention to Christina Hendricks director who insisted the already-plump actress not lose any weight during the show's run

Note: Most of these do not meet your age or filming date stipulations, but if you make enough conditions you can disprove anything.
 

The original poster was correct.........Gaining weight for a role is looked at as a bid to down play sexuality for “attractive” women to make the role more “serious” and thus thrust that actress into contention for an award for the role........

[maltesefalcon]

1 hour ago, md2069 said:

The original poster was correct.........Gaining weight for a role is looked at as a bid to down play sexuality for “attractive” women to make the role more “serious” and thus thrust that actress into contention for an award for the role........

And yet-here is an entire web site (among many) here that espouses the theory that some men may find weight gain attractive.

By request, Kirsten Dunst and Eva Mendes fattened up a bit to get bigger boobs. And if you have ever seen Marisa Tomei's ass in the Perez Family, you would realize that the requested gain was not to make her less attractive.

And I've made my point so I'm not going to belabour this any further. Too many good pics to scope out.😁

[Guest Verlorener]

12 hours ago, md2069 said:

The original poster was correct.........Gaining weight for a role is looked at as a bid to down play sexuality for “attractive” women to make the role more “serious” and thus thrust that actress into contention for an award for the role........

Yeah that really does speak to my point. And I also, I made a collage of some of the pictures of these „fat“ women in these movie roles that were listed, and this is what I found. 
Yeah no, women who are skinny as fuck and the gained 20 lbs doesn’t count. I’m talking about big girls.

[Guest Verlorener]

Oh and THIS is the woman they used prosthetics on to make her look „even fatter“? 
Is this some kind of joke? 

[Guest Verlorener]

On 12/9/2020 at 1:37 AM, dragonageguy said:

Did you change the rules because you got proven wrong?

I changed the rules because I was hoping I wouldn’t have to spell out what I was talking about, because it’s a political dumpster fire. But I think it’s clear that they would never have a fat woman play Megan Fox in transformers, or Spider-Man’s girlfriend, or Bella from twilight or Hermione or Rey after the galaxy is saved and she doesn’t have to work out anymore, or whatever the hell it is. No matter how diverse hollywood tries to become, the “pretty young white girl love interest” remains rigidly confined to standards that haven’t changed in decades.  
(And no, I don’t believe race is real. I just say “white” because it’s easier than saying “the light skinned parts of Europe”). 

[Guest Mr Froggy]

You rarely see "imperfect" bodied girls - as that's a flaw perceived in the actress rather than a physical manifestation of a character.   Normally a fat girl part is just that...A Fat girl part.    You never have and will never see a "potbellied but pretty" female lead in a romantic or action adventure AAA imo.

Closest that comes to mind is Renee Zellweger in the first Bridget Jones... but that was a rare part where the role specifically called for her to be tubby rather than fat. 

[Guest Verlorener]

3 hours ago, Mr Froggy said:

You rarely see "imperfect" bodied girls - as that's a flaw perceived in the actress rather than a physical manifestation of a character.   Normally a fat girl part is just that...A Fat girl part.    You never have and will never see a "potbellied but pretty" female lead in a romantic or action adventure AAA imo.

Closest that comes to mind is Renee Zellweger in the first Bridget Jones... but that was a rare part where the role specifically called for her to be tubby rather than fat. 

I don’t consider it imperfect for a girl to be fat because obviously I like fat, but you hit the nail on the head on one thing; it’s not that they show a young fat white woman with a pretty face and simply pretend she is ugly. No, the fat woman must always be older, or with a less conventionally attractive face/hair, or from a marginalized demographic that has been traditionally excluded from mainstream white beauty standards. They refuse to show the fat, white, young, pretty, traditionally feminine, well groomed, sexually desired female at all because it violates an unspoken delusion that they’re trying to protect.
And I feel extremely alienated by that, because that kind of woman is exactly what I desire, well, honestly more than anything else in life. If you like what most young white dudes like, but just want a heavier version of it, then you will notice that the mainstream media seems to obsessively avoid depicting of that kind of woman. 

 

[Guest Mr Froggy]

3 hours ago, Verlorener said:

I don’t consider it imperfect for a girl to be fat because obviously I like fat, but you hit the nail on the head on one thing; it’s not that they show a young fat white woman with a pretty face and simply pretend she is ugly. No, the fat woman must always be older, or with a less conventionally attractive face/hair, or from a marginalized demographic that has been traditionally excluded from mainstream white beauty standards. They refuse to show the fat, white, young, pretty, traditionally feminine, well groomed, sexually desired female at all because it violates an unspoken delusion that they’re trying to protect.
And I feel extremely alienated by that, because that kind of woman is exactly what I desire, well, honestly more than anything else in life. If you like what most young white dudes like, but just want a heavier version of it, then you will notice that the mainstream media seems to obsessively avoid depicting of that kind of woman. 

 

Yeah,  there's plenty of facially gorgeous but pudgy white girls in real life ... but Hollywood won't ever show you them.  They'll show you fat women sure,  but they'll be otherwise "compromised" from the "Hollywood ideal" to be sure you never forget their inclusion is overt tokenism or as a gimmick / plot device.  

I.e Hollywood has no problems making a movie like Precious but they'll hound Scarlet Johansson to lose her little inter-movie natural potbelly before she can begin filming just about anything. 

[Guest Mr Froggy]

2 hours ago, vpprof said:

Sorry to butt in into this very informed chat  (you guys are really savvy about them actresses) But would you really be more fulfilled or happier if there were movies with fat girls playing the leading roles in them? What would you do about it? How'd that help?

A very bizarre fantasy just struck me, in which they release a feminist version of, say, Batman, except this time it's Batwoman, played by a fat Caucasian, mid-20s German girl and everyone is like: "How *could* they've done it? It's so against the canons of beauty in our Western civilisation!" — and then Verlorener comes in and says: "Well, guys and girls, now you see you've been proven wrong!". 

This is the type of forced diversity that the comic book world is experimenting with - but they're equally part of the problem imo. 

They're still not ONLY varying weight.  They're making these characters obese, facially ugly, tattooed,  purple haired etc all in one swoop.   Its like they're thinking "oh so if you are (or like) women without a flat stomach,  you've OBVIOUSLY given up on relating to ALL OTHER traditional standards of beauty too!  So here you,  here's your short, fat, tatted, bisexuality demiqueer otherkin blue short haired butch dark skinned batwoman!  Give us diversity points because we covered all bases!".

Meanwhile most of us "problematic" Western fat fetishists are like '"eww, gross.... you went WAY too far there... we really just wanted that A list white pretty actress you hired last time to be allowed a bit of a pudge..."

[Guest Verlorener]

1 hour ago, Mr Froggy said:

This is the type of forced diversity that the comic book world is experimenting with - but they're equally part of the problem imo. 

They're still not ONLY varying weight.  They're making these characters obese, facially ugly, tattooed,  purple haired etc all in one swoop.   Its like they're thinking "oh so if you are (or like) women without a flat stomach,  you've OBVIOUSLY given up on relating to ALL OTHER traditional standards of beauty too!  So here you,  here's your short, fat, tatted, bisexuality demiqueer otherkin blue short haired butch dark skinned batwoman!  Give us diversity points because we covered all bases!".

Meanwhile most of us "problematic" Western fat fetishists are like '"eww, gross.... you went WAY too far there... we really just wanted that A list white pretty actress you hired last time to be allowed a bit of a pudge..."

I mean, I still like “alternative” looking women, like goth or whatever. But the focus is always on representing those groups, not on validating the people who are attracted to those groups. Many feminists (though I consider myself one) mistakenly dismiss the importance of representing what diverse groups of men find attractive, as if it is more woke to only focus on representing women for women’s sake. I don’t think they’re bad people or anything, but they do have a blind spot for the struggles of sexually deviant men. 

[Guest Mr Froggy]

5 minutes ago, Verlorener said:

I mean, I still like “alternative” looking women, like goth or whatever. But the focus is always on representing those groups, not on validating the people who are attracted to those groups. Many feminists (though I consider myself one) mistakenly dismiss the importance of representing what diverse groups of men find attractive, as if it is more woke to only focus on representing women for women’s sake. I don’t think they’re bad people or anything, but they do have a blind spot for the struggles of sexually deviant men. 

At the risk of going off topic, I'd say feminist women have a blind spot for the struggles of men, broadly.   A blind spot at best ,  a pejorative hypergamy-lensed contempt at worst.