Weight stigma in literature

I grew up reading fantastical stories that swept me away to far away places, from post-apocalyptic worlds to medieval kingdoms. Books are commonly used to escape from one’s reality. Readers lose themselves in the pages of a compelling story to explore the human experience in various circumstances. A compelling novel intertwines fiction and reality by alluring its readers with endearing characters. 

The characters of a book are symbolically created to be the chess pieces that move the plot forward. Authors tend to reuse the same “stock characters,” or stereotypical figures recurrently used in works of fiction, in formulating a character’s persona.

These cut-and-paste characters, in addition to having generic personalities, are often fundamentally defined by their physical appearance, perpetuating potentially harmful physical stereotypes. Reading novels in which the only prominent characters were thin made me question if people with larger bodies were even considered normal. This was furthered by the fact that the fat characters present in the books I read were depicted as sloppy and unhygienic. 

In consuming so much literature as a child, I began to unconsciously correlate physical appearance with morality. I believed that if I was skinny, I would be loveable and refined, and that if I was fat, then I was ugly and underachieving. This was later damaging to me as a teenager struggling with poor body image, and arguably a cause of this struggle.

High School junior Gabriela Murray believes that authors only mention body shape in literature to make a point about a character’s morality. The physical stereotype for heroines and heroes sometimes causes her to strike comparisons between herself and them. 

“Automatically when you’re reading, as you’re picturing the characters in your head, you’re probably going to picture them as thin,” Murray said. “If you don’t physically match those images, then the other option is the fat person who is morally reprehensible.” 

Fatness in literature is often illustrated as an obstacle that prevents characters from being happy. For example, in J.K Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter series, Neville, a student at Hogwarts, is originally described as “short and plump.” However, as Neville transforms from a coward to a hero as the series progresses, Rowling no longer describes him as “round,” “plump,” or “pudgy.” This insinuates that in order to be courageous, Neville must  exist in a thinner body. The consequences of his physical transformation is one of the many examples of fatphobia in literature.  

The dependance of personality on physical appearance is a literary stereotype that frequently perpetuates weight stigma, or a discrimination against fat folks, and unfairly marginalizes them by casting fatness as inferior in comparison to thinness. 

While there are many non-fiction books that preach about self-love and the harmful nature of fatphobia, like #VERYFAT #VERYBRAVE by Nicole Byer and The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor,  fictional books are still in desperate need of more fat positivity. A problem that aspiring writer Sarah Ehlers found in the books that she read is the underrepresentation of any kind of body diversity.

“I find that there’s a strong under-representation of fat bodies in literature,” Ehlers said. “Despite some physical features that avert from traditional beauty standards, the representation of bigger bodies is still very much behind.”

As authors continue to misrepresent body diversity in books, readers will continue to absorb toxic messages about body size. A thin body does not inherently equate to happiness or normality. Stock characters build on harmful stereotypes like these, causing general readers to compare themselves to characters that don’t represent them. 

Continuing to consume incorrect information that connects personality to physical appearance will only give untalented creators a bigger platform in which to perpetuate weight stigma. Readers have the power to shut down the wide reach literary weight stigma has by celebrating authors that promote fat acceptance and body diversity. Only this way will the misrepresentation of body diversity cease.