The initial critical blurbs for Darren Aronofsky’s new film, The Whale, hail the movie’s “rare compassion” towards its protagonist Charlie, a 600-pound gay man (played by Brendan Fraser in a fat suit).
Even though The Whale has only played at a few select film festivals, one critic, Polygon’s Katie Rife, has called the film “an act of hate disguised as tough love.” She worries that the film may actually encourage audiences to continue being cruel to overweight people rather than give them the allyship they truly need to survive a fatphobic world.
Rife notes how Aronofsky inspires disgust by turning up the volume of Charlie’s eating sounds (playing sinister music as he snacks); shows Charlie constantly sweaty, dirty, and covered in crumbs; suggests that people’s cruel comments about his weight are actually loving concerns for his wellbeing; and depicts Charlie as a selfless martyr rather than endowing him with the anger, lived experiences, and emotional depth of people who share his size.
Related: Daniel Franzese slams Brendan Fraser’s casting in ‘The Whale’: “The world is homophobic”
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“The film … [is] likely to be actively harmful to some audiences… [and] a self-serving reinforcement of the status quo,” Rife writes, saying the film suggests that overweight people “serve as repositories for society’s rage and contempt.”
Overweight people have every right to be angry
In actuality, essayist Emily McCombs has observed, overweight people are relentlessly pressured to conform to other people’s body ideals, even when fat people already feel love or indifference towards their own bodies.
McCombs, who has gained and lost significant weight throughout her life, notes how other people never allow large-bodied people to just exist: Instead, they bully and catcall, give unsolicited advice about exercise and diet, and sexually fetishize largeness.
She said she constantly smiled, laughed off, and swallowed these microaggressions. But they wore away her self-esteem as she gradually internalized the mistreatment and became constantly guarded against it. It made it hard for her to date or even walk out in public.
People will often scowl, giggle, or slam doors in the faces of overweight people, McCombs said. Even when people compliment overweight individuals, it’s often in a backhanded way, telling them how they look good in spite of their size.
Related: Guy Branum on velvet rage, fatphobia, and how ‘Bros’ breaks away from Hollywood’s fat-shaming tropes
Most people wrongly assume that all overweight people must desperately want to be thinner — creating the myth of the “good fatty” (as McCombs calls it), an overweight person who is always working at getting slimmer. This thinking compels some folks to shame fat people for not exercising or calorie-counting. But biological factors and financial privileges factor into people’s body sizes, McCombs says, and what works for some may not work or be attainable for others.
The effects of this fatphobia don’t just take a toll on larger people’s self-esteem — it can actively kill them.
Numerous studies have shown that doctors disproportionately “dismiss, demean, and misdiagnose fat people,” Rife notes, often blaming any number of medical issues on their weight rather than as a standalone issue. Other studies have shown that people with bigger bodies are often hired less often, paid lower wages, and made to work longer hours.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, numerous hospitals listed obesity as one of several reasons for denying sick patients care. Simultaneously, overweight people had trouble finding face masks that would fit and stop them from getting sick in the first place.
Similarly, fashion companies will often charge more for large sizes or leave it to lower-end brand names to make unappealing but unaffordable styles that are hardly flattering to large people’s bodies.
How to be a better ally to overweight people
Rather than just repeating “all bodies are beautiful” platitudes and reposting images of thinner people who support body-positive messaging, allies can help amplify and support fat activists who are already speaking out against fatphobia on social media by re-sharing their messages.
Allies can actively research the many ways that fatphobia affects everyone. They can also help by sharing images of influencers of all shapes and sizes (to normalize larger bodies) and by bringing up the subject when conversations about diversity and bias occur.
Related: If you’re fat-phobic, you might have these 2 personality traits
Allies should also consider their own fatphobia: Question whether you’re using language that glorifies thinness and weight loss. Sincerely ask yourself whether you’d date a large-bodied person. Challenge your assumptions larger bodies are capable of. Recognize your willingness to call out friends’ and family members’ fatphobic comments, and engage in difficult conversations that challenge negative stereotypes about “lazy” overweight people who are “unwilling” to change.
These acts alone won’t immediately dismantle fatphobia, but they will help create a world where all people can exist without needless cruelty and harm.
The Whale opens in theaters on December 3. You can watch the trailer below:
