Why 2018 Was A ‘Really Big Triumph’ For The Curve Community

Why 2018 Was A ‘Really Big Triumph’ For The Curve Community




Representation was a major buzzword in 2018, and widespread calls for increased diversity beyond the scenes have led to noticeable improvements on screen. In particular, people of color and the LGBTQ community celebrated visibility wins thanks to movies like Black Panther and shows like Pose. Although there’s one community that’s had to struggle a little bit more this year to be heard, and finally, it seems, they’ve made enough noise.


The community in question goes by several names — curve, plus-sized, body-positive, fat-positive, or some days, just fat — yet much like any other marginalized categorize of people, they’re bound with each other by the same aspire to be treated with respect.


In what seemed like a banner year for the community, stories acquired from the curve experience hit the big and small screens one right after another, from the Amy Schumer-starring I Feel Pretty all of the way to Jennifer Aniston and Danielle Macdonald’s beloved Dumplin’. In between, Netflix dropped their controversial-but-widely viewed Insatiable and the Shannon Purser/Noah Centineo rom-com, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, while those with more mature taste turned to AMC’s Dietland.


Netflix
Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston in Netflix's Dumplin'; Shannon Purser in Netflix's Sierra Burgess Is a Loser


With each release came assessments of whether that representation was actually representative of the plus-sized experience. And from the community’s collective critique of those and previous portrayals, folks are finally beginning to catch on to the dos and don’ts of telling body-positive stories. “It feels like we’re at the very starting of a lot more widespread representation, so I hope people continue to be loud,” Sophie Carter-Kahn, a half of the duo beyond the She’s All Fat podcast, told MTV News.


Each season of the podcast, she and her co-host April K. Quioh break down, assess, and usually talk about all things — including pop culture — that impact the plus-sized community and fat-positivity movement.


"I think like any other show or any other sort of media, the things that work best are once you have someone attempting to tell their own experience and talk about their own story,” Carter-Kahn mentioned, which is piece of the reason why Dumplin’ was her preference work of the year.


Based on the 2015 best seller by Julie Murphy, Dumplin’ tells the story of an overweight girl in Texas, named Willowdean Dixon, who joins a local pageant operated by her aesthetics queen mother. The book and movie have been praised for their nuanced portrayal of what it’s like to be young and fat.


Danielle Macdonald, who portrays Willowdean in the movie, “fell so in love with” the book immediately after reading it, she told Elle magazine. Then she heard it was being made into a movie. “I felt like I wanted [the role] for my teenage self — I never got that sort of movie growing up. It was sort of cathartic."


Getty Images
Macdonald at the Los Angeles premiere of Dumplin'


That dearth of representation shaped what Murphy wanted to carry out through her book. “For plus-sized representation, it’s really crucial for me to be able to see characters who don’t have to lose body fat sort in attempt to have a satisfying story arc, characters who don’t have to constantly rely on humor or this categorize kind of one-dimensional thing that defines them,” Murphy mentioned. “And then I think another excellent thing that representation can do is to show us countless kinds of people, and thus I think that insinuates countless kinds of fat people, because there’s not just one way to be fat.”


To achieve that aim, Murphy avoided the obvious weight-loss storylines and funny sidekick roles often reserved for plus-sized characters and compiled a global — a more realistic world, by the way — where the main character isn’t the token fat girl. Murphy used Millie, another teen who joins the pageant alongside Willowdean, to show a different plus-sized teen experience, and employed Willowdean’s loving Aunt Lucy to exemplify a positive adult role model. “If kids can’t visualize positive representation of people who look like themselves, it’s really hard for them to grow up and be a positive representation of themselves,” she explained.


Both Murphy and Carter-Kahn agree on the impact these accurate, positive representations of the plus-sized community stand to have. "I think that getting to be able to see fat people being successful and thriving, that would’ve meant so much to me as a young plus-sized kid, a teenager. That would’ve opened up my mind and the world of possibility that was there for myself a hell of a lot quicker,” Murphy reflected, while Carter-Kahn mentioned simply, "It would have been everything to me. Everything."


Growing up with stories that frequently portrayed larger people as a weight-loss story, a villain, or just lazy impacted both women’s abilities to be able to see themselves because the hero of their own story. Once I would read books, if I was imagining myself because the protagonist, I would imagine myself as thin, because I was like, well, if I wanted to be a protagonist, I had to be thin," Carter-Kahn recalled.


She noticed her protagonist story line on Instagram, by means of the body-positivity movement. As soon as I was first getting into it I would spend literally hours just finding different people who looked like me on Instagram and looking through their posts and attempting to imagine myself feeling that confident or imagine myself wearing the clothes they were wearing," she mentioned. "So for me, it’s very clear how visual representation makes a large difference in being to be able to see yourself in a certain way or visualize bodies like yours in a certain way."


because the online body-positivity movement organically grew, people in charge of making content caught on to the hashtag, and the answer was loud and clear. "The audience has been waiting for this for so long," Carter-Kahn mentioned. "I think that the reaction to it is so proper and that is going to continue to fuel things."


However Murphy points out that these stories didn’t have to wait up until 2018 to surface — “I don’t necessarily think that right now is the best time because I know that I would have loved to be able to see a fat character like this Whenever I was 10, 12 years old, 15” — although right now is as good a time as any.


Hulu
Saturday Night Live's Aidy Bryant stars in Hulu's Shrill, coming in 2019


"Change only happens if people force it to happen... I think that, you know, no pun intended, we’ve all been really famished for this for a really long time," Murphy mentioned. "There’s been some really critical, especially to me, fat characters and fat stories that have come before this moment that I think every time we visualize fat character and also a fat character just getting to live their life joyously on screen is a triumph, so this is one of these moments that just feels like a really big triumph for a lot of people."


And with the upcoming release of Hulu’s Shrill, based on the bestselling book by Lindy West and starring Aidy Bryant, there really is more triumph to come in 2019.









Leave a Comment

Have something to discuss? You can use the form below, to leave your thoughts or opinion regarding Why 2018 Was A ‘Really Big Triumph’ For The Curve Community.

Best Of 2018 News