By Brittany
Let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m fat and I’m a Black woman. I’ve always been the fat girl.
Growing up, I thought I was supposed to be invisible, docile and quiet. I could be good at things, but only things that people expected fat girls to be good at. So, I spent time in the kitchen with my grandmas learning how to cook. As a teenager, at the mall with my friends, I shopped for them, picked out clothes that I thought would look great on them, but I secretly wished I could wear. When friends and I had crushes on the same guy, I bowed out gracefully. “He’d never like a girl like me anyway,†I’d say.
When I found what I loved and wanted to do for the rest of my life— work in media— I knew writing was my lane. I could write pages, upon pages of someone else’s story, hide behind my computer, never be interviewed, and still make a living. To me, it was the right thing to do (I’ve since found a home within the writing world, but that’s a different story for another time).
Then, one day, after coming home from a college lecture, I flipped on Girl Code on MTV and saw Nicole Byer, a fat, Black woman staring back at me. Her curly hair was a sandy brown like mine and almost touched her shoulders, she had a beautiful smile and a hearty laugh. I’d never seen MTV cast member that looked  like me. I was hooked. I followed her on social media, scoured the internet for her work, I vowed to support her in anyway I could. This was the representation my five-year-old self needed. I felt valued, wanted.
But eventually, the desire to simply be represented in a one-dimensional way stopped being good enough. Seeing Nicole Byer on screen always on the receiving end of fatphobic jokes was reflective of the mediocre representation that Black fat women are often forced to fulfill. Her work on Girl Code and Loosely, Exactly Nicole  wasn’t good enough. It still isn’t.
In an era of body positivity, my Instagram feed is  full-figured girls loving who they are and proudly hashtagging #EffYourBeautyStandards. But  the representation on television still leaves a lot to be desired. In 2012, a Refinery29 study estimated that 67 percent of women were plus sized, but they account for only 3 percent of main characters portrayed on television.
We’ve got to do better.
Of the few fat, Black women on television—like Natasha Rothwell on Insecure, Gabby Sidibe on Empire and the aforementioned Nicole Byer—all are supporting characters and fall into the one of the tropes most Black women play on television.
On Insecure, Rothwell plays Kelly, the “sassy†sex-obsessed  friend of Issa’s who roasts the others in the friend circle before they make her their punchline. Though there is less of the preemptive clapback  in the second season, this form of humor is replaced with lines and scenes about her weight loss journey, and there’s little depth to her character beyond that. Kelly is genuinely funny, but almost to a fault. Her constantly being portrayed as the girl with the one-liners makes it hard for viewers to see her as anything else. Even the man Kelly is dating in season two seems like a joke rather than a serious option. We’ve never seen her in an office setting like we have the other characters, nor have we met her family members.
On Empire Sidibe plays Becky, a former executive assistant who is slowly getting what she deserves. In the most recent season she is (spoiler alert) promoted to head of A&R for Empire’s Gutter Life Records. Still, it’s taken four seasons for her to land a leadership role that is regularly offered to skinnier, light skin Black women and men before her. Even in her new executive role, she’s still ignored and talked down to in meetings. In season three, when the show pushed the envelope the tiniest bit and showed Sidibe having sex with her on screen boyfriend, viewers responded with disgust. The relationship ended soon after that and we haven’t seen Sidibe in any steamy scenes since. News flash: fat girls have sex too.
There’s no denying that Nicole Byer is funny. But instead of letting her just be funny, MTV had to take it to the extreme on the show Girl Code. Even when body image wasn’t the topic, Byer’s lines almost always led back to her weight. In 2016, Byer got her own show, Loosely, Exactly Nicole on Facebook Watch. This show is definitely more scripted than her stint on Girl Code and she is the lead, but the entire plot is one large joke about how she, as a fat Black woman, can’t get a serious acting role in LA or a serious relationship. So, it’s still disappointing.
Last year was impressive for fat white women in TV. Chrissy Metz (This Is Us), Katy Mixon (American Housewife) and Melissa McCarthy (Mike and Molly) are all leads on their respective shows. Still, their weight was often a punchline at best and portrayed as a burden at worse. In fact, in all of these shows the fact that the lead character is fat is the focal point of the show. It’s as if Hollywood is saying fat women can’t run businesses, have children and fall in love while simultaneously being fat. Still, these fat white actresses are getting a chance that fat Black actresses simply aren’t.
Movements like #OscarsSoWhite highlight the gross lack of racial diversity in the entertainment industry. But I want more. I don’t just want to see a Black woman on screen. I want to see a fat, Black woman with natural hair, stretch marks, scars, a great wardrobe and a dope job because that’s what we look like in the real world.
Fat girls are dynamic. We’re smart, driven and confident. We deserve so much better than the role as the invisible sidekick, or the the girl who only has lines when she’s worried about her figure. Portraying groups of people as monolithic (or not portraying them at all) is how anti-Blackness in the form of tropes and stereotypes are upheld. There’s a lot of great TV set to air this year, (new seasons of Insecure, Atlanta and the ending of Scandal to name a few) casting directors, producers and showrunners must put more thought into the portrayal of fat Black women (hiring some to help make your show is a great start) because we exist. We’re not going anywhere and we damn sure aren’t going to be silent anymore.
Suggested Reading
“The evolution of fat women on TV” – Maggie Fremont, The Vulture (Sept. 27, 2017)
“The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost its Way” – Evette Dionne, Bitch Media (Nov. 21, 2017)
Brittany is an independent journalist based in the midwest covering race, gender and education. Keep up with her on social media @heyitsbkay.
