By Catherine Imani
When I was 23 I started exhibiting symptoms of a disease called Cushing’s Syndrome. During the first 8 months I gained 100 pounds, plus extremely high blood pressure and cholesterol. I developed painful muscle spasms as my muscles deteriorated, and later developed joint and teeth pain as the osteoporosis set in. There were many, many more symptoms, but out of fear and lack of access to healthcare I focused instead on diet and exercise. As an athlete who was running daily before my symptoms began I pushed myself to aggressively add further work outs to my already active schedule, in addition to cutting calories from my already sparse diet. Unsurprisingly, this triggered further symptoms.
By the time I realized I was sick and not “being lazy,” as I was often told by family members, I had gained even more weight, was incredibly fatigued and could see in my legs gaps where my muscles used to be.
It was a terrifying time. First and foremost because I did not understand what was happening to my body and was powerless to stop it, but also because my understanding of fatphobia in my community moved from intellectual to material—in that my life changed at the foundation because I was sick and fat. As someone who is deeply interested in a holistic end to white supremacy and anti-Blackness, I have always wanted to unlearn the ways I express or benefit from these two entities.
Even though I read articles to unlearn fatphobia before I got sick, there was a heightened urgency due to the way my symptoms expressed. Suddenly strangers were commenting on my body, and making jokes. Suddenly I couldn’t find clothes that fit, and had friends who would try and destroy me and my relationship because they thought my partner deserved better than me. Even my family believed I was not working out or dieting enough, even after my deteriorating health caused me to ultimately lose my job.
Please do not wait to get fat to truly understand fatphobia. Also, weight gain is not inherently indicative of depression or disease. Some people are just fat and that’s okay! We all deserve quality lives and experiences—everyone should work to end fat oppression in all its forms.
As I DIY’d my healthcare, I learned that cortisol cycles in the body like a lot of other hormones. When people have high stress childhoods and experience constant high stress as an adult, they can disrupt their cortisol rhythm which can cause them similar albeit less extreme symptoms as what I experienced. This is what I believe triggered my genes to express Cushing’s, as I survived rapes, domestic violence, chronic housing instability, fleeing to Atlanta with no money on a greyhound bus, abusive workplaces, and many, many other things in a short 5 year period on top of a stressful childhood. This constant stress in my life is why I resonated so much with Thor’s character, as his stress is a possible logical explanation for his weight gain in Avengers: Endgame.
Thor has been going through it. He lost both his parents violently. He thought his brother was a mass murderer, and that he died several times. Each time he grieved him. He learned that the father he loved was a “reformed” evil man, who stole his brother Loki, slaughtered many people across the universe, and then locked his sister (that he never knew about) in a cage when he got tired of killing. He had to choose to destroy his home world, lose his hammer (which for him is equivalent to losing a limb), and then oversee a mass migration of his people to earth only to immediately lose half of them. All of this happened within 5 years just like me, so in my mind it made sense that he would have gained weight and been depressed.
My momentary joy at having an experience similar to mine represented on screen was immediately undercut by the reactions of the people in the theater. From comments about how he has cheese wiz for blood, to the way the camera angles and close up shots focused on his stomach, to how he was always dressed down in sweatpants and shirts that did not always fit his body—the disgust for Thor was palpable. It was further reinforced by the reactions of the other characters as well. Non-stop throughout the film the characters made fat jokes about Thor’s appearance and ability to do what they needed him to do.
Even though he was just as strong, and still the God of Thunder, and even though he had always been someone who drinks, suddenly he couldn’t be trusted and was a liability to the group. They wanted him, and went way out of their way to get him, but because he was fat and sad they spent most of their time insulting him and putting him down. It was no wonder then, that while traveling back in time he did a test to see if he was still “worthy” by reaching out for his hammer in the past. He and I both exclaimed with joy when he realized that in spite of what he went through, how he looked and what his friends said he still was!
Marvel hates fat people, which is why there are no fat characters in the films except for in the background where they are either bad at their jobs, bad people, or the butt of a joke. Marvel, like superhero culture more generally, is obsessed with an idealized standard of beauty that expects hypersexuality from women, and hyper masculinity from men. Even when they touch on beauty politics through characters like Zendaya’s Mary Jane, they do so in ways that reinforce the notion that only pretty people can critique the idea that only pretty people have value, all the while still investing in their commitment to their own pretty privilege.
In spite of how much I resonated with Thor’s character arc and development, I still recognize that the symbolism I see is not what Marvel intended. They felt that by making a character that is typically incredibly handsome fat and thus ugly, they could have a consistent joke they could point to when they needed to lighten the mood. Marvels writing and directing team are incredibly lazy, ableist and fatphobic and no matter how much I resonate with Thor that doesn’t change how wrong and violent they were for reinforcing toxic notions about fat people to a global audience. No media is neutral, and marvel has made it very clear how they feel about fat people. That fatphobic and ableist attitude needs the Thanos snap for sure.
Thor’s weight gain is one of two things that actually felt accurate regarding his narrative. The second good thing the Marvel team inadvertently did was let Thor stay fat by the end of the movie. It is a fatphobic trend for people to be made fat or become attracted to fat people so that they can “learn a lesson.” Typically they have to learn to see the value in people outside of how they look, before they go back to their life of never interacting with fat people again.
By choosing to let Thor stay fat, the writers were able to bring home the notion that you can let go of people’s expectations of you to instead be your real self. By letting Thor stay fat, it feels like the weight of his family and his people’s and the other Avengers expectations of him have been lifted off of his shoulders. Now he can take time learning about who he is as a person and exist as just Thor. This is a lesson I have been learning in my life too, which is another reason I resonated so deeply with this artistic decision.
As a multi-marginalized fat and chronically ill Black person I have to take representation where I can find it, which is why I cling so strongly to Thor’s character arc. That being said, Marvel owes it to the many people who helped “Endgame” gross over a billion dollars this weekend to stop being fatphobic. Not only will it minimize the harm fat people experience in the world, but it will also help them write deeper and more complex characters. I hope in Marvel’s next phase they take this backlash to heart and grow.
Reading Suggestions:
“6 tools for understanding and dismantling weight stigma and fatphobia,” Gillian Brown, The Body Is Not An Apology (2016)
“How the ‘Fat Census’ uses real facts to reclaim body positivity,” Bee Tajudeen, Dazed (2018)
“The body positivity movement still looks too much like white feminism,” Ashleigh Shackelford, Wear Your Voice Mag
Catherine Imani is a hood philosopher, theorist, and strategist writing while chronically ill and predominately housebound. You can tip them at Paypal or CashApp, and talk to them directly on twitter @imaniloves_you. You can support them on Patreon as well.
