To this, I say: WELL, DUH. I actually don’t think bodily autonomy was ever really up for debate, at least in this context and from this group of people. It’s obvious. It’s a given. It’s actually a core tenet of the body positivity and fat liberation movements, which push back against the mandate to be thin - leave people alone, let them live, all bodies are allowed to exist and are deserving of basic rights and consideration no matter their size, ability, or appearance. No one could really try to force someone they only know through the internet not to lose weight anyway! I don’t even see people sincerely arguing these creators have a moral obligation to stay fat. But invoking it in these contexts functions as a sort of strawman argument that deflects from the actual criticisms being levied: that in the narratives they present about their weight loss, these creators are implicitly or explicitly demeaning fat people - the very demographic they once claimed to advocate on behalf of, and not-so-long-ago belonged to themselves (in fact, a lot of them still do even after their weight loss). And demeaning fat people isn’t just insulting them, it’s an implicit argument that the harassment and systemic discrimination they face is deserved and justified.

Body autonomy is good. Everyone should have it. But the fact that fat creators have to disclaim that people have bodily autonomy any time we talk about someone who has lost weight in any context that’s not straight-up praise (“she looks so much healthier now, good for her!”) or be accused of denying it gives me pause. Bodily autonomy is never invoked when people mock fat people, try to shame and bully and terrorize us into becoming thin. Shouldn’t people also have bodily autonomy to choose to stay fat, or just not prioritize weight loss?

What is left out of these conversations is that weight loss is, by the vast majority of the world, seen as an objectively and wholly positive thing. For every comment that questions a formerly body positive creator’s flip to fat shaming content, there will be ten cheering them on. Offline, too, they will receive effusive praise, more opportunities, and better treatment. Overall, their lives will become better even if their weight loss doesn’t change their health, purely because of how society views it. Ignoring this is at best obtuse and at worst justification for the awful treatment fat people receive in the world - because if they can easily lose weight to avoid it, choosing to stay fat is inviting it.

The truth is, all bodies are not viewed as equal, therefore bodily autonomy does not tell the full story. Do you have autonomy to lose weight? Sure. But you also live in a society that offers you more respect, praise, attention, healthcare, access to physical spaces like planes and theaters, media representation, professional success, literal money, etc. when you are smaller. In that context, one could argue that the decision to lose weight is in many cases coerced, rather than the simple exercise of bodily autonomy it appears. The opposite decision NOT to lose weight, however, is broadly discouraged to the point that for a fat person it is an active choice even if that person doesn’t feel they are actively doing anything (I’m not trying to lose weight, and outside of talking about these things on the internet, I don’t really think about my body that much!). If we’re going to center bodily autonomy in conversations about weight loss, we should also invoke it when discussing weight. “I don’t have to lose weight for you” is a powerful sentiment.

I think part of the reason bodily autonomy doesn’t get discussed outside of weight loss is that frankly, no one would choose to be fat especially in a world that fucking hates fat people, and so the narrative in body positive spaces is usually about eating disorders or medical conditions or medications or genetics that make us fat against our will. It’s reassuring to those of us who have spent our entire lives fighting our bodies to no avail (I had to starve myself to get down to a size 10!) but maybe it’s also a little disempowering. Like, if the gym bros in my comments are still going to tell me I’m using my PCOS as an excuse to stay fat, maybe I’ll just own that. It’s true that I’m choosing not to try to lose weight despite the outside factors working against me. Where the gym bros and I differ is that I think I’m entitled to make that choice.

No one brings up bodily autonomy in that context, though. It’s only about being allowed to lose weight, aka make the objectively better and more rational choice.

So if you have strong feelings about bodily autonomy when it comes to weight loss, I want you ask yourself a few questions. Does your fight for bodily autonomy extend to fat people who choose to stay fat? Does it extend to reproductive rights, trans healthcare, illegal detainments and deportations? Or is it just for people who changed their bodies into something you like looking at more? 

Food for thought.

A lot of the things we feel we need a spouse to get (intimacy, support, even just company) are things that can be found elsewhere - but society is not set up for it. Singleness feels a lot less lonely when you’re in a loving and supportive community. This is why many of us don’t feel lonely being single when we are children - we have a built-in support system and community.

I didn’t get in a relationship until I had graduated college and almost never felt lonely. I used to think that was because I didn’t know what I was missing, but now I realize I didn’t feel the lack of a romantic partner in the same way an adult would because I lived in walking distance of all my best friends and was a member of an extremely tight knit community at my very tiny university. And as a kid, I lived with my family and had a huge network of relatives, classmates, and friends nearby. In fact, my parents are violin teachers who work out of our house and I was friends with their students and their families - I literally had new friends delivered to my house daily! And while that situation is unique, most kids do have stronger non-romantic ties because they live with their families or caretakers and regularly interact with peers during school and extracurricular activities.

Growing up, I didn’t have romantic love, but I had support, companionship, and plenty of social interaction. I had PEOPLE. It’s not that I never wished for a romantic partner, but romance was a separate thing from loneliness because the rest of my life provided all the non-romantic elements of companionship. (Disclaimer: I am lucky to have always had a supportive family and friends so have never felt romantic relationships needed to make up for anything in that area, and this may be different if you grew up in a less stable situation.)

But now, at this stage of my life, all my work is very isolated so I have no coworkers. I live across the country from most of my family. My friends are scattered across the world and the ones that live nearby don’t always have schedules that match up with mine. If I didn’t live with my partner, I would definitely be lonely because I would inevitably go days without even talking face to face with someone who I don’t work for and isn’t working for me (i.e. servers, cashiers, etc).

A lot of us feel like romantic love is the ultimate escape from loneliness, and I’m not saying that’s wholly untrue. It certainly can make you feel less lonely. But just like self-development work can’t make up for the lack of it, romantic love can’t make up for the lack of community and social bonds - or at least, it’s not fair to ask it to.

The thing about love is that it is impossible to guarantee anyone will find it. Some people never will, and insisting that they do just ends up trapping people in bad relationships. It is not a reliable plan. You NEED to be able to survive without it, and it’s also a bad idea (and very difficult) to be completely self-reliant. Enter: community. Which incidentally is a great way to meet people who you might want to romantically partner with!

When we are all chained to our jobs and don’t have strong community ties, to the point that we don’t have to see or talk to anyone to like order a pizza, a romantic relationship can easily become our only consistent source of social interaction, emotional support, logistical favors like rides to the airport or help moving, etc. NO WONDER we are lonely without significant others. They are all we have.

The crux of this is: Dylan’s weight is never mentioned, nor is it coded in his characterization. He is a hardworking member of the central Macrodata Refinement team who discovers his “outtie” is married with kids and becomes determined to learn more about his other self. His hardworking, rule-following qualities directly contrast stereotypes of fat people as lazy and lawless, though he later discovers his outtie does not share his professional success. When he does begin to question the Lumon powers that be, it’s a part of his character's journey. (A fat character even having a journey unrelated to their size is sadly rare.) Dylan also heads up the “overtime contingency” mission that allows his fellow employees to visit their outties’ lives and pulls it off. Many fat characters, especially fat men (I’ve discussed the the sweet soft fat boy trope before), tend to be timid followers, and while Dylan does change to become a leader, the juxtaposition is between his ambitious, rule-following nature and his later resistance. In the season 2 finale, he even resists through physical strength and force, barricading Milchick in the bathroom with a vending machine at a crucial moment. As an innie, he’s kind and generous, but isn’t portrayed as the lame, weak, undesirable “sweet soft fat boy” in the way a Samwell Tarly type tends to be. As an outtie, we do learn that he’s had trouble holding down a job and finding his “thing,” but that’s not the viewer’s first impression of Dylan. In fact, that information is only revealed midway through season two and comes as somewhat of a shock to both the viewer and innie Dylan himself.

Dylan’s most notable quality on the MDR team is that he is a family man, with kids and a wife. This season, he earns the privilege of a visitation with his outtie’s wife Gretchen, played by Merritt Wever (who is one of my favorite actors and is also not Hollywood thin). Over the course of their visits, Gretchen and innie Dylan began to fall in love. It’s SUCH a juicy concept: the wife meeting this version of her husband who has never met her before and there’s still a clear attraction between them, him experiencing all of this for the first time and her having been with him physically for years but now meeting a version of him that’s more confident and professionally successful. This is nothing I have ever seen a fat character (or any character!) live out onscreen, on so many levels. Even just the romance arc, with another complex character who also isn’t skinny and isn’t portrayed as a consolation prize, is extremely rare. The fat father and husband is certainly a trope (see: “dad bod”) but in its more fatphobic iteration it’s connected with gluttony, laziness, or cluelessness. Dylan is none of these things; his outtie may be struggling, but it’s not because he’s not smart or isn’t working hard - at least, not according to his wife. She clearly loves him as both innie and outtie. What’s so refreshing and sadly revolutionary about this romantic arc is that the show doesn’t go out of its way to point at that as some kind of miracle. The vast majority of the time, when a fat character is given a romantic storyline, the main obstacle is either their confidence or the mere fact that the audience knows they are fat and therefore unattractive and unlovable (eye roll). Even if that obstacle isn’t presented in the plot, it’s clear that we are supposed to see the existence of the couple as something extraordinary. This can either be in a condescending way when the love interest is somehow flawed in a way that makes them “equal” or explains the relationship (i.e., is also fat, is equally nerdy or unpopular, is from a foreign culture where fat people are viewed as desirable, etc) or it emphasizes the contrast between the lovers and frames it as a triumph of the less desirable partner who still managed to snag a hottie with their cool personality - what a feat! Even otherwise body positive narratives do versions of this (see: Phat Girlz, Dumplin’) and it’s honestly quite hard to avoid especially when the narrative centers around weight (I definitely did not avoid it in my own romcom screenplay, because the theme is interrogating fat tropes around romance). Either the fat character’s partner is going to be perceived as equally or more attractive than they are, and either case will be notable in a world where we are told fat people are abjectly unlovable. The only way to avoid it is to do what Severance does: never comment on the characters’ appearances at all, and make the romantic obstacle much bigger and more distinct than their size or attractiveness. In this case, the obstacle is the love between Gretchen and innie Dylan is forbidden because she’s already married to his outtie - a consciousness that shares his body. Appearance is a non-issue because Gretchen has already chosen his body to make a life with. What remains a question is how his innie’s personality differs, and maybe that’s what I find so damn compelling about this arc. When love based on appearance is already a given, what else matters? That’s not a rhetorical question, and as a fat person it’s never one I’ve been able to ask myself. I’ve never known romance without the worry of what if they don’t like how I look, stop liking how I look, or never really liked how I look? I’ve never been able to take a deep look at relationships without the physical element hanging over me. If I’m having relationship problems, there’s always the thought of “maybe it’s really just because I’m fat,” however irrelevant that might actually be. But in a world where the physical is definitively not the obstacle, love can be forbidden for other, more interesting reasons. It allows for a depth of love story almost never portrayed by characters who aren’t thin onscreen, which in turn makes their bodies even less relevant to the plot. This is, again, precisely why Dylan’s size is so transgressive. A thinner actor could easily have played the character with zero modifications to the script - but thank goodness they didn’t, because Zach Cherry does a phenomenal job and because Dylan is the fat representation we’ve been begging for for years: a complex fat character who does not fall into stereotype and whose weight is never mentioned or even coded in his personality. A whole human who just happens to be fat - or in this case, two whole humans. Do innie and outtie Dylan count as two separate interesting and multidimensional fat characters? You know what, I’ll take it.

One of the most compelling groups of travelers on the new season of The White Lotus is the trio of childhood friends played by Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, and Leslie Bibb. Monaghan plays Jaclyn, a TV actress who is repeatedly recognized around the resort and receives special treatment for her fame and beauty. Bibb’s character Kate lives in Texas and is married to a successful businessman (which she claims allows her to relate to her friend’s experience of fame). The two are constantly complimenting each other on how young they look, their financial success, and their love lives. Coon, on the other hand, mostly pounds wine throughout the episode, and seems not only much less satisfied with her life but also less successful on paper (the best compliment the others can come up with for her is “everything you do is just so hard”). She is clearly left out of their compliment-offs, included only as an apologetic afterthought. If her two friends are competing for who has it the best, Coon’s character Laurie hasn’t even qualified to enter the competition. In our culture where thinness is shorthand for beauty and success, this is a dynamic I am very, very familiar with as a fat person.

One scene particularly hit home, where Jaclyn and Kate trade “you look amazings,” then look over at Laurie and, after an awkward pause add, “…you both do.” Laurie’s response is “yeah, but you both look like you just got pushed out of a birth canal.” This breaks the tension enough that almost immediately, Jaclyn and Kate turn back to each other, each asking the other about their respective plastic surgery (the highest compliment, in white woman world: see the oft-expressed desire for “ozempic allegations”). The pretense of including Laurie is dropped after sufficient cursory acknowledgment from her and perhaps even permission to exclude her from further compliments. This immediately recalled interactions I’ve had with thin friends or even strangers complimenting my thin friends in front of me before realizing I’m, um, also there. It captured the exact fat feeling of being told you’re beautiful by a thin person who calls themselves disgusting when they fear they’ve gained a pound. Laurie’s reaction also mirrors one I’ve exhibited many times when my friends traded diet tips or body comments around me. “If you think you’re fat, what am I?” “Sure I’m beautiful too, but like, you could be a model!” Or even just a tacit thank you for a compliment you know they don’t mean. Sitting there and taking it. Knowing how they really feel about you, but not being able to call it out without being accused of insecure projection. And maybe there is some at play - because how could there not be?! But that doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t thinking the same thing. (By the way, if this is happening to you with your more conventionally attractive friends, I promise: YOU ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. And that’s not to say you are actually ugly, it’s to say your friends have bought into a belief system and hierarchy that not only places you below them but also views that position as the worst thing that could ever happen to a person and they are acting accordingly.) 

For Laurie, watching her friends compliment each other on their achievements without mentioning her seems to be less painful than watching them grasp for achievements to compliment in her presumably lackluster life. It’s after the scene where they remark on how difficult her life is when she finally breaks down in tears upon returning to her room. As a fat person, too, the sense that people are so aware of your apparent inadequacy that they have to make something up to placate you confirms your suspicions about their true opinions of you, and it also feels really patronizing. Do they think I don’t know what I look like? Do they think I don’t live in the world and see how fatness is viewed? Do they think I don’t hear them talk about how much they’d like to be thinner? I’ve asked myself these questions so many times. It’s much easier to ignore your friends’ comments about each other’s bodies before they turn around, look you up and down, and finally compliment your eyes with pity in theirs.

This specific scenario feels very familiar to me as a fat person, but does that mean (fantastic acting aside) Coon should have been passed over in lieu of a plus size actress? For me, this time, nah - although I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to take it as a given that Laurie looks older or somehow than Kate and Jaclyn, which was a little confusing as I was already having trouble telling her and Kate apart on my first watch. Laurie does seem to be less well-off and clearly has had less work done than Jaclyn and Kate. I guess the standards among thin rich white women are specific and subjective enough that I can get on board with a world in which Laurie is considered less attractive than her friends, although it’s certainly a different vibe than if one member of the trio looked very different than the others.

While I find the storyline extremely fat-relatable, I actually feel that having a fat actor playing Laurie would be a little on the nose. The only bigger guest this season is Belinda, who in season 1 had a whole arc that didn’t feel demeaning or stereotypical, so if The White Lotus had gone there with this storyline it would have felt a bit jarring to me. This is not a show that often relies on shallow stereotype in its plot or dynamics - characters may seem to fit familiar archetypes (i.e. the put-upon employee, the rebellious teen daughter, or the corporate douchebag), but they are usually revealed to have more layers. Most things on this show are somewhat subtextual, and “fat girl sad and ugly compared to hot friends” would have been a little elementary for Mike White, I feel. So while I hope we see another fat character in a future season, I don't need it to be this one. This dynamic was relatable because of the stereotypes around fat people that sometimes cause our so-called friends to treat us this way, but it wasn’t so explicitly fat-coded that a plus size actor is called for. For more of those examples, stay turned for future installments of this series.

The full tweet is as follows, per the Irish Times: “Fat b*****s are sex offenders I see them and I’m sexually offended Making lingerie for fat b*****s is like giving knives to little kids They gone hurt somebody If you find yourself in a fat b***h p***y just remember it’s because you’re broke."

Considering Kanye didn’t name any specific characteristics or actions of “fat bitches” to justify his judgment that we are all sex offenders, it’s clear that he perceives fat woman’s very existence as a sexual threat. The idea of being “sexually offended” by a person’s existence sounds absurd on its face, and might be easily dismissed as the wild ramblings of a man who is obviously unwell. But it’s actually a shockingly mainstream view, especially with the rise of online redpill content. It’s also not a new idea, however; the stereotype of fat female sexual aggression is just about as old as fatphobia itself (and, like fatphobia, is rooted in anti-black racism and dates back to the slave trade). In my dissertation, I analyzed this trope as it presents in comedy film and TV, where it has long been a staple, especially in the bro-y “sex comedy” genre, which often depicts the bumbling male lead hiding or running for his life when confronted with a fat woman in the context of dating or sex. He might be a loser, but even he doesn’t deserve THAT!

While I focused on active, aggressive behavior in my dissertation, the behavior of these fat women in media who serve as the manifestation of men’s deepest sexual fears often isn’t all that abnormal. Sometimes it might be involve verbal come-ons (which the character is all too happy to receive from women he is interested in), but often it’s as simple as a smile or wave or hello - albeit framed in grotesque terms, with the music, lighting, and framing of a horror movie. Underlying this perception of fat women as the ultimate sexual threat is the implication that the male object of their attentions cannot simply say no. There are many plausible explanations for this: perhaps the idea of a woman who can physically overpower a man evokes the fear of assault, or perhaps fat women are perceived as lawless because of their rejection of societal beauty standards or insatiable because of their apparent gluttony. Or perhaps the real fear for the men is of losing their status in the sexual hierarchy. If men sleep with a fat woman, they are conceding their own low sexual status (i.e., brokeness, according to Kanye). By extension, the mere prospect of a fat woman flirting with them is a mark on their attractiveness: “She should know I’m out of her league!” Fat women are thereby cast as either delusional or willfully ignorant of social norms, which again threatens men with the prospect of sexual aggression and assault. 

Fat women are often stereotyped as hypersexual and desperate, due to their low status and supposed uncontrollable appetite for other bodily pleasures, i.e. food. This, to some men, is fat women’s appeal, and you’ll see a lot of this type of joke in comedies too -  see: “fat girls fuck better because they’re so grateful for the attention.” Men’s fear of being preyed on by a fat woman and their hyperawareness of sexual hierarchy can lead them to the paranoid delusion that anything a fat women does or says in their presence IS an aggressive come-on. How else could she relate to him when she’s obviously jonesing for dick and also must know he’s sooo much better than her? For all these reasons, her active desire is assumed.

This is, of course, absurd. Most fat women are extremely aware of how they are viewed by the world, and for that reason would never dream of aggressively coming onto anyone. In fact, I famously did not tell a single soul, even my best friends, the name of anyone I had a crush on until like halfway through college. Because if it got back to that person, they might be sexually offended - i.e., perceive my romantic feelings as an assault. My FEELINGS. Which I never even planned to act on!

So whether or not a fat woman is actually being sexually aggressive or even sexual at all, it is male entitlement to women’s bodies that makes them perceive us as such. Movies and TV might allow for the existence of seemingly asexual sidelined fat people - usually the parents, best friends, etc. who only exist to enhance the thin central characters - but to misogynists, women are ALWAYS viewed in a sexual context, so much so that a failure to be sexually desirable becomes, yes, literally OFFENSIVE to them. A fat woman is nothing but a missed opportunity for desirability, a walking should, a walking failure. When women are only viewed as ornaments for sexual consumption, a body viewed as such an unfuckable eyesore is just that: offensive to the very concept of womanhood. I wrote in my dissertation that fatness is not merely viewed as sexually unappealing, but as anathema and antithetical to sex itself. Because of this, any hint of fat sexuality is viewed as heinous, horrifying, absurd, abject - even if the hint isn’t coming from the fat person’s actions, but from something as mundane as the assumption that all fat people must be hypersexual or the fat person’s outfit or their presence in a place where sexual intent is often implied, like a bar or club.

As a lifelong fat woman, I have encountered the real-life manifestation of this mindset many times over. It occurs everywhere, but most often in those aforementioned sexualized spaces, where men like this look at me with open disgust on their faces, make it clear they are unavailable before I so much as open my mouth, or completely ignore me as they chat up my thinner friends. And I am not the only one - nearly every fat women I know has had identical experiences. (And thanks to my podcast and the internet, I know a LOT of fat women!) But to men who see women as sex objects and sex objects only, there is no escaping being seen as this grotesque paradox of fat sexuality. By existing, you automatically sexually offend the Kanyes of the world. It’s a given. It’s inescapable.

Let me be clear: some men who are not attracted to fat women are still able to see us as friends, colleagues, and humans. The problem is not men. The problem is misogyny. Men like Kanye would not view fat women as sexually offensive if they did not view women as objects for their viewing and fucking pleasure. The sexual audacity they assign to fat women is merely a projection of their own assumption that all women exist solely for their consumption. But if you’re that threatened by a person just existing without being attractive to you, you’re the one doing the sexualizing, buddy. Stay offended.