00:00:00
Hey guys, it’s Celestia, and we need to talk about
how fat people are portrayed in art. And not just
00:00:04
fat people, pretty much anyone with a body type
that isn’t skinny but not too skinny, curvy with
00:00:09
a perfect hourglass figure, or muscular, because
art, particularly in both Western animation and
00:00:14
anime, does all of them dirty. From inaccurate and
offensive depictions of their bodies that border
00:00:19
on caricatures to the way that those depictions
are used to reduce those characters to harmful,
00:00:23
derogative tropes, there’s a lot that’s wrong
with the way that anyone with a body that doesn’t
00:00:27
meet impossible beauty standards is often drawn
in popular media. So we’re gonna talk about it,
00:00:32
because I’m just really, really sick
of this being the standard for things.
00:00:35
But first, let me take a moment to thank today’s
sponsor, where you can learn to draw real bodies
00:00:39
right, amongst a million other things: Skillshare.
Skillshare, if you somehow don’t know, is the
00:00:44
largest and, in my opinion, best online learning
community with classes on pretty much everything,
00:00:48
from illustration to marketing to crocheting
those cute little jellyfish I keep seeing.
00:00:53
I’ve personally used Skillshare classes to learn
literally everything I’ve needed for my career:
00:00:56
how to use Procreate when I was just getting
started, how to edit videos on Premiere Pro,
00:01:00
how to start creating a webcomic, and a multitude
of illustration-based classes to improve
00:01:04
everything from anatomy to environment design.
More recently, I’ve been struggling with my art
00:01:08
style because it’s kind of at a transitional point
where it’s changing, but I’m not really sure what
00:01:13
it’s changing to. Thanks to Skillshare,
I was able to take Andy J Pizza’s course,
00:01:16
Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your
Creative Identity, which gave me a lot of really
00:01:21
helpful insights into making that transition a
lot easier and made me feel more confident in my
00:01:25
work. Skillshare has been instrumental throughout
every part of my career, and they have curated
00:01:30
collections of courses specifically designed
to help you do the same for yours, and today,
00:01:34
they’re giving you a chance to check those out
for free. The first 1,000 people to click the
00:01:38
link in the description will get a 1-month free
trial of Skillshare, and I can’t recommend enough
00:01:42
that you go click it now, because there is a
class for absolutely anyone, including you.
00:01:46
Thank you so much to Skillshare
for sponsoring today’s video,
00:01:49
please go check them out, and
now let’s get into the video.
00:01:51
Now, I recently made a video roasting the
worst art tropes in anime, which was a lot
00:01:56
more fun than this one, so… go watch that first
if you want a laugh before we get into the much
00:02:00
less funny topic we’re discussing today. But
then come back here, because in that video,
00:02:04
I mentioned that one thing people hate a lot as a
trope in anime is that every body type is mostly
00:02:08
the same, with very little variety in weight
amongst their casts of characters, and that’s
00:02:12
part of a much larger problem that exists in the
art of popular media as a whole. And now we’re
00:02:17
gonna talk about how that problem came to be, what
makes it a problem at all, the consequences of it,
00:02:21
and how we can work towards getting rid of
it, or at least lessening its prevalence.
00:02:24
Before I do, I just want to say one thing:
I’m gonna be using the word fat in this video,
00:02:28
because I don’t think it’s a bad word. I think
the gradually, widely accepted belief that it
00:02:33
is contributes heavily to the demonization of
bigger bodies in media and in society itself,
00:02:37
and is inherently based on the belief that
fat = ugly, which is both harmful and untrue,
00:02:42
and I don’t want to further that. Also,
based on the nature of the video’s topic,
00:02:46
trigger warning for weight-related
discussion and eating disorders.
00:02:49
Disclaimer aside, this whole problem boils down
to two primary and closely related issues: one,
00:02:54
the lack of body diversity in most artistic
mediums, and two, the fact that weight is
00:02:59
used as a way to define and reduce characters to
specific, often derogatory tropes. I’ll explain
00:03:04
how those two go hand-in-hand later on, but let’s
address them individually first, starting with the
00:03:08
lack of body diversity. It’s impossible to look
at anime and animation as a whole and not see it:
00:03:13
characters are almost always depicted only
as skinny but not too skinny, curvy with a
00:03:18
perfect hourglass figure, or muscular to varying
degrees. Average, chubby, or overweight characters
00:03:22
are rarely seen in the main cast, and almost never
without their weight being a significant part of
00:03:27
their identity. Thin characters are rarely defined
by being thin with it being their only real trait,
00:03:32
but average and chubby characters constantly talk
about being insecure about their weight or wanting
00:03:36
to diet while fat characters often exist only to
have their weight be the butt of every joke. And
00:03:41
I fully acknowledge that this is the case not
just for animation, but for all forms of live
00:03:45
action media, too - it’s a problem everywhere
we look. But in the case of TV and movies,
00:03:49
the characters on-screen are limited, to an
extent, by the physical limitations of the
00:03:54
human body. A character can’t have a body that a
real human being can’t have in live action media,
00:03:59
because a real human being has to play them.
Yes, there are other factors to consider in this,
00:04:03
like the fact that skinny actors frequently have
to starve themselves to achieve the bodies they
00:04:06
have during filming, and the fact that muscular
actors follow ridiculously rigorous workout
00:04:11
regimens and often dehydrate themselves before
filming to make sure there’s no water weight at
00:04:15
all to obscure their muscles, all of which is so
upsetting to me and is a massive problem in and
00:04:19
of itself. Video editing can also distort their
proportions to an extent in post. I’m not saying
00:04:24
the bodies that actors have in TV and movies are
always realistic, but they’re always physically
00:04:28
possible for a human being to achieve, even if the
ways in which they can be achieved are unbearable
00:04:33
for most. In animated media, that’s not the
case. Every character can have the quote-unquote
00:04:38
“perfect” body if the animator wants them to, and
in turn, promote beauty standards that no human
00:04:43
being alive could ever achieve. Obviously viewers
know that and the onus is on them to not look at
00:04:48
an exaggerated, idealized anime character and
expect themselves to be able to look like them,
00:04:52
but it’s undeniable that many viewers still look
at them and think “well, I at least need to try
00:04:57
to get close if I want to be attractive”.
And in that way, the lack of body diversity
00:05:01
in animated media contributes in a very unique,
negative way to the unrealistic beauty standards
00:05:06
imposed upon its viewers, often resulting in a
significant toll being taken on their body image.
00:05:11
But what about the second issue: that weight
is used as a way to establish a character as
00:05:14
a certain trope? Well, it’s hard to ignore:
characters that are excessively thin are
00:05:18
usually designed that way so they fit the trope
of weak and sickly. Super voluptuous or muscular
00:05:23
characters usually have those proportions to
make them fit the bimbo slash himbo trope. Fat
00:05:27
characters, maybe worst and most frequently
of all, are almost always designed to be fat
00:05:31
in order to fit the trope of a villain, a
lazy loser, a geek, or a creep. In reality,
00:05:36
all of those characters could fit those tropes
without weight being involved, but over time,
00:05:41
it has nonetheless become deeply yet unnecessarily
integral to them anyway. And that does measurable
00:05:46
harm to viewers of that art, because it’s only
natural to compare yourself to the characters
00:05:50
you’re seeing, and if your weight is associated
with a type of character that’s viewed as weak,
00:05:54
stupid, lazy, or unattractive, and that’s
all you see your body type represented as,
00:05:58
time and time again, it’s hard not to let that
impact your self-esteem. As some of you may know,
00:06:03
I suffer from a chronic illness that caused
me to go from a healthy weight to dangerously
00:06:06
underweight, and while a new treatment has
helped me get back from a body-shutting-down
00:06:10
double-digit weight and back to just the upper
end of underweight, I spent a long time looking
00:06:14
skeletally thin. I still don’t look how I want
to, as I still am underweight. Constantly seeing
00:06:19
characters that look like me only ever
being depicted as sick, weak, pitiable,
00:06:23
and undesirable does not make me feel good
about myself. And when I was a healthy weight,
00:06:27
only seeing curvy women with my relative body
type having impossibly small waists and no fat
00:06:32
anywhere that was quote-unquote unattractive
genuinely contributed, in combination with a
00:06:36
myriad of other things, to my development of an
eating disorder that I’m still fighting. Both ends
00:06:41
of the spectrum hurt me, and it’s in no small part
because of the normalization of these tropes. Yes,
00:06:45
we as viewers can’t put all the blame on media
for that, but as the article Messages about
00:06:49
Physical Attractiveness in Animated Cartoons
puts it: “The media, in particular television,
00:06:54
communicates facts, norms, and values
about our social world. For many people,
00:06:58
television is the main source of information about
critical aspects of their social environment.
00:07:02
Whether television shapes or merely maintains
beliefs about the world is not as important
00:07:07
as its role in a dynamic process that leads to
enduring and stable assumptions about the world.”
00:07:11
So how are these two issues related? Well,
because the lack of body diversity in media
00:07:16
is intentional because of those weight-related
tropes. Whether we like it or not, attractiveness
00:07:21
is a major factor in what gives a character value
both for the viewer and the creator of the media
00:07:25
we’re viewing - we as humans are drawn to beauty,
and media will naturally reflect that. The same
00:07:30
paper I mentioned earlier said the following:
“Without a doubt, the animated cartoons studied
00:07:33
in conjunction with this research communicated
a clear, consistent message with regard to
00:07:37
attractiveness: Being attractive is a very good
thing. On virtually all dimensions examined,
00:07:43
socially-desired traits were associated with
being attractive, and socially-disapproved
00:07:47
characteristics were associated with being
ordinary-looking and/or unattractive. For example,
00:07:52
our culture values youthfulness over old age;
youths were less likely to be unattractive.
00:07:57
As another example, our culture values thinness
over being overweight; overweight characters were
00:08:02
more likely to be shown as unattractive, whereas
thin characters were more likely to be depicted
00:08:06
as good-looking. Intelligence is also prized
in our society and, once again, below-average
00:08:11
intelligence was associated with the less-valued
group: physically unattractive characters.”
00:08:15
So if those responsible for creating the art
and media we consume are sure that we only
00:08:19
want to cheer on and show interest in attractive
characters, that means they’re going to make as
00:08:23
many attractive protagonists as they can and
shove characters that aren’t into side roles,
00:08:28
or worse, antagonistic roles. To a degree,
this is just an unavoidable inevitability
00:08:32
in a society that puts so much value on
physical beauty, and while it’s not good,
00:08:36
it gets a lot worse when we acknowledge that
unfortunately, we’ve collectively come to falsely
00:08:40
associate thinness with beauty and fatness with
ugliness. So if the creators of animated media
00:08:45
deliberately include primarily attractive
characters and being attractive is heavily
00:08:49
associated with being thin, it’s no surprise at
all that we have so little body diversity in the
00:08:54
art we see. And if unattractive characters
are deliberately being assigned undesirable
00:08:58
traits like a lacking moral character, lacking
intelligence, lacking social approval, and so on,
00:09:03
it’s no surprise either that we have so many
negative weight-based character tropes. If we
00:09:07
could just accept the obvious fact that fat people
can be beautiful and thin people can be ugly and
00:09:12
beauty isn’t tied to weight, we could break this
stupid association and have characters of all
00:09:16
weights be eligible for protagonist positions
and positive tropes rather than negative ones.
00:09:20
If your protagonists have to be attractive,
make them fat and attractive! It’s so easy!
00:09:25
The lack of representation and the fact that to
fit those negative tropes, fat characters are
00:09:30
almost always intended to be depicted as ugly,
also means that they aren’t drawn accurately
00:09:34
or favourably, either. If fat characters aren’t
drawn often due to the lack of body diversity,
00:09:39
artists will be less experienced and skilled
at drawing their bodies accurately. If the
00:09:43
character is supposed to be ugly because they’re
fat, they’re going to have only the societally
00:09:46
unattractive features of theirs exaggerated to
fit that appearance, often in a manner that’s
00:09:50
completely unrealistic and not even close to how
their body would look in reality. It all combines
00:09:55
into what we have now: fat characters usually
looking more like offensive caricatures of their
00:09:59
real-life counterparts than anything close
to realistic. And yes, I understand that most
00:10:03
animated mediums are supposed to be stylized,
so some features and proportions are obviously
00:10:07
going to be exaggerated. But number one, the
fact that there’s no middle ground between thin
00:10:11
and obese in media means those exaggerations are
being consistently taken too far: there should
00:10:16
be a middle ground between them with average and
chubby characters, too, with weights varying and
00:10:20
being exaggerated in a varying manner as a result.
As it stands, quote-unquote “average” characters’
00:10:26
weights are often only differentiated by a
variation in muscle mass in males and a variation
00:10:30
in chest and hip size in females, with little
to no fat where they, even as relatively thin,
00:10:35
average, or muscular people, would have it. And
number two, you can stylize proportions without
00:10:40
doing so unrealistically, inaccurately, and
offensively. It’s done for other body types.
00:10:45
A thin or curvy person can look at a stylized
character that is also thin or curvy and think
00:10:49
“okay, I obviously don’t look like that and
this is exaggerated, but that is a model
00:10:55
of my body type that’s recognizable as such”.
The moment a fat character is depicted as fat,
00:11:00
most animated media immediately just turns them
into a blob, which is not at all accurate. They
00:11:04
don’t get that same kind of representation,
because artistic interpretations of their
00:11:08
body types are not recognizably drawn. Some
degree of stylization in art is to be expected,
00:11:13
but it should still be obviously and clearly
recognizable as a version of its source material.
00:11:17
So where does all of this leave us? Obviously, the
first thing that needs to change is the perceived
00:11:22
societal link between weight and attractiveness,
because it’s the root of every problem in art when
00:11:26
it comes to body diversity and harmful art tropes.
As the study I mentioned earlier put it: “Clearly,
00:11:31
and not unexpectedly, a strong association was
found between cartoon characters’ body weight
00:11:35
and their purported level of attractiveness.
Overweight characters were nearly three times
00:11:39
as likely as others to be shown as unattractive,
whereas thin/underweight characters were nearly
00:11:44
twice as likely as others to be depicted as above
average in attractiveness. In another published
00:11:49
work, we addressed cartoons’ messages about
body weight, and showed that being overweight
00:11:52
was a bad thing whereas being underweight was a
good thing.” And that’s not true. It’s not true,
00:11:57
and it being spread like it is is actively
harmful. We need to draw more fat characters
00:12:08
as beautiful to break that false association,
and fight for and support media that does,
00:12:12
too - body positivity is more prevalent and
strong now than ever, and while live action
00:12:16
media has at least taken some significant
steps towards including more diverse body
00:12:20
types in their casting, I personally feel
like art and animated media still has a long
00:12:24
way to go to catch up in a race that even
the current winner is already behind in.
00:12:28
And more than just drawing fat characters as
attractive in popular media, we also need more
00:12:32
diversity in what fat characters actually look
like at all in popular media. There isn’t just
00:12:36
one singular type of fat body that exists, it’s a
scale with varying sizes and varying proportions,
00:12:41
which as of right now isn’t being regularly or
accurately depicted. I think Bojack Horseman
00:12:46
actually did a pretty good job with this, having
a relatively realistic range of body types and
00:12:50
not having any of them directly associated with
negative tropes or making bigger characters’
00:12:54
identities completely defined by their weight.
They approach the whole topic really well too,
00:12:58
with characters openly discussing their struggles
with their self esteem regarding their weight,
00:13:02
how they’re worried about being perceived as a
result of it, and so on. Hollyhock, for example,
00:13:06
is depicted as a relatively average weight,
maybe leaning a little more towards chubby,
00:13:09
and she openly talks about how when she compares
herself to the vast majority of skinny girls in
00:13:13
Hollywood– or Hollywoo, to be accurate to
the source material– she feels like a blob,
00:13:18
even though that’s not how she looks at all. It’s
carefully, tactfully, and realistically handled,
00:13:22
and I could sing that show’s praises for
ages, but the point is that we need more
00:13:25
animation like Bojack Horseman. We need more
Hollyhocks. We need underweight fighters,
00:13:31
overweight hot girl protagonists, muscular
nerds! We need characters that fit tropes
00:13:36
without their weight being a part of
it - we need to rewrite this narrative.
00:13:39
And finally, before you come at me, I’m not saying
anyone, be it individual artists or animation
00:13:43
studios or anyone in between, has to draw fat
characters. People can draw what they want,
00:13:48
and it’s not right to try to force anyone
to draw anything they’re not interested
00:13:52
in. I’m not saying they have to
find fat characters attractive,
00:13:54
either. What I am saying is that if
people are going to draw fat characters,
00:13:58
draw them accurately without turning their
bodies into offensive caricatures. I’m saying
00:14:02
if they’re going to include fat characters
in their stories, don’t use their weight to
00:14:06
establish their identities and reduce them
to tropes. I’m saying if you’re designing a
00:14:09
character that’s intended to be attractive,
don’t make their weight the reason they are.
00:14:13
I really do think things are moving in the right
direction in terms of body positivity in art,
00:14:17
and I do think that positive change is going to
be made in the coming years. It already has been,
00:14:21
even if it’s nowhere near enough yet. But I think
that if we want to see more of it, each of us
00:14:26
has to confront our weight-related biases, both
conscious and unconscious, to fight back against
00:14:30
the harmful and unachievable beauty standards
being imposed on us by this false equivalence
00:14:35
of weight and beauty. Media will always make
characters suited to what the audience wants to
00:14:39
see - let’s show them we want to see all bodies,
not just the ones it says we should idolize.
00:14:44
Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed
today’s video. Special thank you as always to
00:14:47
channel members Cafe Soleil, Joseph Solomon,
TC Pratt, Haruki Kenway, ZeldaDevorak42,
00:14:52
and Art of Amethyst Fable, as well as patrons
Batman, Kyle Low, blueswanson, Cora Feere,
00:14:57
Jamesha Walker, Elenxji, Kim Nguyen, Shamil_sheep,
crazyhussar, GhenTuong, Grayson Xavier, MG,
00:15:03
BlahMage, TC Pratt, Fihyn, Selene Merriman,
Ash W, Eldritchia, TheStrayDogg, Ulura,
00:15:08
Greg Noble, Decagon, and Milltio for their
support, and I’ll see you in the next one!
