In films, only 40 characters with diverse bodies appear – 28 of them fat – out of the total of 741; in series, 46 out of a total of 980, according to the ODA Fatphobia Report
In Little pigthe 2022 film based on the award-winning short of the same name, the director Carlota Pereda shows how Sara (the actress Laura Galan), has to endure the teasing of other girls from her small town for being fat. At one point in the film, a stranger arrives in that small town and kidnaps Sara’s stalkers. She has to decide whether she helps save those young girls or not.
In this fiction, Laura Galán plays a character who, beyond the fatphobic insults, does not have a plot linked to that skeptical vision of non-normative bodies. And, precisely for that reason, she generated some criticism. “There was no problem as long as the diverse body suffered oppression. The general public could empathize with that suffering. Sara deserved her sympathy when she was good, passive, somewhat laughable, a victim. The discomfort arose when that body became humanized, it acquired a complex, real, sexual, strong dimension. The transgression entered when we began to show a real human being,” reflects Carlota Pereda in the introductory letter of the Fatphobia Report 2023, prepared by the Observatory of Diversity in Audiovisual Media (ODA), in collaboration with Prime Video and Filmin.
The director herself had to answer questions from viewers offended by a sequence in which Sara masturbated, “because of the insinuation that the character was not only a body worthy of being desired but, and this is what was most offending, desiring.” Elena Crimental, director of communications at ODA, indicated at the presentation of the report, which was held this Tuesday, that this film “represents a before and after: this problem is represented on screen for the first time” and character fat stop being a “kind fat woman, as always.”
Fatphobia Facts
People with diverse bodies receive a series of very limited roles in fiction: they are the funny and endearing fatties, they are the objects of ridicule, they are characters whose only plot focuses on dieting. But, above all, They are invisible and underrepresented, with respect to the reality of a diverse society like the current one.
This is evidenced by the analysis of the representation of body diversity in Spanish fiction of 2022 in film and television carried out by ODA. The observatory has examined a total of 1,721 characters spread across 99 films and 61 seasons of 59 fictional series. In movies, only 40 characters with diverse bodies appear – 28 of them fat, which corresponds to a 3.8%– out of a total of 741, which They are equivalent to just 5.4%. In series, non-normative bodies correspond to 4.7% (and only the fat ones, to 3%): 46 out of a total of 980.
“The majority of fat characters are concentrated in drama – which has the highest number of total productions – and in comedy – where, although these characters do not appear as comic relief, it is possible that this greater percentage presence has to do with the tradition of using corporality as a laughable elementespecially in the case of men-“, explains the report, which is the first to be prepared on this subject in Spain.
Without references
Ángela Rodríguez, Secretary of State for Equality and against Gender Violence, present at this morning’s event, has indicated that there is “a absolute absence of references, which speaks of a problem of representativeness, but which in reality hides a problem of recognition.” “Is there a possibility that women have perfect bodies?” she asked herself, and then responded that “there is no possibility for a woman or a for no gender dissident identity the possibility of having a body that fits into the norm, because the norm is a fiction in which none of us will ever be able to fit.
“There is discrimination that has to do with what our bodies are like that is problematic and that makes a part of the population suffer. It is an issue that is of public interest and, mainly, due to the interpretation that is made of it in culture, that makes those discriminations prevail“, he has settled.
In the conclusions of the Fatphobia Report 2023, the ODA has proposed a series of solutions to alleviate this lack of references and those discriminatory views towards non-normative bodies that abound in Spanish fictions. Among them, it stands out “that people with non-normative corporalities do not appear only in fantasy, horror, suspense or supernatural productions, so as not to promote harmful collective imaginaries that associate disability or physical dissidence with an otherness stagnant in cruelty, marginality and villainy.”
Brendan Fraser, in ‘The Whale’
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Likewise, from the observatory they emphasize that “it is necessary that there be more than one fat character per production, Well, we have seen how it is still rare for several people with body diversity to coexist in the same series or film,” and that “they do not appear—especially in the case of women—so frequently linked to the diet culture“, since, as they remember, 80% of Eating Disorders (ED) begin with a diet according to reports from the Red Cross and INSALUM.
The actor Carlos Indriago, known for his role in Merlí: Sapere aude, has reflected that he has “many colleagues who see the need to lose weight to get roles.” “There are no opportunities because the casting includes corporality,” whether or not that corporality has anything to do with the plot. That is, they already indicate whether or not they want a fat person, so it resolves that It is “from the script where the big problem lies in the choice of casts.” “They sell us that they are going to tell us a story, but they don’t do it, instead they put the prejudices of the scriptwriters in front of us,” concluded Cristina de Tena, one of the components, along with Lara Gil, of the podcast Nobody will talk about us.