TT: America Was NEVER The Chubby Friend. Nobody Was.
Amidst praise for her amazing Barbie performance, let's talk about how the media chooses to portray beauty in the early aughts and how f*cked up it truly was.
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I’ve reflected a lot on the toxic years of my youth, AKA the early aughts (or 2000s for anyone not chronically online). Hell, I’ve even written about it for a prominent women’s magazine. Because, like many others, my adolescence shaped my view of my body, my looks, and my entire self-worth. And the early 2000s were awful.
Like, really, really awful.
The introduction of social media and widespread internet use just took fat-shaming, misogyny and racism to a whole new level. Whereas before, you could be mocked and belittled to your face, perhaps in a magazine. Now? There was simply no escaping the rigid beauty standards, and websites like Tumblr, LiveJournal and MySpace were just cesspools of young people who hated themselves and anyone else who wasn’t thin, white, and (preferably) blonde. This was the era of Abercrombie & Fitch and Paris Hilton, back when people still gave a shit about MTV. Speaking of Viacom, they had a plethora of entertainment options that really just drove home how little their executives thought of women. I vividly remember in an episode of “My Super Sweet Sixteen,” the 15-year-old birthdayzilla (I cannot remember her name, but she was in Miami) had her also 15-year-old friends try on their matching dresses for her Grand Fête. One of the young women had a slightly different body than the others, and for that, she was publicly chastised about her weight and, if I remember correctly, threatened with removal from the birthday court if she didn’t lose enough weight in time.
The early 2000s was indeed a time when the currency of beauty was more predictable than blue chip stock; you knew who you had to be or who you had to look like to cash in and with minimal deviation.
This is where America Ferrera comes in. With her stellar (*cough cough* Oscar-worthy) performance in box office hit Barbie, the former Ugly Betty star is experiencing a renaissance of popularity. The monologue she delivers in the movie is heralded for its depiction of the plight of womanhood. And rightly so! Greta was in her BAG.
My first introduction to America Ferrera was in 2005’s coming-of-age film, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Having previously read the book, I knew that Ferrera’s character, Carmen Lowell, was the designated chubby friend, a curvaceous Latina in a group of otherwise thin, white teenage girls, so I knew what to expect. And I guess my brain (or media/society at the time) tricked my brain into believing Ferrera was much larger than her co-stars. Reflecting now, she wasn’t. Sure, she had rounder hips and fuller breasts, but she wasn’t that much larger than Amber Tamblyn, and even when compared to Blake Lively, the difference wasn’t as big of a deal as the book made it to be between the two characters.
Over the years, Ferrera, whose other critically acclaimed roles tackled lookism and weight, including her Emmy-winning role in “Ugly Betty” and her breakout role in 2001’s Real Women Have Curves, has spoken about her relationship with her body several times. In a 2017 Instagram post to mark her 33rd birthday, the Superstore actress shared:
"At 33, I finally understand that my body is a miracle! After too many years of criticizing, punishing, depriving, or neglecting my body for what it isn't, I'm attempting to love it unapologetically as it is!"
It makes me wonder if she internalized the barely coded messages Hollywood sent when she was rising the ranks as a young star: “If you’re not thin and/or white, you’re the ugly, fat friend. Sorry, not sorry.”
And she wasn’t the only one. Who could forget Kim Parker, Moesha’s sidekick? From 1996 to 1999, and then on her hit spin-off show The Parkers until 2004, Kim was the punchline of several fat jokes, even from “kind-hearted” protagonist, Moesha. Kim, played by Countess Vaughn, was not large at all. She had a round face, and at 4’11”, she carried her body weight differently.
Even the hit show Glee (2009-2015), considered groundbreaking network television at the time for tackling race, sexual orientation and relationships, had an ongoing fat joke. One of the main characters, Finn Hudson (played by the late Corey Monteith), was constantly criticized for his weight, most notably by cheerleader Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera, who passed in 2020). Santana referred to him as a “whale,” which I thought was strange since Finn was a football player…what was he supposed to look like? I didn’t bother to finish Glee, but from what I can tell, the jokes about his weight continued through Monteith’s final season in 2013.
We all know that Hollywood’s idea of “fat” is vastly different from the average person (this was the same industry that tried to convince us that at ~130lbs, Renee Zellweger was an unlovable heffalump in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. The Hollywood of the early 2000s was a different beast. But that doesn't make teenage me feel any better. That doesn’t erase the years, or rather, decades of self-hatred and constant fad dieting. Much like Ferrera, I spent my 20s punishing my body for being the “chubby friend,” hoping that, with enough hatred and sheer will, I could will it into Moesha, Blake, or Santana. The main characters of the show, the thin ones. Only to find out that not only was I NOT even chubby but that years of dieting negatively impacted my health—physically, mentally and emotionally. At 34 years old, I am still trying to undo the damage of being the “chubby friend.” Seeing Ferrera get her flowers in a role that didn’t use her body as a punchline or ongoing story may actually be healing inner teenage me, letting me know I am, in fact, Kenough. We were, all of us, Kenough.
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