The plight of the fat character

I keep hearing about the show This is Us and how incredible, amazing, real, emotional it is. Plus, there's a real live fat actress on there portraying a fat, American woman. Isn't that just great? Now real American women get to see someone on the television that looks more like us. Except she's only there to diet.

Now before you jump on me for not 'giving the show a chance', know that I watched half the season - 7 full shows and then about a quarter of show #8. And it's all the same. The two brothers have an awful relationship. Kate takes care of Jack until Jack moves away so that Kate can focus full time on dieting. Kate sabotages a relationship because she didn't lose weight fast enough. She struggles and focuses and obsesses about her weight. It's the only thing we get to see about her. I want to see the amazing, smart, and funny woman there, but the show won't let me because we only get to see her at a diet meeting or at a restaurant pushing a salad around her plate or at Toby's or her own house eating some egg whites or dry toast. There are glimpses of a funny, talented, and gorgeous woman, but the show has covered her so much in her own fat hang ups, that we're not allowed to fully glimpse the character.

We get it, fat Americans should only exist in order to get skinny. Heard it for years. Internalized it. And now we have a show that just reinforces it more. If you're fat, lose weight. That is the only way we will accept you.

But what if it wasn't that way? What if instead of shaming fat women, we got to see all of Kate? What if we got to see her rock her job for more than just one episode? A job, by the way, that she only got because she was fat and the daughter of the boss is also fat and needed a good fat-smack reality check. They bonded because they both had skinny moms who made them feel less than for being fat. But then, we got to see Kate be a bad ass organizer and she rocked at planning an event. Of course, showing her rock her job even more didn't further the fat plot, so it was cut.


I get that this show is supposed to be a drama and sometimes dramas focus on the most pressing issue in a character's life and exploit it. Except that Jack and Randall get to have work problems and family problems and race problems. Kate gets to be fat.

I want to like this show. I really do. The dialog is good. The writing is good. The other characters are great. So, why then do we still feel the need to shove the whole 'being fat is a personal failing' trope down the throats of the viewers. What would change if Kate got to be more than fat? What if she got to be a full woman with a career not involving babysitting her brother and a love life that didn't revolve around food? What if instead of Kate focusing on losing weight, we saw her training for a marathon or something equally as bad ass? Or what if she didn't exercise at all? What if she rejected the notion that being fat is a bad thing?

It could happen. We just need writers to understand their characters a bit better. And, clearly, the writers of This is Us don't get what it means to be a fat woman in this country. I am more than the numbers on the scale. Kate is more than the numbers on her scale. Show us that and make the show better.

Otherwise, I'm not at all impressed with what I've seen and I'll continue to watch American Housewife where Katie's fat is acknowledged and her struggles are seen, but it's not who she is.


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