Since the beginning of Hollywood, plus-sized women were rarely represented in films or TV. When plus-size women were seen in Hollywood, they were always shown as the funny side characters, like ‘Fat Amy’ in Pitch Perfect. When bigger women are the lead characters in movies, the movie titles often point out their size, such as America Ferrera in Real Women Have Curves and Mae Whitman in The DUFF (which stands for ‘designated ugly fat friend’). The irony of these movies and actresses is that they definitely weren’t fat or plus-size, they were simply women with bigger hips and bigger breasts.

However, it was a start of showing different-sized women in Hollywood, but how does it influence the viewers that these women are publicly portrayed as ‘fat’ characters whether they are the main character or a side character?

Within the past few years, Netflix has created several reality TV dating shows to allow real people to find love in unique ways. They created popular dating shows such as Too Hot To Handle, Love is Blind, and Perfect Match. However, what all these reality shows don’t have is the inclusion of diverse-looking women. 

The show Too Hot To Handle is all about how a group of extremely hot and sexy people who cannot kiss or have sex with each other, in order to build strong relationships with one another. All of the men and women in every season of this show represent society’s stereotypical description of “hotness”. Simply watching the first 10 minutes of the show, you can see there are no plus or even mid-size women on this show, there is no diversity or representation of women above a size six. Resulting in the women watching feeling insecure that a woman who looks like them isn’t shown as hot and sexy. 

Then again what did we expect from a show called Too Hot to Handle? 

What about dating shows that focus on personality?

Another popular dating show on Netflix is Love is Blind, which is based on finding a husband/wife by falling in love with their personality and not being able to see what they look like until you commit to a marriage. This experimental show is based on knowing the person rather than judging their looks, but how effective is it if they mostly cast conventionally attractive, skinny women? Glamour Newsletter discusses the lack of diversity in a show that is supposed to promote finding love without focusing on looks. Love is Blind has faced allegations of being fatphobic due to the co-host’s response of why the plus-size women don’t succeed on their show, the co-host, Vanessa Lachey, states that the plus-size women bring their insecurities onto the show, and are afraid to be themselves. 

Perspective from watchers

In an interview with Olivia Carter, a student at Northern Arizona University studying Theater Studies, we discussed plus-size representation in Hollywood. Olivia states that plus-size women are rarely represented and if they are they’re either the stereotypical “funny fat friend” or are portrayed by midsize women rather than plus-size women. She also agreed that shows featuring a bigger woman always use the same stereotypes, “9/10 times the story goes like this, plus-size girl, hates her life, hates her body, bullying, hates school but is really smart, likes the popular guy, can’t get with said guy because of skinny cheerleader. You get the point”.

Plus-size women are always shown as the ugly girl who changes themselves to get a boy’s attention and maybe even finds themselves along the way. She says that she has never seen a plus-size woman on any of the recent Netflix dating shows. 

We wondered, if they were to do a plus-size-only dating show, would it better represent plus-size people in the media? To which Oliva states “If there is a show being created, I wouldn’t want it to be exclusively plus-size because then it looks like they’re (producers) creating a show for plus-size people to only be with plus-size people”. 

Conclusion

Dating shows are supposed to allow normal people to find love in a unique way, but these shows exclude people who do not fit society’s standards. How can we know these dating shows even work if not every kind of person can be on the show?  Not a single plus-size female protagonist is shown in top 50 grossing films. Hollywood’s misrepresentation of plus-sized women has affected their inclusion in all forms of television and films.