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Fat characters in recent young adult fiction
Kliatt, Sept, 2003 by Rebecca Rabinowitz
Imagine someone tells you about a character named Joe, or Josephine. You don't know anything about the character. Then you find out that he, or she, is fat. What images come to mind? Do you feel like you've learned something about this character's soul, morality, or amount of power? Many things in literature are symbolic, but this particular symbol carries a damaging influence that is common but often unnoticed. Fatness is used overwhelmingly to connote corruption of inner character, weakness, immaturity, and flaws that need to be fixed. The message is sent through both fat characters who are two-dimensionally flawed, and fat characters who are complex but lose weight as they gain maturity.
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Fat bullies, for example, run rampant through children's literature. In Carl Hiaasen's Hoot, a fat boy named Dana subjects protagonist Roy to regular and full-blown beatings. "[H]usky" Dana (48, 193, 202), a "large, lumpy kid" (190) with "a bulky figure" (193) and a "piggish face" (46), is someone for whom size is specifically and blatantly connected with bullying. This connection is established with phrases that mention the two aspects of Dana (fatness and bullying) together: "Dana clamped a moist, ham-sized hand over Roy's face" (94). "[Roy] glared out from between Dana's pudgy fingers" (94). "This time Dana hit him with the other hand, equally fat and damp" (96). Dana is "a big stupid bully" (29), a "big thug" (287)--the very fatness itself symbolizes the fact that Dana has too much power and is abusive of it.
Dana, as a fat bully, has lots of company. In Catherine Atkins' Alt Ed, Susan receives taunting phone calls from a boy with "sausage fingers" (187); as with Dana, Eddy's size and cruelty are cemented together when he's described as "muscle-fat, shorthaired and mean-eyed" (142). In Tim Kennemore's Circle of Doom, the boy who keeps Max out of soccer games, steals his snacks and drinks, and glares at him as if a punch is imminent has "piggy" eyes (191) and "pudgy" hands (172). In Arthur Slade's Dust, a banker who "lumber[s]" (70) and has a "protruding stomach" (70) abuses his economic hold over farmers and poor townspeople by offering them unrefusable financial relief for aiding an evil stranger. Banker Samuels helps everyone sign up for the project (82); alongside him is Mrs. Juskin, who is "plump" (27, 96). And just think of Harry Potter's relationship with Dudley Dursley.
Sometimes fat bullies get their comeuppance. Dana in Hoot fails to escape from juvenile hall while Mullet Fingers, a skinny, sympathetic environmentalist and owl champion, escapes and goes free. Readers can hardly help being glad: Dana has been tormenting our protagonist Roy for the entire book. But Dana's slide from too much power to no power at all hardly expands the possibilities for fat people. On the contrary, it reveals the limitedness of the options. If someone is not a fat bully anymore, he or she must have lost all power and be, as we cheer, a deserving victim. The same is true with Nathan in Circle of Doom. At the very moment that he holds the drink that will make him sick (and teach him the lesson he will never forget), his fatness comes into play. "Nathan looked at [Max] uncertainly, his pudgy little hand still firmly gripping the bottle" (172). The pudginess reminds readers of two things: that Nathan is about to be punished by becoming weak and powerless; and that he richly deserves this punishment for being a bully for so long. Two archetypes, bully and victim, are simultaneously embodied in fatness to manipulatively eliminate any potential sympathy the reader might have.
Further ensuring that the possibilities remain narrow are fat characters who, rather than sliding from one archetype to another, embody more than one throughout. In Rebecca Fjelland Davis' Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged, Jake is a 9th-grader who bullies a fellow classmate. His threats begin as sexual and progress to a vow of killing her with a .22 gun. Jake is "squatty and has a belly" (2) and a "paunch" (12): in other words, he's "fat" (13, 14). But despite the real danger he poses, Jake is not just another fat bully--he's also a fat victim at the same time. Lainey, the girl he threatens, is scared of him, but she also feels sorry for his sad history, the way he is labeled at school ("irreparably damaged"), and the way no adults step up to help him change. Lainey is caught between fear and pity, and Jake is caught in two fat stereotypes at once.
Other examples of this dual-role phenomenon exist as well. Mrs. Prebyl, Jake's counselor, has "wide hips" (71) that carry plentiful "weight" (47), and although she bullies Jake with her adult power, she is totally ineffectual at helping Lainey out of danger. Lainey scorns her, and Mrs. Prebyl remains both pathetic and too powerful throughout the book. In Dust, two war widows also share both archetypes. They are powerless, pitiful, and lonely. At the same time, they aid the banker in bullying the townspeople, and they're oppressive to protagonist Robert. Like Jake and Mrs. Prebyl, they're "plump" (27), "[f]at" (122) characters who are simultaneously victims and bullies.
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