The Whale won two Academy Awards at the 2023 Oscars, the Best Actor award for Brendan Fraser and the Best Makeup and Hairstyling award, despite the significant backlash over using a fat suit in the film.
Both Brendan and makeup artist Adrien Morot were overcome with emotion as they took to the stage at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood to collect their awards. Adrien was the man responsible for transforming Brendan into the role of Charlie, a man whose excessive weight is a result of self-neglect while grieving the loss of his boyfriend, who died by suicide. And while we celebrate the success of every Oscar winner, our eyebrows have certainly been raised at their wins, especially as many people have criticised the use of a fat suit in the film.
That included Mean Girls actor Daniel Franzese, who previously told People: “To finally have a chance to be in a prestige film that might be award-nominated, where stories about people who look like us are being told? That's the dream. So when they go time and time again and cast someone like Brendan Fraser, me and the other big queer guys, we're like, 'What the ... ?' We can't take it!”
Meanwhile, speaking directly about The Whale author Samuel D. Hunter and the movie's director Darren Aronofsky, journalist Roxane Gay wrote for the New Tork Times: “It was crystal clear that Mr. Hunter and Mr. Aronofsky considered fatness to be the ultimate human failure, something despicable, to be avoided at all costs.”
Their concerns and disapproval were greatly warranted, but the fact that the film was just rewarded in the category that has upset people most feels like a significant step backwards in ensuring that people from underrepresented, marginalised communities are represented fairly.
Frustratingly, the use of fat suits in Hollywood has been around for ages. Chances are, you’ve probably seen a movie or TV show where fat suits are worn. You might not have twigged the presence of the fat suit – let alone perceived it as harmful, offensive or potentially damaging. After all, it’s just an actor in a fat suit, right? With The Whale aside, another recent example was Emma Thomson wearing one for the new adaptation of Matilda. But how do these figure re-shapers actually impact the representation of bigger bodies in Hollywood and in the media?
A fat suit is a type of bodysuit undergarment that is often used in Hollywood to thicken the appearance of an actor, building up a silhouette that’s far bigger than their natural body. They’re typically used to enhance the comedic aspect of a film or movie, like in Hairspray when John Travolta plays the ditsy and insecure Edna Turnblad or in Norbit when Eddie Murphy portrays Rasputia Latimore.
Both examples are of regular-sized men playing fat women – something that is laughed at by the masses but feels unfair when you’re living in a fat body. In the original Hairspray, Edna was played by drag queen Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead), who was fat – making the role more suited, which raises the question: why did John Travolta get picked for the same role in the reboot?
While some people might argue that fat suits are good for the representation of fat people, others think they’re harmful, and, personally, I'm with the latter. My generation has grown up watching the likes of Hairspray, Friends and movies like Shallow Hal, which have played a key role in the normalisation of fatphobia as we're encouraged to laugh at the ‘fat’ character's expense.
TV shows and films that use fat suits to enable and encourage fat jokes unwittingly give the audience permission to reenact these behaviours in real life. Bullied throughout my school life for my size, I believe that the portrayal of fat people and the use of fat suits in the media encouraged people to pick on me and so many other people like me – making society an unequal place for those who happen to be bigger in stature.
Fans of Courteney Cox, who played Monica Geller in Friends, will likely remember seeing ‘Fat Monica’ on their screens – AKA Courteney donning a fat suit. Previously speaking on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Courtney said: “I loved playing overweight Monica because I felt so free.” But in the real world, fat people often don’t feel free because they are constantly discriminated against and are frequently ostracised by thin people.
Courteney Cox isn’t the only Hollywood actor to have spoken out about their portrayal of a fat person. Gwyneth Paltrow starred as Rosemary Shanahan in Shallow Hal – a film about falling in love with somebody because of their ‘inner beauty’. In order to portray the role, she wore a fat suit.
Speaking to Netflix about her experience of wearing a fat suit, Gwyneth said, “It was so sad. It was so disturbing. No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese,” adding that, “For some reason, the clothes they make for women that are overweight are horrible. I felt humiliated because people were really dismissive.”
As well as ignoring the fact that fat people can’t just take off their bodies at the end of the day, Gwyneth also spoke of the experience with little empathy for the group of people she was portraying. To my knowledge, she never did anything to make larger people feel less humiliated, and even the clothes stocked on her website Goop only go up to a size large – a UK 12-14.
Fat suits in comedies haven’t been used as widely and regularly of late, and in more recent years, they’re being used as a way to change the shape of actors portraying roles in true crime movies and biopics.
Sarah Paulson stars in American Crime Story and portrays the role of Linda Tripp, the real woman whose recordings of conversations with President Bill Clinton’s mistress, Monica Lewinsky, almost ended his time in office. Unlike other actors who haven’t acknowledged the harm done by wearing fat suits for their work, Paulson has been incredibly empathetic towards the fat community and openly recognised the issue with fat suits when she spoke to the LA Times last year.
She told the publication, “There’s a lot of controversy around actors and fat suits, and I think that controversy is a legitimate one. I think fatphobia is real. I think to pretend otherwise causes further harm.”
There is no doubt that fat suits are incredibly divisive when used as a medium of character portrayal in film and TV. Harmful when used for comedic purposes and slightly more accepted when used to tell a real-life story – the debate surrounding fat suits will likely never end.
But the question that will constantly arise when the fat suit debate comes around again – why can’t Hollywood just use fat actors? And honestly, I have to agree.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of fat actors who are looking for work – but instead of them getting picked for a role that would suit their body type and kick fat suits to the curb, thin actors are given the job and told to wear a fat suit in order to look fatter than they likely ever have.
Unfortunately, with The Whale's big Oscar wins, it looks as though fat suits are here to stay for the time being – well, until Hollywood can grow up and employ fat actors – so until then if they could keep the fat jokes out of it, that’d be great.
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