Many women and girls in real life have body image issues that lead them to obsess about food and think of themselves as fat even when they're well within healthy weight limits, or even if they're trim or underweight.
Like Hollywood Homely characters, if you took the Hollywood Pudgy character out of her movie and plunked her down among a representative sample of real women, she'd fit in because she looks normal, even good in comparison. She'd be no fashion model or typical movie star, coming to nearly six feet and not reaching a hundred twenty pounds. As an average American (usually) woman, the Hollywood Pudgy character is or appears to be overweight by medical standards but not nearly obese. She'd have no trouble fitting through bus turnstiles or into a cute bathing suit, and wouldn't have her doctor telling her she must lose twenty pounds for the sake of her heart and pancreas.
This does not apply in stories where a skinny woman thinks of herself fat, but is shown to have an eating disorder or body image problem. That would probably fall under I Am Not Pretty instead. Satirical examples hang a lantern on the absurdity of calling normal healthy women "fat".
The same thing applies somewhat to men as well, although not anywhere to the same degree. A slender, athletic build is considered better than a stronger, stocky build. If you don't have large shoulders you're either considered chubby or scrawny. If you have a thick neck and any hint of a double-chin, on the other hand, you can still be an "everyman" sitcom hero: the female equivalent is not allowed to be shown on television except as an unintelligent, totally pathetic Abhorrent Admirer fit only for belittling ridicule.
Compare Hollywood Homely, Unkempt Beauty, Muscle Angst, and BBW. Contrast Informed Attractiveness and of course Hollywood Thin.
Note: Under the examples, PLEASE only include those who are explicitly identified as overweight despite not actually being overweight! This is NOT the page for actors of normal body type playing characters of normal body type, nor for genuinely fat actors playing genuinely fat characters. Anything that is drawn or animated is also extremely unlikely to qualify (Garfield, for example, doesn't even look like a cat), unless the depiction is intended to be realistic or the trope itself is being parodied. If the only time the character's said or implied to be fat is when another character is tossing out insults, it probably belongs under You Are Fat instead of this trope.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
Many ads for Kellogg's products such as Special K cereal, will encourage the viewer to replace two of their meals a day with the cereal in order to lose weight. The majority of these ads will feature a woman being portrayed as overweight or too chubby to wear a particular piece of clothing they have their eye on. They successfully complete the diet plan and show off their newly-slim bodies. What makes these ads a series of Wall Bangers? Just about every woman in these ads is already thin to begin with, thus making the shown weight-loss unnoticeable and also completely ignoring the "for ages 18 and over with BMI 25+ " disclaimers at the bottom of the screen. This is just one of the advertisements.
Pretty sure it's implying that they're so skinny already because they've been on the regimen for awhile.
That would make sense. However, in the majority of these adverts the women are shown at the beginning clearly acting self-conscious or unhappy with their bodies before doing the diet (such as the woman in the linked ad desperately trying to hide herself), suggesting that they're supposed to have hideously chubby figures. Thinking they weigh more than they really do is a common symptom of eating disorders, BTW.
Especially annoying are the Special K ads which are run after Christmas, in which women who are on the low side of average size are mistaken for Santa Claus by children and Santa's sleigh team.
In the former, the "overweight" woman is portrayed by the gorgeous actress Stacy Edwards◊. In the latter, the woman is dressed in a bulky winter coat (with unflattering side pockets), heavy scarf and unflattering hat that would make anybody look 20 lbs. heavier.
The ad campaign for Special K in the 1970s was just about as bad. They encouraged viewers to "do the Special K pinch", which meant to pinch some part of their midsection. The message was, "If you can pinch more than an inch, you should probably be watching your weight." The problem here is that skin, subcutaneous muscle tissue, etc. can all be pinched around the abdomen, so it's very easy even for someone who's underweight to pinch more than an inch. Even chronic anorexics can pinch more than an inch, if they're hunched over.
An ad for the zero calorie sweetener Truvia have an extremely thin woman scarfing down cheesecake as a cutesy jingle that's supposed to be her inner monologue laments that real sugar made her "butt fat."
This ad for Safe Food, where nobody appears to be unhealthily overweight, bar a small bulge in the belly. Make even funnier by Safe Food's slogan, "Be Safe, Be Health, Be Well."
Anime & Manga
Stocking from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has quite a sweet-tooth, and one episode shows her wearing a monitor and going on a diet, much to Panty's taunting delight. She in enraged over Chuck's hogging her beloved sweets, eats them herself, then later laments over how she'll likely be "back" to her normal proportions by the next day. Yet her physical appearance never changes, and she's still hot enough to pull off that explicit henshin...
In the fourth episode of the Sailor Moon anime Serena/Usagi is worried that she has gained a little weight. Visually, she hasn't changed at all. Fortunately, in the show, nobody except Usagi notices. The dub even exaggerated this a step further by having "Serena" freak out about gaining a grand total of...half a pound. The rest of the episode shows a villain preying on women with body issues by using machines that make them skinny while sucking out their life energy until they become emaciated (and it is implied that they will die after enough sessions). Strangely, the dub attempts to pretend the machines don't work despite the fact that all the victims are visibly skinnier and skeletal. Either way, it's still not enforcing a certain body type, but mocking the obsession with being skinny that leads perfectly attractive women to starve themselves.
It's still worth noting that while Usagi/Serena's family doesn't give it much importance, their comments imply that she is indeed "a bit chubby" in their eyes and that she should probably eat less and exercise more (Luna also thinks this way). While they may just mean to encourage her into a more healthy lifestyle (or playfully mock her worries) rather than to have her get thinner, they never clarify this (cue Usagi/Serena crying at hearing them).
Sailor Moon Abridged takes this and runs with it, having every character point out how overweight she allegedly is. Naturally, the art hasn't changed a bit; she's every bit as skinny as she is in the actual show.
Also happens in the Codename: Sailor V, where Minako in fact gained some weight but was almost unnoticeable. Minako freaked out so much she started doing exercise like mad, losing the excess fat... And still weighing a little too much, this time IN MUSCLES (Artemis had stopped saying he didn't want a fat Sailor V, after all).
The same couldn't be said for the people of Tokyo, since this was the latest scheme of the Dark Agency. Basically everyone else besides Minako (and her friend Hikaru-Chan) had noticeably gotten fatter because of some special chocolates being distributed around Valentine's Day. It reached a point that "fat" was the new in-look even though everyone was going like crazy trying to lose the weight.
By some accounts, Japanese culture is extremely lipophobic. In a country where people eat mostly fish and rice and do 2 hours of aerobics every day, body image standards can get pretty warped.
Yomi in Azumanga Daioh has weight issues, even though she's no less thin than the other girls on the show. The liner notes in one of the DVDs notes that her obsession with her weight was given to her to give her a slightly more "normal" quirk than the other girls, so its clear that this was more in Yomi's head than an actual problem. Tomo also teases her for being fat, but Tomo is also a Jerk Ass that spends her life tormenting Yomi in any way she can think of.
Likewise, Kagami from Lucky Star often complains about her weight despite not being fat, especially after indulging her Sweet Tooth. But as Konata pointed out, "You don't look any different if you gain a kilo or two."
In the rather obscure anime series Onegai! Samia Don (aka Psammead the Magic Genie, based on Five Children And It by E. Nesbit); Anne Hopkins, the eldest girl, is working out to be thin, and despite not being overweight at all, ponders asking Psammead help (but being Genre Savvy enough to know that her wish might backfire, she doesn't).
Male example: America in Axis Powers Hetalia doesn't look fat, but when he steps onto the weight scale, it actually sweats carrying his weight and he looks completely mortified seeing the numbers. Though it could also be joking about this trope as well.
Word of God suggests that the weight is muscle, and that America simply doesn't know any better.
Finland is another male example: Word Of God has stated that he is a little chubby, but he looks like this. (Warning: kinda NSFW)
Hiro of Hidamari Sketch is also very sensitive to her weight; different signs may imply she is kind of on the fat side (like Miyako's teasing or her open preference in Renoir because he drew Rubenesque women), but it's not something we can see in the manga or anime, particularly because of the art-style...
Rumiko Takahashi actually did a one-shot manga about such a girl going to a weight-loss camp because of a new dress that was only slightly too tight on her. She ends up getting a better body image by the end, however.
The girl in question wanted to go to the dance with her crush, and thought dropping a lot of weight would help. As it turned out, the guy liked them plus-sized, and went with a girl who was visibly pudgy. On the other hand, she got the young camp coach instead, who (unlike the first guy) got some screen time and established character. This is Takahashi, after all.
Hige from Wolf's Rain is an interesting case, as he has two forms, human and wolf. He earns the nickname "Porky" from Tsume, and his canine form is indeed noticeably overweight. On the other hand, most of the time in the series the viewer only sees his human projection, and the only indication that the image he projects might be heavier than the others is that he doesn't wear skinny-jeans or tight leather pants like the others do, leaving a Hollywood Pudgy impression.
Though he rarely (if ever) does it withoutprovocation, Ranma ½'s title character often calls Akane "fat," "thick-waisted," or "wide-hipped," just to deny being attracted to her. Akane's response is swift and certain. There was a story later in the manga about a magical gi. When female Ranma tries to wear it she learns it only fits someone with Akane's supposedly dumpier physique.
Subverted in Ichigo Mashimaro: when Chika and Miu start obsessing about their weight gain, Nobue points out to them that they are still growing.
Fushigi Yuugi subverts this trope with Miaka, as Yuu Watase has pointed out and shown in the manga that she really is supposed to be pudgy (though after distress galore in the book, she loses weight). In the anime, however, she's a bodaciously brawny babe who at one point fantasizes about having the body of a supermodel. Well, she got her wish... ornot.
One story in Pet Shop Of Horrors deals with dieting by following three people. The first person is a high school girl who genuinely is overweight because of low self-esteem issues (she overeats when she's upset). The second person is a boxer who needs to keep his weight down so that he can stay in the proper weight class. The third person is a model who is rail skinny as she is but asks the Count to give her a mysterious pill that her fellow model told her about. The model explains that her body is her "calling card" and gaining even a pound could mean losing a lot of expensive clients. Throughout the chapter, the animals are all very distressed and confused at the thought of someone willingly starving themselves as they know what it is like to really be without food. While the first two people get happy endings (the girl loses the weight thanks to self-esteem boosts from a training partner the Count loans her and the boxer makes his weight class), the model becomes violently sick after taking the pill for some time, until her body becomes dried up and breaks open to let an alien version of the model out. It is also revealed that the other model - who told her about the pill to begin with - had the same thing happen to her. The message of the chapter seemed to be that there was more to life than shedding a few pounds, especially since the characters that were dieting for non-selfish reasons actually had happy endings and got more out of it.
Cattleya from Queen's Blade has some plumpish features but most of her thickness is really just muscle. Still, it hasn't stopped detractors from labeling her as fat or obese and it certainly hasn't stop doujinshis and fanart from portraying her as such.
Tina has a mini-freak out in one chapter of Ai Yori Aoshi due to her weight. She tries to diet (which is hard when you're a Big Eater who lives in the house of a Supreme Chef. Tina looks like this.
Sakurai Rihoko from Amagami is a textbook example. Based on her character design, she'd just be around the upper-bound of average sized waistline and chubbiness.
Mio and Mugi from K-On! tends to get worried of their weight gain at the end of the year, and are envious of Yui's high metabolism. Even Ritsu can be manipulated into drum practice with this fear, though.
However according to Ritsu, Mio's weight goes to her breasts.
Nagi from A Channel tends to worry about her weight on occasions.
Isana from Yumekui Merry is often shown worrying about her weight, despite her very cute and slender outer appearance. Chapter 39 shows on more than one occasion that she really is physically heavy, at least compared to Merry, just not to the point of being unhealthy.
Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto certainly isn't a stick-thin Bishounentypically seen in anime (Masashi Kishimoto isn't big on drawing those as he likes to show off his figure-drawing skills), but he also isn't ever called "fat" or "chubby" In-Universe. But to many fans (used to seeing stick-thin characters in flattering outfits), he is, mainly after the Time Skip where he (like everyone else) filled out some...and absorbed Orochimaru's appalling fashion sense.
Ayako of Slam Dunk goes on a diet at the end of the series. Admittedly, she is drawn as curvier then Haruko and with a rounder face, but considering how many characters refer to her as attractive it's pretty obvious she's just being paranoid.
The eponymous lead of Empowered seems to suffer from this big time, as she constantly refers to herself as chubby and pudgy (as do some of her teammates, supervillains, the media, random loudmouths on the internet, etc.), though technically she should be on par with a 20-something white chick with some decent curvature. It is telling that the only female character who is significantly skinnier than Emp publicly dismisses her complaints as "grenade-fishing for compliments" and privately considers her extremely sexy.
This is likely done to highlight the main character's MASSIVE self-esteem issues, aggravated by being around superheroes with perfect comic book figures. It really doesn't help that she has to seriously diet and exercise to keep in shape, while pretty much all of the other female supers are implied to have gotten their figures along with her powers. Especially Sistah Spooky, who's a Big Eater and has an ongoing spell that displaces excess mass to her nearby enemies, and poor Emp is almost certainly at the top of that list.
Furthermore, her soap-bubble thin costume is really skintight, and stops working, cutting her off from her superpowers, whenever she hides it, even with a small mantle. As a result, she's basically naked all times, while other heroines are allowed to accessorize and highlight their best assets.
In her solo series, Ms. Marvel has been called fat a few times, despite having the usual trim-and-shapely comic book physique. It's worth noting, however, that it is villains (mostly female ones) who make these comments, and most of them have been made by the same villain, indicating it's just an attempt to get under her skin. And another one was Doctor Doom screaming insults at her, which included "fat whore." It's also worth noting that most of these happened under the same writer, making it more a Running Gag than anything else.
A throw-away gag during the first New Avengers tenure has Jessica Drew entering The Raft, a high security prison, with a bag of donuts in her hands loudly complaining about how fat she got in the previous months of inactivity, and offering to share her breakfast with whoever is able to provide her with suitable information about an impending breakout. While the villains fall for the trick (loudly asking for Jessica to surrender the donuts in exchange for their full, unbridled cooperation, implying that the usual gruel they're usually served is really foul), Jessica's implied image issues are somewhat lessened by her skintight Hot Librarian tailleur, showing off her usual voluptuous physique, busty but nowhere as fat to need dieting.
Tarot's mom, from Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose. As expected from a mother of two, now in her late forties-early fifties, she's grown noticeably fatter than her smoking hot daughters. However, instead of looking pudgy and fat, she looks exactly like a wider version of Rowena, her youngest daughter and the titular Witch of the Black Rose.
Can apply somewhat to Gert in Runaways, as it depends on the artist. Under main artist Adrian Alphona's pen, Gert actually is fairly chubby, but other artists tend to draw her as just having slightly more hips and waist than Nico or Karolina, and even Alphona drew her that way to start with. Here, it may not be so much a case of warped values as it is comic artists just not being used to drawing women with that sort of body. Also, Marvel's official stats list her at 5'1'' and 125 pounds. The Alphona version, if she was 5'1", would probably be at least 140.
The "Palomar" half of Love And Rockets points out how ludicrous this is with Doralis, one of Luba's daughters who stars in a hit TV variety show. She started out as a back-up to an anorexic blond who insults her for her incredibly voluptuous figure. The blond ends up getting edged out of the show and Doralis gains millions of male and female admirers.
The First American in Tomorrow Stories has a classic Heroic Build, but is referred to frequently by other characters as though he were fat. He does have rather slovenly eating habits, but he's sculpted like Michelangelo's David for crying out loud!
From the Threeboot continuity of Legion of Super-Heroes, Saturn Girl and Invisible Kid after Francis Manapul did redesigns of the characters. He made Imra more hippy and Lyle a bit rounder than a typical skinny kid, but neither could be called fat. Although Imra complains that people consider her "dumpy".
Cornfed from Livewires, who was designed to look like a big Farm Boy because his frame is meant to store extra amounts of smartware in his body, primarily in his beer belly. But beyond that he's as muscular as Hollowpoint Ninja, and taller.
In All Fall Down, Portia laments having gained nine pounds since she lost her powers (and her superhero metabolism).
Film
Jan, one of the Pink Ladies in Grease, is constantly talking about how she should be dieting, but she's hungry. This could be put down to adolescent body image, except other characters ask her if she really wants to eat that, and Putzie asks her out, "romantically" saying that there's more to her "than just fat." The actress is not even slightly pudgy. No double chin, nothing but looser clothes than the other Pink Ladies and continuous mentions of her fat in the script. The original script actually calls for a chubby actress.
She weighed nine and a half stone (136 pounds). Yup, real whale there. Although the point might be that she obsesses about her weight so much, not that she's actually fat. Renée Zellweger at her Bridget Jones weight was considered too fat for the cover of Harper's Bazaar. Zellweger as Bridget Jones was supposed to be a UK size 14 (which is a US size 10). She gained only enough weight to reach a size 6, but even then she endured dozens of newspaper and magazine articles on her weight gain. Though during interviews at the time, she claimed to enjoy being heavier, she lost the weight as soon as filming was done and when it came time to film a sequel, she refused to gain weight until the studio literally paid her for every extra pound she put on.
In the novel, when she successfully achieves the weight that she considered ideal, everybody comments that she's too thin.
Julia Roberts in America's Sweetheart wore a fat suit to be a size 12.
An hour into Romy And Micheles High School Reunion, Romy is referred to as "the chubby girl", even though (a) she is nowhere remotely close to chubby in either flashbacks or the present day, and (b) another character is far more deserving of the "chubby girl" distinction, in both flashbacks and the present day.
In the Sex and the City movie, Samantha eats to distract herself from thoughts of cheating, and when she flies out to New York it's considered a big deal when she sports a wee bit of a gut. Its said later that its not so much that she's gotten 'fat', as according to Charlotte she would look great at any size, but that such weight gain is extremely out of character and indicative of some underlying problem. Granted, this felt a little shoehorned to try to avoid being accused of an 'if you aren't thin there's something wrong with you' implication, but at least they tried, if however half-halfheartedly.
The character played by tall, lanky Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada was considered fat at a size 6. It was intended to show the shallowness of the fashion industry. Later in the movie she's down to a size 4, showing how far she's fallen in her principles. And her size and weight are never mentioned again afterward, so we can assume she stayed at size 4. Ironically, Hathaway gained weight in order to play the character, but when the designer clothes wardrobe had selected for her didn't fit, she had to lose weight to be a size 2-4 to fit into those clothes.
Dudley looks to be somewhere between normal and slightly pudgy. He, of course, is supposed to be a fat slob. This is Adaptational Attractiveness, since he is genuinely fat in the books. Actor Harry Melling began studying ballet, and had to wear a fat suit for his brief appearance in Deathly Hallows Part 1. Ultimately the films make less a point about his weight than the books to sidestep this issue.
Although it is mentioned in one of the later books that Dudley has taken up boxing and has been developing more muscle.
Neville is also described as "round-faced" and said to be plump, and there's little indication this changed until the last book. In the first film he fit that fairly well. As the actor aged◊, he shed most of the weight. Neither the books nor films make much of an issue about his weight, leading to the possibility that he slowly dropped the weight as he grew.
Minnie Driver's character in Circle of Friends actually refers to herself as a "heifer" at one point. This mirrors reality somewhat; around the time of the film, talk shows were abuzz with excitement that an actress as plain and chubby as Minnie Driver could land a role as Chris O'Donnell's love interest.
PM Hugh Grant in Love Actually is into his cute tea maid (Martine McCutcheon) at Downing Street, even though she's constantly referred to as "fat" by everyone else. The PM character is bewildered that all of the other characters seem to have reached a consensus about her supposed fatness, since he couldn't see it at all. This seems to be based on the problem McCutcheon had with being labeled as fat by the media, and the subsequent backlash.
One of the cheerleaders in the original Bring It On is told that her ass is enormous by a cheertator and is told to skip meals. Of course, she's thin and gorgeous. One of the cheerleaders in the sequel Bring It On: All or Nothing is supposedly fat, and is pressured to lose weight and is made fun of. By any normal standards she looks just as thin and sexy as the other cheerleaders. This is a deliberate criticism of the phenomenon, as the character who makes these comments is an Alpha Bitch and it's played for a Kick the Dog moment.
In Hook Peter Banning (really Peter Pan, of course) is mocked by the lost boys for being "old and fat", and Captain Hook himself calls him a "pitiful, spineless, pasty, bloated codfish" despite that fact that Robin Williams wasn't out of shape◊. Of course, he'd still be softer than the athletic adolescent he used to be.
This is most likely a reference to the fact that he has, in fact, gotten older and heavier since he left, and in a place where the average age and weight of a character is 10 years old and 30 kilos... yeah.
The brunette "ugly stepsister" Jacqueline de Ghent in Ever After is chided by the Wicked Stepmother for eating too much and being overweight. The Baroness isn't at all a nice person, so cutting comments like that are to be expected, but no comment to the contrary is given, and the man she ends up with is the husky, buffoonish royal carriage driver, suggesting she's not fit for a prince. Seeing as Jacqueline is played by the lovely Melanie Lynskey, that could also be interpreted as the set-up for Ugly Guy, Hot Wife.
In Strip Search, an interrogator tells Maggie Gyllenhaal she could stand to lose a few pounds. However, it's not clear what the character actually believes. He is an interrogator trying to break her will.
Katie of Paranormal Activity is undeniably of a larger clothing size than a typical female Hollywood protagonist. Makes sense, since both Katie and Micah are supposed to be as average as possible to make the movie seem more real. Of course, after the movie's opening weekend, cue internet discussions about Katie being so fat.
The main characters in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels have a running joke of calling the rail-thin Tom fat. Tom never understands the joke and is completely mystified by how they could think he's overweight. Even the narrator gets in on the joke by claiming that, for a thin man, Tom is extremely fat.
Even overweight Nick "The Greek" pokes fun at Tom.
Nine Fergie, as Saraghina, a woman who's supposed to be fat. Either just big or plain obese, Saraghina was, in the musicals and in the previous movie, overweight. Fergie had to gain weight to be in character and... well, I'll give you this point: she has gained weight. C'mon, children, let's find the seven little differences between New Saraghina◊ and Old Saraghina!◊
Simon Pegg◊ plays the lead in Run Fatboy Run. The role was originally envisioned for Jack Black. There are a few shots that attempt to show that Pegg has something of a gut. In spite of the title they ultimately seem to go for "out of shape" rather than "fat."
Word Of God says that Pegg had just finished filming Hot Fuzz and had to be in superb shape to play Nicholas Angel. Quite difficult to put on a lot of weight that quickly.
In Bride Wars, there's a scene that's pretty much lifted from Mean Girls, in which Kate Hudson's character is somehow tricked into eating five pounds worth of chocolate and can't fit into her wedding dress. In his review of the movie, Film Brain points this out:
The whole "I'm fat" joke doesn't really work when you haven't really put any weight on. Oh, and I think Kate Hudson would actually look healthier if she put some weight on.
Played with in Death Becomes Her, when Madeline calls her husband overweight, despite the fact that Bruce Willis, playing the character, is Hollywood Homely but not fat. Madeline apparently thinks that being extremely thin is the high of attractiveness, to such an extent that she makes a Deal with the Devil to stay rail thin forever.
Averted in the film Real Women Have Curves, in which America Ferrera, in her feature film debut, looks like a typical overweight but healthy teen. (She eventually slimmed down once hitting stardom with Ugly Betty) Nevertheless, young actresses showed up at the casting call at about 120 pounds under the belief that that was the idea of "overweight".
Discussed in The King's Speech when Elizabeth complains to Bertie about how his brother's lover Wallis Simpson calls her the "Fat Scottish Cook". Elizabeth is played by the petite Helena Bonham-Carter, and Simpson is portrayed as a horrible person, so it's apparently not meant to be taken seriously.
Yancy from Sleepover, played by Kallie Flynn Childress. Yancy is picked on because of her weight several times over the course of the movie. Yancy would not be called skinny by any stretch of the word, but looks perfectly healthy and rather cute. (She's the one standing directly behind the Alpha Bitch using the computer.)
Margaret Dumont is constantly mocked for her weigh by the Marx Brothers. While consistently the largest women in the Marx films, and among the largest in period film, she's average for modern America and only slightly above normal for current actresses playing characters her age.
Discussed in the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor (from 0:32-1:21) when Prof. Sherman Klump is having dinner with his family, much of whom, like Sherman, is obese.
Hayley Atwell was considered this by Miramax when she was filming Brideshead Revisited with Emma Thompson, who hit the roof when she found out and threatened to resign if they forced her co-star to lose the weight.
In Ether Ore, a tall young woman who's said to be about 120 lbs is described as though her build is very solid and curvy - not fat, but far from skinny. A woman who's over 5'6" and weighs less than 120 lbs is almost always underweight. Somewhat justified in that the viewpoint character is a younger woman who's 90 lbs and boyish, so maybe it's just relative.
In the Nancy Drew series, chum Bess is described as "pretty, but slightly plump", or in the 80s-to-90s era Nancy Drew Files, as pretty, but perpetually obsessed with losing the five pounds she believes are standing between her and physical perfection. Despite this, she never has trouble attracting male attention.
This is finally and thankfully subverted in the newest Nancy Drew series, Nancy Drew: Girl Detective. The closest mention of Bess's weight is the occasional throwaway line referring to a dress flattering her "curvy" figure.
Live-Action TV
Male example: There's more than one episode of Will and Grace in which Jack taunts Will for being a "fattie" or some similar disparagement. This is Eric. Fucking. McCormack we're talking about here. Justified in that Jack is always presented as a neurotic Gym Bunny and general dimwit. Note that he's pretty much the only one who ever says this about Will.
It was also implied that deep down, Jack had feelings for Will, and was even hurt when Will laughed at the idea of considering going out with him.
Another episode revealed that Jack (who was clearly rail-thin himself) was so afraid of having even the slightest bit of pudge that he routinely wore a girdle under his clothes.
Occasionally, Karen would say similar things to Grace. In one event, while decorating Karen's mother's apartment, Karen warned her "You better have plenty of money in the budget for Egg McMuffins, 'cuz Heavy G like tah eat!" These, along with the jokes about Will, were usually played for Values Dissonance, since it was painfully clear that neither Eric McCormack nor Debra Messing were overweight at all. This became clear when several articles mentioned that the fat jokes leveled at Grace weren't funny anymore when Messing was pregnant.
Although on the show this is because of the fashion industry she works in, where fat = having natural boobs and hips. In real life, America Ferrera was at most a size 10, and thinner now, but you still get people on the IMDB boards calling her a bad role model for being obese. Of course, this isIMDB we're talking about here; most of the people on those boards live under bridges.
Ugly Betty also had a woman everyone called "Fat Carol" who really wasn't, which was the whole point of the joke.
For Hypocritical Humor, Amanda commonly jokes about how much Betty eats while chowing down on anything she sees.
Ironically, in the original Yo Soy Betty La Fea one of the points about the ugliness of Betty is that she is thin as a toothpick, and in an attempt to disguise that she ends wearing clothes better suited for her heavier mom. But then, they had the Big Eater gossip hen Bertha, who was genuinely overweight (about US size 18, and when the actress - and her character - got pregnant, even bigger) but received a far less amount of fat jokes than a character of that type would receive, and all the remarks she got were from the vainest evil characters.
The world was being invaded by aliens disguised as supermodels, and Dr. Allbright was considered a larger woman for being a size 8.
Again when Dick struggled with his weight for an episode. The ultimate solution: larger pants.
Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was considered fat, even though her build was scarcely different than Mary's. They would dress her in baggy outfits as opposed to Mary's more form fitting clothes, but no reasonable person would look at her and label her overweight.
This was finally inverted in a Season Three episode where Rhoda admits to having lost 20 pounds. Despite the constant compliments (even from Phyllis), she still can't see herself as attractive until she ends up winning her company's beauty contest.
In one episode, Liz, who is regarded as frumpy in New York, meets a woman in Cleveland who asks her if she's a model and says "You are so skinny! You really should eat something."
Liz: "And in Cleveland, I'm a model!"
Jenna: "Yeah, we're all models west of the Allegheny."
In another episode, Jenna put on the pounds. Jack's response? "She needs to lose thirty pounds or gain sixty. Anything in between has no place on television."
Many "jokes" about Carol's weight on Growing Pains, which certainly didn't help Tracey Gold's anorexia any.
A lot was made of Sara Rue being a "full figured" woman on her ABC sitcom Less Than Perfect; indeed, the show's title was supposedly in reference to Rue's character's appearance. In reality, of course, Rue was a mildly zaftig size 12, and gorgeous as hell.
Played by Alison Sweeney, who is also famous for being the host of The Biggest Loser. By the end of each season, she's usually the biggest one on stage.
If this hadn't been averted with a bludgeon in Huge the show would have been a crowning example of Comically Missing the Point. Thankfully all the fat characters were played by larger individuals and the body image aesop remained unbroken.
Ethel Mertz of I Love Lucy fame, called a "fat old bag" by her husband, despite Vivian Vance not being noticeably heavier than Lucille Ball. When casting the role, they deliberately cast a thin woman, since a husband calling his thin wife "fat" is funny, while a husband calling his fat wife fat makes you feel sympathy for her. In later seasons, Vivian Vance gained some weight, changing the dynamic. It got so bad that an Urban Legend sprang up claiming that she was contractually obligated to remain 20 pounds overweight. Ironically, she became a star by playing sexy vamps in Cole Porter musicals on Broadway. She was a knockout◊!
In one episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy goes on a crash diet so she can fit into a costume (made for a thin dancer) and sneak into an act of Ricky's show. She loses so much weight that she has to go to the hospital once the show is over. (And it's all played for laughs, of course.)
Peggy Olson of Mad Men gains weight throughout Season One. We're led to believe it's because she's trying to avoid being treated as a sex object at work - it's actually because she's pregnant.
Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis is occasionally referred to as fat by other characters, and frequently in fanfic and discussion, and he typically can't keep up with other characters in their running, jumping, and climbing up trees. To be fair, he does show noticeable "wattle", and most of those he interacts with on Atlantis are in prime physical condition, either being USAF or alien Super Soldiers.
Invoked, possibly, on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, when Kourtney tries to get Khloe◊ to stop reading blogs that refer to her as a "whale," stating that the people making the criticisms are probably overweight themselves. Shortly thereafter, the audience is treated to Khloe in a miniskirt and heels. Check out her drastic weight loss!
Occurs accidentally in Blackadder the Third, where several people describe Prince George as fat. The historical Prince George was actually fat, but here he's played by the tall and lanky Hugh Laurie, so the insults just seem to come out of nowhere. Which of course just serves to make it even funnier.
Actual pudgy example,Wizards of Waverly Place has Jerry the father. Maybe it's just her curves and unique styles, but Harper fits this trope as well.
Definitely played for comedy in Bottom (especially in the live shows), where Richie is apparently monstrously obese.
This is used in Absolutely Fabulous, where the entire cast describes Eddie as being "fat" (including Eddie herself), when she's in fact completely average. It isn't clear whether the writers were trying to garner a few laughs from the ridiculousness of it, or lampooning thin people who think they're fat. Possibly Justified, as Eddie works in the fashion industry where yes, she would be considered fat.
On a Just Shoot Me! episode where one of Nina's former colleagues shows up having gained considerable weight. When Nina finally confronts her with this, she says she has no problem with her weight and actually worries about how Nina is still so obsessed with looks after so many years.
Also played with: Maya is thin, but since she works at a fashion magazine her colleagues don't typically think of her that way.
The New York Times had an article on the Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva praising it for having a realistic attitude towards women's weight, but accompanying it with a picture in which the "fat" protagonist is obviously, by any realistic standard, not fat, and right next to her is Margaret Cho, who has been the epitome of the "fat Asian" caricature. Uh huh....
This is justified (in-show, at least) with the series' protagonist, as she was formerly a very petite aspiring model. Not so much with Margaret Cho, however.
Al from Home Improvement is a male pseudo-example. He's only moderately overweight by real world standards, but in the show people talk about him as if he were morbidly obese, with all the behaviors that would go with it. The teasing mostly comes from Tim, though, who's just trying to be funny.
Gaby in Desperate Housewives Season 5, when she becomes "fat and frumpy" after giving birth to her two children. Eva Longoria was no heavier◊ than in the previous seasons, just wearing baggy clothes and an unflattering hairstyle.
Eli on Stargate Universe is treated as if he's obese; in fact, he's at most slightly overweight for his height.
When it was announced that Donna would become a regular character on Doctor Who, some of the fans who disliked her previous appearance as a guest cast member responded with a barrage of (unjustified) online fat jokes directed at Catherine Tate.
Especially ridiculous in that most of Tate's so-called "fat" is really just her breasts. Well, and her hips.
Seen in an episode of Friends, in which the rest of the group comments that already Hollywood Homely Chandler has put on weight—Phoebe even mockingly pretends that she can't put her arms around him to give him a hug. This is an especially bad example of this tropes, as he looks exactly the same as he always does and is completely unaware of any weight gain until it is pointed out to him.
Plus the Unfortunate Implications; while Matthew Perry did bounce around looking "very thin" and "a little bloated", it was because of his various drug addictions and rehab stays.
In an episode of Undeclared, the character played by the extremely not-fat Monica Keena is portrayed as eating so much and getting so fat (i.e. wearing looser clothes) that her friends even stage an intervention. It isn't until two nerds start hitting on her that she realizes she must be extremely unattractive if they think she is in their league. She swears to never eat a carb again and gets back to being very thin (i.e. tighter clothes again) by the end of the episode and the Hollywood Nerd doesn't dare to hit on her anymore.
Note that in the real world, being gorgeous is not a very effective way to repel nerds.
In Pretty Little Liars, Hannah is supposed to have been fat a year before. But in the flashbacks early in the show...she's played by the same actress and only a crazy person would think she's overweight. As the show progressed, the costumers and makeup artists got much better about depicting Hanna as having been fat in the flashbacks.
Often used on The Golden Girls, in which Blanche and Rose are frequently the target of barbs about their weight, even though they look exactly the way two middle-aged women who have had several children should look. Though Rose gets to subvert that in the episode where the four women engage in an impromptu dance-off, where Rose does a pretty fantastic job dancing topped off by doing a badass split on the floor. And Blanche? Well, there must be a reason why she's portrayed as being the siren of the foursome, the woman all the (silver-haired) guys want and with a little black book to rival any femme fatale's.
Insinuated in an episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer quite rudely comments that Jerry and Elaine have put on weight (due to eating supposedly fat-free yogurt that in fact * does* contain fat). Later, Elaine's current date appears to develop an aversion towards her due to her weight gain. One would think they had become morbidly obese due to the reactions of others around them, instead of experiencing a normal fluctuation in size.
The lanky, rail-thin Portia de Rossi, playing Lindsay Bluth, is constantly criticized for being fat by her mother, Lucille Bluth, and keeps referring to as eating enormous quantities. Quite Harsher in Hindsight when de Rossi revealed her battles with anorexia. Of course this is very clearly just Lucille being a terrible, hyper-critical mother; no one else ever refers to this.
Buster is also occasionally referred to as fat by Anyong and other kids, despite quite possibly being the tallest and thinnest of the Bluths. Presumably, this is just childish meanness.
Ann also gets a bit of this along with the Hollywood Homely jokes.
Kirstie Alley — whose weight has famously fluctuated between nearly-emaciated to clearly obese, finally settling on the high side of zaftig — has famously criticized this phenomenon, both in a notorious appearance in a swimsuit on Oprah, and in her brutally satirical and quasi-biographical Showtime series Fat Actress. Tellingly, the series only lasted a single season; and she has since started trying again to lose weight. Notable here, as she's receive a mountain of criticism, if not outright insults, from Oprah, other celebs, and fashion industry gossip mags even when she was down to a normal weight.
Trudi Malloy on Mistresses comments on how she needs to go on a diet and "my rear end wobbles when I walk!" Not only is Trudi played by the positively stunning Sharon Small, she looks like this◊ on the show. Yeah.
Parodied in an episode of Unhappily Ever After. Ryan tampers with the bathroom scale to read an additional ten pounds, to make Tiffany think she has gained weight (largely, she thinks, to a recent zit), to her horror. Jack doesn't approve of this until Jennie weighs herself and freaks out as well. Both women struggle to lose the imaginary weight, despite not looking any different before the tampering.
Finn from Glee is nervous about playing Brad in the Glee club's performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where he'd have to strip to his underwear. But then we actually see him in his underwear, and it's hard to picture anyone kicking him out of bed.
Of course, the show itself seems to be mocking this, because the alleged complaints of students who had to get counseling after seeing him in his underwear are too absurd to be taken seriously.
This trope is actually averted with some of the other characters, though. The two girls who get accused of being fat, Mercedes and Lauren, are ACTUALLY FAT.
Karofsky, called "chubby" and "Manimal" by Kurt and Artie, is certainly heavier than the rest of the principal guys on the show, but is noticeably slimmer than other members of the football team. Max Adler just seems to be naturally huskier than the other cast members.
Las Vegas had a rather grating example of this in the season 5's episode "Three Babes, 100 Guns, and a Fat Chick" with the downright skinny Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel) and Delinda Deline (Molly Sims), where both characters were repeatedly derided for their sudden weight gains. Delinda was simply pregnant so it's obvious she'd naturally gain a pregnancy belly, but even in this state she looked surprisingly thin. The lightly-build Danny seemingly had a bit of padding tucked underneath his shirt coupled with a suit jacket that's obviously too tiny even for his build, both of which were completely gone by the next episode. Both characters were suddenly treated as if they were grossly overweight.
Averted on Mike And Molly. Victoria Flynn, played by Hollywood Pudgy actress Katy Mixon, is the sexpot character who always wears revealing outfits and gets lots of dates, with no mention (at least so far) of her weight or whether or not she should be considered hot because of it.
Isabelle on Weeds is at most very slightly pudgy and that could be because of the way the show dresses her but she is a plus-sized children's model in the show and her admittedly Jerkass mother acts as if she's two or three hundred pounds.
An episode of The Cosby Show had Claire frantically trying to lose several pounds to fit into a fancy dress. She's shocked at the realization that she even needs to lose weight (though her husband Cliff smugly enjoys this, given the way she's always haranguing him about HIS eating habits), and ridiculed by her aerobics instructor, even though Claire is noticeably slimmer than many of the other women in the class.
Cliff himself is an example of this. While he could clearly stand to eat better and lose a few pounds, he is far from overweight and rather undeserving of Claire's constant nagging.
On Grey's Anatomy, Chyler Leigh's (Lexie) real-life weight gain due to pregnancy was rather ham-fistedly written into the plot: the very thin Lexie was made a stress-eater kind of out of nowhere and began wolfing down snacks when Mark and Derek were in a long fight. Meredith referred to her ass as being "huge," which it really wasn't, but at least they kept up the storyline and brought in back in season seven, when Mark tells Jackson to ply her with peanut butter cups to get her to talk about her feelings.
Dee's mother constantly insinuates that Dee is fat, even though Kaitlin Olsen is quite lanky and slender. Her mother, however, is a horrible person.
Dee insinuates that the vain and athletic Dennis is putting on weight. He freaks out and begins starving himself. When he seems close to death, she finally admits that she was just messing with him, because he's a horrible person.
Averted in Kath And Kim, where Kim is played by genuinely pudgy actress Gina Riley. Considering most of Kim's humor revolves around how sexy and slim she thinks she is, and the far-too-small clothing she often squeezes herself into, using an actress who is chubby makes sense.
Played straight in the American remake. Kim is played by Selma Blair, who refused to put on too much weight for the role. Needless to say, the jokes revolving around her unappealing looks and figure didn't work. Here◊ is a photo that compares the two Kims- it's easy to see where the remake went wrong.
A male example from Big Wolf on Campus. Tommy's enhanced appetite starts getting the best of him in The Wolf Is Out There and he begins gaining weight. Although he simply develops a noticeable belly instead of ballooning out of size. He manages to lose the weight by the end of the episode through dieting and a Time Skip. The viewers complained that they didn't understand why people were treating Tommy differently, considering he's a football player and they tend to bulk up.
Mellie of Dollhouse is played as being the heavy, homely neighbor-with-a-crush. It doesn't help that most of the other female characters are dolls, specifically chosen in-universe to be gorgeous and sexy, but one doubts that most people who like women would kick her out of bed...
Mellie "is" a doll as revealed later in the series, so she's chosen "in-universe" to be "gorgeous and sexy".
That's So Raven actually deconstructed this trope in one episode. Raven (who is slightly pudgy) is told she isn't skinny enough to model the clothes she designed for a fashion show. She and the twig-thin model then team up and both wear the outfit on the runway. Also deconstructed when both of them chew out the magazine owner that's sponsoring the show, saying that no one is as skinny as they look on the magazine.
Kim Sam Soon's supposedly problematic weight was a constant point of ridicule in My Lovely Sam Soon. The actress playing the role was a shocking! 50! kilos! (i.e. 110 lbs).
Music
The main character in the video of P!nk's "F***ing Perfect" is deliberately a poster girl for this trope.
A line from The Arrogant Worms song "Hollywood Girl" references this trope: "Is she pregnant, or did she have breakfast?"
Professional Wrestling
Towards the end of her WWE career, Molly Holly's gimmick became that she was overly sensitive about her huge ass. Which wasn't really huge; she had bigger curves than most of the Divas, certainly, but she wasn't large in any sense of the term. This didn't stop Trish Stratus and Lita from making fun of her, though - and they were supposed to be the faces. It was mostly played for comedy, considering Molly was a heel at the time, but a long-standing rumor is that this was the angle that eventually drove her out of the business, despite being one of the most technically sound and skilled female wrestlers WWE's ever had in their ranks. Naturally the rumor isn't true, she hated the ass angle but left because of a cancer scare.
A similar angle started in 2009 and carried over into 2010, this time featuring Mickie James (a face) in the role of the Hollywood Pudgy gal while Michelle McCool and Layla El (heels) ripped on her for being fat, even going so far as to give her the nickname "Piggie James". Unlike Molly, Mickie was okay with the angle, likely because she was casts in a sympathetic light and was released for unrelated reasons (being late for a bus in the UK).
Kara "Cherry" Drew was fired because she was too fat.
Reportedly, the same thing happened to Candice Michelle. However, what sent this into Wall Banger territory is that she did gain a little weight, but it was because she was rehabbing a shoulder injury and was therefore immobile. This is Candice's "Fat Picture." Thud.
In a bit of a twist, some fans tend to rag on male wrestlers if they gain a bit of softness around the middle. On the one hand, when your ring attire consists of tights, trunks, spandex or a bathing suit, any bit of chubbiness can turn to Fan Disservice. On the other hand, it sure as heck can't help wrestling's ongoing steroid problem.
Matt Hardy has become a particular target of this after he gained weight following a burst appendix that wrecked his digestive system. It didn't help his cause though when in a YouTube video he was seen eating steak fries and still has a large belly two years after his injury.
This is Matt Hardy recently. Either some of the barbs about him are supposed to be ironic, calling him fat has become some kind of bizarre affectionate nickname like Teddy Long's "Peanuthead", or the idea of this trope being an Always Female double standard is officially dead.
Tomko's return run in TNA failed in part because of this trope.
In an odd aversion, Samoa Joe who actually is big, doesn't get any crap from people (Well Scott "HE'S FAT!!!" Steiner called him fat, but he's legitimately nuts), probably because he's Acrofatic and a hell of a wrestler.
Samoan wrestlers have historically been quite "stout"; then again, most of them come from one family. Joe is an exception, but the cruiserweight-shaped Uso brothers aren't, however.
Vickie Guerrero had a lot of fat jokes hurled at her in the past (she was a bit pudgy to be polite) but they have started up again despite her having lost the weight and looking quite good for her age. The worst part is that they're being told by John Cena who is a face and supposed to be a role model figure. Hell, Vickie probably weighs half of what he does and could probably hide behind him.
The worst part? She got a fat joke from Snooki, who looks pudgier than her. Granted, Snooki's always going to look pudgy because she's 4'9".
According to Maria Kanellis, she was actually once told backstage by management (*cough* Johnny Ace) that she was fat. Maria "Playboy covergirl" Kanellis. She has also said that other girls often get told to drop a few pounds.
Tammy Lynn Sytch a.k.a. Sunny or the first girl to slut herself up for WWE once posted a scathing blog about seeing fat rolls on the Bella Twins. If King ever hears about this then Sunny should sleep with one eye open.
Theatre
Averted in the case of Magda in Tanz der Vampire, who's intended to be the village sex symbol, but is also meant to look appealingly zaftig, to the point where petite, thin actresses have to draw on fake cleavage and pad out their chests and hips in costume and full-figured actress◊ looks like a better fit for the character than a thin one.
Video Games
Nep-Nep gets called out on her weight and eating habits a few times, but you can't really tell due to her oversized jacket and the only time we can see her tummy is her requisite pretty Super Form.
For some undecipherable reason, The Sims 3 allows males to get MUCH fatter (at least much more realistically so) than females, who are adamantly maintained into at least a rubenesque figure.
That is, until slider hacks were invented.
The Sims 2 plays this trope infuriatingly straight: the "fat" morph for females is, well, basically that picture of Britney Spears above.
Misha from Katawa Shoujo is only a bit stockier than the other girls in the game, but still the butt of fat jokes among fans. Thankfully she is never identified as being overweight within the game itself, with the protagonist merely noting that she's curvier than he expected and noting that it complements her 'cute' face.
In Tales Of Hearts, Innes Lorenz is subject to repeated jabs about how squishy her belly and butt are. This is Innes◊.
Many players of World of Warcraft consider human◊ and orc◊ females to be on the heavy side, and tauren◊ and dwarf◊ females are apparently disgustingly fat. Granted, draenei and both night and blood elves have slimmer waists than the aforementioned races, but seriously now.
Since Wrath of the Lich King went live, and some time before, female humans and female dwarves have gained a decent number of defenders lashing back at the people who insist that any model thicker than draenei and the elves are oxen. Female orcs and tauren do have some defenders but they're notably fewer, the fact that female orcs are all muscle with maybe .1% body fat being gleefully pointed out at every opportunity.
As for humans, any player who take a closer look at them will see the outlines of their ribcages. In fact,if it weren't for their disproportionate thighs and breasts, they'd be seriously underweight.
The Dwarf example is odd in that it's frequently referenced in-game that the Dwarven standard of beauty is for stout women, and compared to the men the model is very skinny.
In Dungeons And Dragons online, female elves and drow are quite skinny. Female humans are noticeably heavier, and while still by any reasonable standards quite fit, the fact that you spend most of your playing time looking at your character from behind does make them seem relatively pudgy. Female dwarves are even wider and shorter to boot.
Poor Letty Whiterock of Touhou fame has a larger-than-average hitbox, and is mocked endlessly by fans who make fat jokes about her.
And this is despite the fact that all the bosses from the previous game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, have a hitbox just as big as Letty's.
Final Fantasy X 2 decided that Wakka had been gaining weight since the last game, but his in-game model had not been changed in any way. Due to the lack of any visible change, the jabs at his growing belly come off as this trope.
This is actually owed to the developers being too lazy to create a new model for him. This is also why Lulu, who's nine months pregnant in X-2, looks just as fit as she did in the first game.
Players of Tactics Ogre usually would make jokes on how Sisteena Foriner is a fat amazon, due to how her sprite is drawn (which had her wear rather loose long clothes). She has a slimmer builds in official arts (while still wearing her long clothes.
Your daughter in Princess Maker 2 can get too fat for certain sets of clothes (the basic set will always fit, but fancier ones won't). However, the difference between her "fat picture" and "skinny picture" is about two pixels in width.
Chrono Cross has some bizarre character descriptions in regards to weight. Janice, who is 5 foot 7 inches and 104 lbs. is described as having "plumpish" body build. Her character model is in no way noticeably pudgier than those the game deems "slender". On the other end of this skewed spectrum we have Macha, a rotund housekeeper. She is 5 foot 6 inches and 150 lbs. which is about the same height-to-weight ratio as Christina Hendricks, but Macha's character model has wider waist than chest.
Web Original
When Spoony's curvaceous former girlfriend Scarlett appeared alongside him in his Mashables award acceptance video, the site was flooded with negative feedback calling her (among other things) a "fat ginger pig". The backlash was so extreme that the video was almost immediately removed, and Spoony posted a letter calling for his fans to "have some manners". Scarlett hasn't appeared in another video since, and is reluctant to even post pictures of herself online for fear of reprisal. For the record, Scarlett is over six feet tall and (in Spoony's own words) "works out like a maniac." Fat, indeed.
You can see Scarlett in the background of some of the Magfest videos (she's the redhead in the audience during the Rock Bandvideo, made more obvious when Spoony sits down next to her and kisses her on the cheek). If that's what people consider a "fat pig", they need an eye exam. Or maybe a swift kick to the family jewels.
(The comments "It's like a company fitness plan in reverse", "Spoony's been blowing up like Violet Beauregarde" and "Doug just gets older and fatter every year" come to mind.)
While most of the individuals in question admit to having put on a few pounds since they first started doing videos, almost none of them could be called medically overweight, and few people would call any of them unattractive. And hopefully no sane person (especially those who saw Critic's lanky legs in Suburban Knights) would consider a six-foot tall string bean like Doug Walker "fat".
There is a well-known reason people who would look normal in real life are criticized for being heavy on film and especially in photos. Being put on a 2D surface makes people look heavier than they are. The camera adds 10-15 lbs.
In modeling, anything size 8 and up is "Plus Sized", as shown by this ABC news article: Glamour Honors Plus-Size Models. That's plus-size?! The justification designers give for stick-slender models in the fashion industry is that the focus is supposed to be on the designer's creation, and any unexpected curves or bulges might distract from that. The model is basically meant to be a living clothes hanger. The real reason, though, is that it's simply easier to design clothing for women with narrow hips and shoulders and small breasts - the designer doesn't have to consider ease, darts, or all those fussy details that make clothing fit the average woman properly. And the average designer doesn't give a damn if his or her clothing looks good on the average woman.
Any tabloid speculating on an actress's possible "baby bump" should she show even the teensiest hint of a gut. One US magazine cover featured this, with one of the women simply looking like she exhaled.
This attitude is evident any time some super skinny actress gains a whole five pounds for a role and is lauded as being so incredibly brave. You'd think she volunteered for experimental surgery the way the media goes on about it and the way some of the actresses never shut up about how terrifying the experience was (the rest practically get orgasmic over being "allowed" to eat pizza and ice cream).
Teenage girls drive themselves crazy with this. When you're 14, insecure, and putting on weight because you're going though puberty and that is what your body is supposed to be doing right now, it can be easy to believe you're fat because A: the media tells you having a gut makes you look three months pregnant, and it goes crazy over the fluctuations of celebrities' weight (you'd think people would have better things to tell the world about, but no) B: your friends think they're fat too and C: you have been brainwashed to think that being overweight is a billion times worse for a woman than being a serial killer or child molester. Some grow out of this, but others struggle their whole lives.
Family members sometimes (usually unintentionally) add to it. Relatives who haven't been seen in a long time may sometimes joke about a girl (or boy) having "baby fat" or say things like "you're still a bit chubby like when you were a baby". Of course, they do not mean it that way, but a teenager hears it that way.
A lot of porno actresses run the gamut of this trope. Pick any porn actress and place it near a usual fashion model, she would look huge by comparison. Actually porn actresses have a rather healthy build, aided by thorough exercise, because, surprisingly, most viewers of porn are men, and, even more surprisingly, the porn actresses are not supposed to be clothed when viewed.
Carmella Bing might as well be the industry's poster child as/despite not being a Big Beautiful Woman in the typical sense like Samantha 38G due to her height of 5'10 yet when compared to Jenna Jameson or Tera Patrick, the "jelly rolls" on her stomach make her seem bloated and given the audience...
This is not uncommon throughout Asia. If you think Hollywood and fashion magazines create a culture of Body Nazis, go to Asia, where most people are already tiny by American standards and still feel the need to lose weight. They also don't have any problem telling someone to her face, "You look fat!"
On the other hand, the ancient standard of "You look fat!" means "You look like you've been eating well!" is still fairly common in poor Chinese rural backwaters. There are a few stories of a poor Chinese migrant worker finding herself in the city, being told she looks fat, and either being confused ("But I've barely eaten in days!") or happy ("She called me fat, I must not be doing too badly") rather than insulted. Recall that in China, "?????" (Ni chi fan ma?, "Have you eaten [rice] [today]?") is a common way of asking, "How you doin'?"
Interesting aversion in Korea with this. To be perfectly fair, Jessica Jung really is quite thin, as you can see in the article's photos. Played sadly straight with other (primarily female) Korean celebrities, though, and even from the same girl group. Tiffany Hwang was called out for being fat in this costume◊.
A big contributing factor to Hollywood Pudgy is the Body Mass Index, which is a horrendously inaccurate measure, since it does not take into account things like bone mass, muscle mass, or actual fat. This chart is an excellent example. *
It should be noted, however, that Johnny Depp is 5'10"; the chart claims he's 5'7".
Incidentally, the BMI was developed between 1830 and 1850 by a Belgian sociologist whose goal was to determine whether fat people commit more crimes than skinny people (they don't.) He acknowledged that the exponent (discussed below) was arbitrary, but he needed some way of indexing height and weight.
The core of the BMI equation is comparing the square of someone's height to their weight. Anyone with an understanding of the Square/Cube Law will see that tall people have to be much skinnier proportionally to get the same BMI as short people. Ideally, it should be based on height cubed (or even height raised to 3.1 or somesuch to allow for needed bone strength).
Not true since this assumes that a taller person is proportionally enlarged in ALL dimensions. However, most of the difference is in height only. Taking a normal looking 1,70m person and blowing them up 15% in ALL dimensions would make that person look grotesque. The square is just a (natural) intermediate between looking only at the height (linear) and all 3 dimensions, neither of which is sensible.
Also, the U.S. government's definition of normal weight was once a BMI of 18.5-28. Sometime around 1998, the maximum threshold was lowered to 25, adding more than 30 million Americans into the "overweight" definition (BMI 25-30). Literally overnight, the percentage of Americans who were considered overweight or obese jumped from 38% to 60%, not because of a poor diet or lack of exercise, but because the rules had changed. [1]
Government obsessing over the BMI arguably reached its height of crazy in Arkansas, a state that - like most Southern states - really does have very high obesity rates no matter what the standard. In 2003, then-governor Mike Huckabee (who during his time in office lost 100 pounds) decided that the rest of his state needed to get on a health kick just like he had. So he had the state legislature pass a law that would require Japanese-style physical checkups of every public school student starting in elementary school. That's one thing, but the law also required BMI results be published on students' report cards, making it essentially public information. If the intent was to destroy kids' self-esteems, create a new raft of personality and eating disorders, and open the state up to lawsuits, then mission accomplished. A year after the law went into effect, a 14-year-old girl with heart problems who had been harassed over her high BMI - other kids had found out by seeing her report card, and for the record she wasn't fat, just muscular - died one day during class. Her parents sued the state and lost. But the tremendous backlash from parents (and students too, but legally they have no rights) led to the law being repealed once Huckabee was out of office and out of state.
Incidentally, Huckabee considers the BMI experiment one of his success stories as governor, and talked it up while running for president.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was forced to lead a crusade to get the US Army to loosen their goofy BMI standards for soldiers. Since the BMI is fooled by people with lots of muscle mass (the kind of people you want to be soldiers), very fit men were being forced to starve themselves before weigh-ins to meet an arbitrary standard. He finally won the argument when he showed his superiors the roster for the Washington Redskins and pointed out that every single one would fail.
Recently, one army recruit died from a crash diet just to fit into the strict BMI standards. [2]
In case you want to know: Measuring the girth around the belly is a surer way to get a meaningful result.
And even that method suffers from the fact that different body shapes store fat proportionately in different places. A pear-shaped "thunder thighs", and an apple-shaped "beer belly", will have very different belly girths even if their fat-weight-to-total-body-weight percentage is the same. (Belly fat, or more specifically visceral fat, is a stronger indicator of risk for Type II Diabetes and other health issues, but is not by itself a definitive overall indicator of how much fat you're carrying.)
As any competent doctor will say, being overweight simply means having too much fat in comparison with other tissues (actual body density can be measured by DEXA or DIA methods). This makes BMI next to useless (at least definitely less useful that simple observation) because muscle tissue is more dense that fat tissue and so any person with average fat tissue content but more muscles than average (not necessarily ripped) will be overweight according to BMI. And muscular deficiency is much more dangerous to the joints and general health than being overweight but with matching musculature..
Real Life — Specific
Khloe Kardashian is often described as being fat. Here's what she looks like (she's on the left).◊ Not to mention, she has a stable marriage while her two "sexier" sisters are stuck with shallow sex tapes and marriages that last 5 seconds.
Pictured above: When Britney Spears made her comeback in 2007, wearing a two-piece costume and having a decent body after giving birth to two children, the media did not fail to note how "soft and fat" she was (she had a belly from profile, but clearly not enough of one to show up in the page picture). This is partly explained by how her stiff dance moves combined with said post-baby body, unflattering hair, the look of Dull Surprise on her face, poor lip-syncing, Stripperiffic costume, the thinner, more energetic dancers she surrounded herself with, and, of course a media that wasn't quite ready for the train wreck that was her recent life to be over (and really, it wasn't). Still, there's no excuse for calling her fat or soft when she clearly wasn't, and there's certainly Unfortunate Implications in the idea that that's why she had a failed performance, as opposed to the host of other reasons.
Jordin Sparks, 5'11'', was attacked by MeMe Roth of the National Action Against Obesity. Roth said she shouldn't be American Idol because she was overweight and therefore a bad influence to children. Definitely a double standard, since a previous male American Idol (Ruben Studdard) weighed around 400 pounds, and the previous season's winner, Taylor Hicks, had a bit of a pot belly as well.
In a rant posted on her website, she spoke out against cultural obsession with thinness, noting that one of the younger actors told her that a female friend of his was picked on for being fat, which baffled him because she isn't fat at all. JKR explained to him the sad truth that "fat" is considered the absolute worst thing you can call a girl, whether or not it has any basis in reality.
She's also told a story about meeting a woman she hadn't seen in three years at the British Book Awards who promptly told her "You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!"[3] Completely ignoring the fact that she had published six bestselling books, gone from welfare to a castle, and inspired millions of children to enjoy reading.
At the height of Beatlemania, every member of The Beatles had to have a tag. Paul was the Cute Beatle and George was the Thin Beatle. Somehow John got tagged with being the Fat Beatle (despite the fact that all four were healthy weights), which caused him to worry about his weight for years. Around the making of "Help!" in 1965, John considered himself overweight and dubbed the period his "Fat Elvis" period. It may be significant that while all of the Beatles dabbled (or more) in marijuana and acid, John is the only one who got involved with heroin, which tends to leave its users thin and drawn.
For a while, it was a popular meme for fashion mags to note how Marilyn Monroe — considered one of the sexiest women ever — would be considered "overweight" by modern standards. And would do this without a trace of irony. The "Lad Mags" did the same thing, but for the purpose of openly mocking those who thought that way. It's true that she was a size 16: in 1950s sizing. In today's sizing, she'd probably be a size 8 (possibly size 10), and was actually something of an early fitness fanatic.
Making this Older Than Television, Mr. Mayer (of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) complained about being contractually obligated to hire the then-20-year-old Greta Garbo◊, telling her director "In America, men don't like fat women." Greta Garbo.
A rare male example is Patrick Stump, lead singer for Fall Out Boy. Since most rock stars tend to have slender or muscular builds, he's had to face some pretty moronic comments about his weight. He has since lost the weight, and Your Mileage May Vary on whether he looks better now or back then.
Bill Maher mocks this attitude in his "Be More Cynical" routine, but explicitly points out that it is not men enforcing this standard.
Maher: "If this is what they're giving us to fuck, I guess this is what we'll be fucking."
Amanda Palmer ran into this with the release of the video for "Leeds United." Roadrunner Records had wanted to pull shots that showed her bare stomach, because they thought she looked fat. When Amanda Palmer related these events in her blog after the video's release, it sparked some fan outrage, resulting in a "ReBellyon", with fans posting pictures of their own bellies in protest.
Aya Hirano, the Japanese actress best known for voicing Haruhi Suzumiya, blogged in August of 2008 that she was very fat and vowed to diet in order to achieve a slimmer figure. This is what she looks like◊. Japanese fandom website Sankaku Complex reported the news in full Sarcasm Mode, and to this day will refer to Hirano with adjectives such as "flabby" and "tubby" as part of a Running Gag.
Subverted by Liana K, co-host of (currently on hiatus) raunchy Canadian talk show Ed and Red's Night Party, a gorgeous and curvy size 10 redhead, and whip-smart to boot. Liana was also responsible for, among other things, a size 14 go-go dancer for the show, who was also positively received by the fans. A prominent spokesperson for geek culture, she is a mainstay at Toronto-area (and other) conventions, almost always cosplaying.
A recent picture of Matt Damon in a magazine shows the actor in a swimsuit◊ (he had just gained 30 pounds for The Informant). The caption declares, "We like our Matt ab-by, not flabby!" Thing is, he still has a relatively healthy build for a man his age who doesn't go to the gym. And his pectorals were still impressive despite the weight gain. By the way: "ab-by, not flabby?" Go to hell, magazine.
Fashion designer Ralph Lauren recently fired 5'10", 120 lb. model Filippa Hamilton, a size 4 who has a BMI of 17.2 (underweight by any medical standard) for being too fat. They also photoshopped an image of her to make her "skinny," but instead took heat for hiring and promoting an "emaciated" model. That photoshopping made her look rather like a "live" version of Jack Skellington, including having her skull larger than her pelvis. Incidentally, that girl wouldn't even be considered fat by Hollywood standards, which really says a lot about how screwed up the modeling world has become.
Jennifer Stone◊ seems to have a lot of people that think she is fat. In reality, she is at average weight. It doesn't help that she spends most of her scenes on Wizards of Waverly Place next to the wispy Selena Gomez.
Male example. An online magazine called W.E.N.N once poked fun at Tim Curry for being rather chubby. Sure, it may seem funny now...until you realize the reason why Tim put on weight: he was growing increasingly distraught over several of his more crazed Rocky Horror fans who were going so far as to raid through his garbage. It got to the point where he grew "chubby and plain" in order to discourage said rabid fans.
This Cracked article provides the Freudian excuse to this, and probably a lot of other Real Life entries: When your sole "talent" is looking really hot, don't expect people to still love you when the looks change.
The late Brittany Murphy was this early in her career, and we loved her for it! That's◊ pudgy!? No, but that IS Hollywood Pudgy, brilliantly reinforcing the point of the trope.
That might work in her favor, though - the old saying is "Never trust a skinny chef".
Chantal Claret is the singer of the poppy glam-rock band, Morningwood, with a healthy, curvy, friggin' awesome figure. Needless to say, she gets some pretty idiotic comments about her weight.
Israeli model-turned-Hollywood actress Esti Ginzburg is incredibly hot◊ and actually pretty damn skinny◊, but since she's not showing any bones she's constantly referred to as "chubby". I suppose that's what happens when they keep juxtaposing you with Bar Refaeli◊.
This is kinda sad. She is actually a very bright girl, but she once said that a protruding belly is ‘disgusting’. After a while, she apparently matured a bit and gained a bit of weight (which made her much hotter), and got openly mocked for it.
[4]◊ Casey Wilson got a lot of negative attention on Internet message boards, the gist of it being that she was A. not funny and B. fat. Your Mileage May Vary on the former, and the latter mostly reveals what a suffocating standard is applied to actresses. Sadly, the show's producers let her go after only two seasons, perhaps taking the attacks to heart.
Delta Burke was known as "The Fat One" on Designing Women. It probably didn't help her mental state, which had her in wild yo-yos from her super-thin Miss Florida-winning body and a body that really was unpleasantly overweight. Her "natural" weight is a few pounds north of "ideal", but not that much.
Another beautiful "pudgy" Jennifer is Jennifer Ehle, known mostly from Pride and Prejudice from 1995. A review on Amazon actually called her "barely pretty" because of her weight, which is clearly◊ stupid◊.
Attempting to escape the clutches of wearing a tight corset every morning, Rachel McAdams would trick the costumers by pushing her stomach out or eating a big breakfast of oatmeal before being laced up. However, they eventually caught on to her ruse.
Sometimes the press will give the weights of celebrities as lighter than they are. One example is Blake Lively, who despite being famously pretty is said to weigh 123 pounds. Homegirl is 5' 10", so that puts her at a BMI of 17.6. Which isn't uncommon in Hollywood, but she's also famously not-skinny. Observe◊. So apparently it's not just the aesthetic-even if you are accepted as totally gorgeous, you must also be light as a feather.
If the concern was physical fitness, it may very well have been a valid complaint. Gemma was super skinny in that picture, but thinness does not equate fitness. It's entirely possible she simply wasn't strong enough to do the stunts required for the role, not that she was too 'fat.'
Also going back to The Eighties... The four teenaged stars of The Facts of Life were absolutely excoriated in the media because they were perceived as being big, bloated whales (particularly when the show became massively popular) when in fact all of them had fairly typical body types for teenaged girls, with Lisa Welchel, Nancy McKeon, and Kim Fields all having perfectly healthy, athletic bodies and Mindy Cohn only being a little overweight.
Australia's Next Top Model rejected 16-year-old Ashlea Monigatti from being on the show for being too big. Australian body image experts slammed the decision. And rightly so, if those pictures (and her 32-25-34 measurements) are any indication.
Debatable, as the show is about finding the next top MODEL. She's not fat by any standard — except maybe the fashion industry's. Still not cool, but it does make some sense in context.
Rochelle Wiseman, a member of British girlband 'The Saturdays', recently made angry posts on Twitter about her recieving criticism for being fat. This is what she looks like◊
For added irony, an advertisement that shows up on the bottom of this page has the catch phrase "How much do you need to start losing?" with a picture of Jillian Michaels with visible ribs.
For additional irony, the advertisement at the bottom of the page is for Eating Disorder Treatment.
But only because ex-boyfriend Jamie Kennedy made her. Since they broke up, she has put some of the weight back on.
Kate Winslet is, of course, gorgeous, but it didn't stop James Cameron nicknaming her "Kate Weighs-a-lot" on the set of Titanic. Her nude scene was probably responsible for a sizable portion of the film's record-breaking box office.
The nude pencil drawing of Kate Winslet makes her look skinnier than she actually is. Not surprisingly, it was drawn by Cameron himself.
Dancing with the Stars contestant Bristol Palin has bemoaned the fact that she hasn't managed to lose any weight during the show. While not as thin as most of the other contestants or pros she's hardly what most people would consider fat.
Although considering Kirstie Alley's rapid weight loss the next season (the show's tailor said her original dress had to be let in 38 inches so she could wear it at the final), it might make a few people wonder if Bristol actually put in any work.
Then there was Kathy Griffin who made fun of her for being fat, even comparing her to the title character of Precious. Yep, apparently this is in the same league as this◊ nowadays. Not to mention using Gabby Sidibe as an insult/punchline has all sorts of Unfortunate Implications on its own.
Ballet critic Alastair Macaulay took some flack in December 2010 for his critique of the annual Nutcracker performance of the New York City Ballet. He claimed the ballerina playing Sugar Plum Fairy, Jenifer Ringer, had "eaten one sugar plum too many", and the dancer playing the Cavalier, Jared Angle, "seem[ed] to have been sampling half the Sweet realm." A few pictures of Ringer for your perusal of Macaulay's perception of "fat".
Just to show this cuts both ways, this is Jared Angle, the "Sweet realm glutton." This shows one ugly truth; in many ways, ballet might be an even worse place for this trope than high-fashion modelling. The problem is that in some minds, enforcing this trope is somehow justifiable in ballet. It's not just "You have to look skinny to fit into designer clothes," it's also "You have to be really skinny so you can be lifted by the male ballet dancer." Girls who are emaciated in real life are still fat by ballet standards.
There have been reports that Cheryl Cole is supposedly "too fat" to be on American TV and plans to lose 9lbs before appearing on the upcoming US version of The X Factor. Oh yes, what a fatty◊.
The woman described by caustic comic Frankie Boyle as a set of tits on a broomstick.
More recently, Cheryl has received criticism for gaining weight. From a UK size 6 to a size 8. For Americans, a UK size 8 is the equivalent of a US size 4. Fatso indeed.
Of course, she was bumped from the American X Factor. Not because she was too fat, but because she was too British.
A recent tabloid article on Christina Aguilera claims that she has spun out of control since separating from her husband with her weight supposedly ballooning from a size 2 to a size 8. That's right. A size that is not only slim, but STILL almost half the size of the average American woman is seen as "ballooning", and worthy of such snarky advice as "it's time to put down the fried chicken and get on the treadmill". Even worse, this is seen as the worst indicator of her downward spiral, as compared to say, her DUI arrest and her personal and professional troubles.
Christina gets a lot of slack for her weight, depends on how well she dresses herself and how she wears what she is wearing.
Amy Lee, lead singer of Evanescence is sometimes referred to as "fat."
Israeli singer Marina Maximillian Blumin subverts this. She was briefly called chubby at the beginning of her career (which started with her participating on the Israeli version of Pop Idol season 5), though she said she thinks her look made her look more feminine and ‘maternal’. She even appeared on the Israeli mockumentary Red Band as somewhat of a sex goddess and brief love interest of the main character. However, later on she admitted being seen eating is very uncomfortable for her, but she wanted to get over this inhibition.
Karen Carpenter suffered from anorexia nervosa, and perhaps also bulimia. She was always underweight. This didn't stop one newspaper's review of a Carpenters concert from calling her the "chubby little sister" — which only served to reinforce her anorexia. The physical stress of so much crash dieting eventually caused her to die from heart failure.
Alex Kingston originally auditioned for Felicity Huffman's part on Desperate Housewives, but was apparently turned down for being "too curvy" to fit with the rest of the rail-thin cast. This is unbelievable.
Natasha Henstridge hasn't been shy about admitting to doing some potentially dangerous things to keep the slender physique that made her Ms. Fanservice in the movie Species. The kicker, though, is that if you've seen the show She Spies, she's hilarious. She has great comedic delivery and comedic timing, which should be enough for most people, but she still felt the pressure to go on potentially risky diets and even use weight-loss pills in order to compete.
