Highlight the lack of plus-size leads in romantic genres (film, TV, books).
We also face the (named for The Whale ’s nurse character, but applicable to thousands of scripts). There is a tendency to make big girl romantic storylines exclusively traumatic . She must be bullied. She must have a mother who hates her body. She must starve herself. While these stories are valid, they cannot be the only stories. big girls are sexy 3 new 2013
Similarly, comedies like Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls have normalized bodies of all sizes engaging in messy, hilarious, horny adolescent behavior. The big girl gets cheated on, gets jealous, has awkward sex, and finds true love—not in spite of her body, but within the reality of it. Highlight the lack of plus-size leads in romantic
There is a collective trauma among plus-size women of watching movies and realizing that no one on screen looked like them receiving a genuine, passionate kiss. The message was internalized: You can be smart. You can be funny. But you cannot be loved. Not in the way that matters. She must be bullied