Schrödinger’s Fat Girl
Schrödinger’s Fat Girl: A female character whose body is not available for immediate categorization, thus leading to a contradiction in fan perceptions of her body. An ambiguously bodied female character.
When Mei, an arctic scientist in a parka, was announced for Blizzard’s Overwatch characters, a friend excitedly pointed me towards her.
“Fat rep!” they exclaimed.
“Y-yeah?” I replied hesitantly, and squinted at her. She… could be fat rep, I supposed, as the character is depicted as Chinese and, thus could be said to represent a popular Chinese perception of fatness which is much smaller than my perception of fatness as an American. But Blizzard is not a Chinese company, being headquartered in California since its inception, nor was the character specifically designed for a Chinese audience. This was an American company with a global audience. Was Mei fat in either of those contexts? When the World Health Organization uses terms like “globesity”, does Mei embody this fatness? At 300lbs, could I consider Mei fat representation in media? Was she fat, I wondered, beneath the parka? She didn’t have a double chin as I did. Was she really fat compared to my American perception of fatness? I wondered, and could not tell. She was fat and not, “transgressive” and “acceptable,” simultaneously. The multiplicity of her position is the hallmark of what I’ve come to describe as Schrödinger’s Fat Girl.
