Can Fat Thor Advance Fat Acceptance?
On fat suits, what Avengers: Endgame achieves, and what it doesn’t.
NOTE: This essay contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.
Until its opening night, I hadn’t planned on seeing Avengers: Endgame. That’s when my inbox was unexpectedly inundated.
Have you heard of that part?
It turned my stomach.
It wasn’t that bad!
I liked the point they were making.
I had to leave the theater — I wasn’t going to be ridiculed that way.
Messages poured in from fat people across the country and around the world about their experiences watching the movie. I couldn’t figure out why. After all, superhero movies rarely depict fat people — what could the problem possibly be? I asked one person who’d written in what all the fuss was about.
The fat suit. It’s terrible.
I sighed, overcome by a familiar wave of disappointment and anxiety. My stomach sank, muscles tensed, breathing stopped as I thought of the countless humiliating moments I’d spent in movie theaters, watching actors in fat suits, hearing friends and strangers alike laugh uproariously at cruel caricatures of bodies like mine. Norbit. Shallow Hal. Just Friends. Austin Powers. The Nutty Professor. So frequently, fat roles went to thin…
