Hey, 9–1–1, Fat People Aren’t Punchlines

Just another daily reminder my body is something to be laughed at.

Sometimes, I expect the moments and storylines that remind me that my body is the wrong kind of body. Sometimes the buildup to a fat joke is obvious. Other times it comes out of nowhere, and I sigh in exasperation as something I’m enjoying turns into something happening at my expense.

9–1–1 is one of my favorite new shows. It’s got just the right amount of the disaster-movie feel I’m a sucker for, unusual-verging-on-ridiculous emergencies, and a touch of sweet character development. Plus, who can resist a show with Peter Krause and Angela Basset?

The scene snuck up on me during last week’s episode, “Careful What You Wish For.” A group of students are touring a chocolate factory with two teachers. One male, one female, neither plus sized. The woman says to the man in a quiet voice, “Are you sure you’re okay being here? Isn’t it like an alcoholic being at a liquor factory?” As soon as the words come out of her mouth, I know where it’s going. There is only one place it COULD be going.

Even though this guy is no longer fat, there’s still a fat joke to be made.

Not even a new one. The same one I’ve heard a thousand times about how fat-asses are that way because they can’t control themselves around food. He replies that he worked hard to lose 150 pounds and can control himself.

Except then he tastes the ‘chocolate liquor’ everyone is sampling, and he can’t resist it. As “I Want Candy” by the Bow Wow Wows plays cheerfully in the background, he climbs up the catwalk and strains to dip his sample cup into the sweet, hot liquid.

I’m sure you can guess what happens next- his hand slips and he falls and becomes stuck in the vat of chocolate. Of course, the heroes of the 118 show up and help him out. But not before the episode is pretty much ruined for me.

Yes, of course, people fall into vats at factories. It happens, probably more often than we think. I can also think of a dozen ways it could have happened other than gluttony. A child spilled their sample, and someone slipped. Someone dropped something, and when they bent to pick it up, another worker turned and knocked them in. A faulty railing bent or broke.

It gets worse. As they carry him away, the former-fat confesses:

“They were right, I had no willpower. I had lap-band surgery.”

When the scene ends, I expect to be mad. It only takes a moment to realize I’m more irritated. I see this type of scene and hear this type of joke every single day. Daily reminders of the truth that society believes fat people are out of control food-freaks who can’t reign themselves in to save their own lives. That even if we do manage to lose weight and become acceptable, on the inside we will always be undisciplined, ravenous losers willing to do anything for a bite of something tasty.

How did the writers decide that the best way for this scene to play out was to add humor by making fun of fat people? As they sat in the writer’s room writing dialogue, how did they decide to make it clear that the only way someone could lose weight was by radical surgery, and that all it would take was one taste of sweet, sweet candy for them risk their well being to get it?

It would have been easy for them to create a less fat-phobic conversation and keep the novelty of a guy nearly drowning in a vat of chocolate. It may have taken a little more skill, a little more energy, but why bother? So many people seem perfectly happy to laugh at the expense of bigger bodies, regardless of the damage it may do to our psyches.

Fat jokes in movies and on TV are almost always extraneous. Rarely necessary to the actual story, they’re dull, unoriginal interjections at the expense of people like me. How many times do we have to insist that we are not here for the entertainment of people who take up less space than we do?

I’m so, so tired of saying the same thing over and over. I’m tired of having to defend my right to exist as something other than a punchline. It’s not okay. Sometimes, it feels like I’m screaming into the void. But I’m not going to stop. I will shout and argue and write until the end of time because people like me deserve to be more than jokes.

It’s time for Hollywood to do better.

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