Sometimes we “eat right”, and sometimes, for a variety of reasons, we don’t. There doesn’t need to be a plot- or character-development-based reason for a character to be plus-size in a film any more than there needs to be an emotionally resonant justification for someone to be plus-size in real life. I’d love to see more actresses who look like Queen Latifah and Nikki Blonsky in movies that not only celebrate their bodies, but celebrate their skill as performers and their full range of emotional depth. However, Hairspray is a great start to what should be a profusion of films featuring more diverse body types. That sticking point probably originates with the combined five white men and one white woman who wrote and directed the 1988 movie, its 2002 musical adaptation and that musical’s 2007 film incarnation, all of which feature integration as a major plot element and none of which feature people of color in top production positions. Tracy, a fifteen-year-old white girl with little knowledge of the sociopolitical elements of her time, shouldn’t have been the one to suggest a march on the TV station to a room full of African-Americans. A recent critical re-watch after four years of college education and two on Tumblr made me uncomfortable with the white savior-y elements of the story. However, it was my first taste of the body acceptance movement, and it did a better job than a lot of media narratives featuring fat people do today.įor all its good qualities, the movie is certainly not perfect. Not so much-I still deal with disordered ideas about eating and body dysmorphia. I wish I could say Hairspray completely ended my body image issues.

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