#but i think what pre-20s me needed was a book where characters unapologetically people

[gloriousmishaps]

on overweight characters 📚

because i like to yap about my hobbies 🗣️

i like to do this exercise after i start developing characters for a concept, usually sometime after i hash together the first version of their backstory and before i’ve gotten too attached to any one manifestation of them in my head. i take a step back from the cast and go, “okay. now make at least one (or two or three or FOUR, heaven forbid!) fat.”

your characters could exist in a vacuum if you really wanted, but the best ones don’t. the best ones are overweight because they’re 30 and work a sedentary job that leaves them little time for physical activity. or they’re overweight because they’re 17 and have spent the latter half of their adolescence in foster homes and were never able to form a healthy relationship with food. or they were too busy surviving an abusive situation to focus on the specific kinds of things they were eating. or they were poor. or homeless. or mentally ill. or physically sick and unable to get out of bed for long periods of time.

the same can be said for underweight (or even “average” weight) characters. everyone wants their plucky YA protagonist to be abused and underprivileged (“it builds character, dammit”), but a malnourished character is going to have many more symptoms than just “ribs and collarbones showing.” they’ll be weak. they’ll be immunocompromised probably. their bones will be more fragile. if they’ve never eaten enough their entire life, they’ll probably be shorter than their peers who did.

the important part is to really consider their backstory and how that might be reflected in their body. we’re all products of our environments. someone can be born naturally thin as a beanpole, but an abusive childhood that leads to food hoarding in their future might pack on the weight. or even an adulthood with few opportunities for athletics and too many workplace potlucks.

i guess my point is that a lot of characters should be more overweight than they are. no, 35yr old john smith in accounting who spends most of his 40hrs sitting down at a computer desk should probably not have lean shoulders and a sleek back unless he’s a regular member at the local branch of the fitness club. and maybe the fit and wiry 16yr old heroine of the not-so-distant YA dystopia has a food hoarding problem and eats more than she should because she figures that eating it now is better than losing it and never eating it later.

so, sure, as an overweight person myself, i know it’s a type of catharsis to make your characters look nothing like you; to give them everything you felt you never had. you’ve already suffered so much because of your fatness, why would you suffer willingly in your fantasy worlds? your characters will be so much more likeable if they’re skinny, won’t they? they’ll be so much cooler and fitter and smarter and more deserving of everyone’s affections, just like in real life. just like you experienced. but that catharsis only exists because there’s a 13yr old version of you who still feels othered. and there are 13yr olds now who feel othered, too, and who might feel a little less so when they see a teen that looks like them saving the world and making friends and being loved for exactly who they are.

i think that’s worth the smallest bit of my own personal discomfort.