My teenage daughter, who adores the Infinity Saga, has always taken issue with the fact that Thor’s “friends” didn’t care about his severe and debilitating depression. She’s angry that they just dismissed him and his pain. On a side note, thank you for this thoughtful video and running the council meetings😸. You and Jessie are my go-to fandom geeks😻. It’s the safe space I wish I had in high school.
Fat dude here (stuck at 250 lbs no matter what I do due to meds). I loved Fat Thor. To me he exemplified what happens when the worst thing that you could think of happening happened but you have to find a way to still exist. Fat Thor reminded me of Simba when he was living with Timon and Pumba. Also I’d rather a fat suit than a head digitally inserted on a fat body. The fat jokes didn’t really bother me because the Avengers level wisecracks at each other anyway. It would have been more notable if they didn’t take shots at Thor. My partner has severe digestive system issues. He can’t usually get help from the medical system during a flare until he wastes away to a point where they think he’s lost enough weight. Since his normal is a bit overweight, that takes a few weeks of starvation to achieve.
I am also fat and I love Melted Ice-cream Thor. You mentioned that you're glad that he didn't just become muscular when he got Mjolnir back; Chris Hemsworth did that! Originally they were going to have him be sexy ripped Thor again once he got Mjolnir and he lobbied Marvel saying it was the wrong call. The movie definitely makes a joke out of the fat suit but he never does. He plays the pain, the mourning, the depression and I love him for that.
I'm disabled and I'm fat and I am unhealthy. I'm also broke. A few years ago I was sat down in front of a nutrition video by my doctor. I felt very condescended to. He's not going to *buy* all the groceries, after all. He doesn't have to look at a SNAP budget and determine how it can be stretched out for the month. It's not just time, or money, it's environment... And mine isn't the best exactly. There's so many factors that contribute to weight, for me it's a poor quality of everything on all fronts. The fat I have on my body has been there since I was seven, and that got worse when I was disabled by a doctor wanting a check from my CHIP insurance at the time. I got no settlement, no payout, no justice for what happened to my leg. There's so much that contributes to my body and health and all anyone sees usually is a fat woman that 'just doesn't know how to eat right'. Fattening, crappy unhealthy food is cheap and lasts long. You're exactly right- Chris Hemsworth can afford to have professional chefs cook the best meals for him and a personal trainer to motivate him to work out six hours a day. Money and time and lifestyle stagnation are major factors as to most people's weight and health. I'm fat, I'm disabled- and there's no "eat a salad" magic wand that will change that.
I have asked my doctor about losing weight and I get brushed off every time. Like, "here's a picture of the Diabetes Plate Method- just make all your portions like that!" Like, okay, if it was that easy I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be fat right now. I've been considered fat since I was like 8 years old and I assure you I wasn't just gorging on junk food. People look at a fat person and just think they have poor willpower and aren't worth any time to try and understand what is actually going on with them.
I've been a thin person all my life, but boy does it rankle my chain when the "eat a salad" comments come from skinny people who live off of ramen and Red Bull. I mean, talk about cluelessness! The fact is, by most nutritionists' standards, virtually every single person in the US doesn't eat anywhere near as well as they should; it's just more visually apparent for some people than others. It's largely a question of LUCK.
I was #1 on the Fat Thor train while watching Endgame. One of my favorite moments in the film is when he summoned both weapons with a half up/half down hairstyle, braided beard, and a POT BELLY! I got so excited because he felt like the Thor we always deserved. I just knew they were going to take that aspect away because “superheroes gotta have those chiseled abs”. I’m not pro-skinny actors in fat suits, but I do feel like we missed out on something great in Love & Thunder.
In defense of love and thunder, unlike many other shows and mainly films, we did aee fat thor in love and thunder and even saw thor lose that weight as a way for him to work on self love and self care. And even better unlike with most training montages Thor's mental health isn't resolved. He still feels shitty despite meditation, lots of exercise etc. sure he gets his chilsed abs back but he is still working on his depression. Getting chilsed abs after a training montage isn't enough, it's something he must work on every day. And over time he finds ways to deal with it like becoming an uncle
I'm a large woman, I can't stand fat jokes. To me "Endgame" was different. The comments made by War Machine and Rocket are unnecessary and blunt, but the character of Thor has dignity. Also, he has never looked as Norse as he did in the final battle. I want to thank you sincerly for this nuanced video. One of the best you done🙏🏻❤
I think I a case of, despite there being fat jokes, on a thematic level the movie says its fine that he's fat. Who cares, he's still worthy at the end of the day.
I've read a lot about Norse mythology, and I think the Norse people probably imagined Thor looking a lot more like "Fat Thor" than like Hemsworth's normal physique. Chubby face, bit of a beer belly, absolutely reliable and competent, like the guy who can put away a six-pack at one sitting but also fix anything that's broken, wrangle the kids, etc. (Thor was super popular in the Viking age, far more so than Odin.)
My dad has struggled with his weight for many year. He had depression and the anti depressants he was on caused significant weight gain and even after coming off of them many years ago his weight has fluctuated and he has struggled to lose the weight and keep it off and I know it really affects him and makes him upset. A few years ago he was at a fitting for a suit for his youngest sisters wedding and he saw how he looked in the suit in the mirror and he burst into tears because he hated how he looked in the suit because of his size and weight. I know that really got to him and also as he approached his 50's and having blood pressure concerns and issues for many years he decided for himself to make a commitment to losing weight and becoming healthier. He has manged to keep a steady trajectory for the weight loss. slowly but surely. For clarity my dad is 52 in a couple weeks. My dad has a very good sense of humour and I know has joked about his size in the past but like knowing how affected by his weight he is it is a very sensitive topic that needs nuance. People just need to read the room. I also know people who have suffered with eating disorders and I know that certain language around food, weight loss, diet culture and stuff like can be really triggering for people at both ends of the weight spectrum. Comedy is always something that needs a lot of care and thought. Certain subjects are not inherently funny and you need to figure out a way of discussing these topics within comedy without being out right rude and horrible.
I’m fat, severely physically disabled and I’ve been stuck on high dose steroids for years (the main reason I’m now fat). I’m stuck like this forever. I loved fat Thor (with the exception of “eat a salad”, which really was awful). Seeing him realise he was still worthy and stay unrepentantly fat to the very end was wonderful. One of the few things I actually like about EG, which is a film I will be angry about until the day I keel over. Fat Thor thrilled me. You are right about L&T. David Harbour bod would have been perfect.
“Eat a salad” and there’s also the unhealthy method of only eating one thing, of anything, whether it’s small amounts or big amounts. Salads aren’t exactly filling, I think
I used to be fat and now that I'm not anymore, I realize how much fiction has shaped how I used to perceive myself. When I was a teenager, I turned myself into a cliche, exaggerating my love for food, telling self-deprecating jokes because I thought that was expected of me. I had to be the funny guy, funny in a pathetic sort of way, like most fat characters on TV. And whenever I see someone bullying fat people while pretending they care about their health, it makes me mad because I know that it had the exact opposite effect on me. It made me believe that my weight defined me so even though I wasn't happy with it, it was somewhat reassuring. I knew who I was, who I was supposed to be. And it's only when I grew up, isolated myself (for various reasons) and became less exposed to people's comments that I decided to lose some weight, not to please anyone but because I wanted to.
As someone who is fat, for a lot of reasons, I love fat Thor. As someone who recently lost a friend to anorexia, I 100% agree with your views on why it's problematic with how it's portrayed and it's reasoning.
@@YourBeingParanoid I hadn’t really thought too much about it because I was under the impression that the excessive alcohol consumption was due to his depression (which they did mention), not the other way around. But you bring up a point worth exploring too.
I had a sports science lecture on the topic of weight last year. (My job is to take notes in university lectures for students with disabilities, so I pick up random facts all over the place.) Takeaway points: 1. The much-touted correlation between weight and poor health outcomes only applies to people who are unfit. If you're fit, your weight doesn't affect your health. 2. The gap in health outcomes between fat unfit people and thin unfit people is nowhere near as big as the gap between unfit people and fit people. Fitness matters more than weight. 3. At least some of the correlation between weight and poor health outcomes for unfit people is due to the fact (as you mentioned in this video) that many health professionals who see a fat patient will assume the fat is the problem and try and fix that rather than hunt down the real issue. Sometimes, and we had some hair-raising examples in the lecture, this can be quite dangerous. 4. Body fat can affect sports performance, but the specifics depend on the sport. The optimal amount of fat is minimal for a runner, a lot more for a swimmer, a lot more again for a sumo wrestler.
Regarding The Whale (which I have seen), Brendan Fraser, while not as fat as depicted in the film, is on the heavy side, so in his case he does know what it is to be fat (and at some point knew what it was like to be thin), and from what I've heard in interviews, the film allowed Fraser to confront several of his own demons, so I do think you should give the film a shot (I loved it, but I also loved it because I love the way Darren Aronofsky overwhelms me). Also, the film is based on a play written by someone who was overweight in his 20s, which is why I believe it depicts these issues with plenty of empathy (and in case this makes a difference, I was obese as a child, and now I'm still fat, though not to that level).
It's just so sad that Thor's depression in Endgame is treated as a punchline. Even his one heart-felt scene with his mother had to be punctuated with a joke. I know they were trying to go for a lighter tone to balance how bleak Infinity War was but it felt out of place. Everyone is 5 years away from the worst thing that ever happened to them, you think they'd have more compassion and empathy for their friend/teammate.
I strongly disagree. Him being fat and still getting mjolnir saying he's still worthy happily with almost tears from his eyes and him fighting Thanos still fat I feel thematically and character wise keeps Thor having dignity
In addition to media often not showing the work to go from "fat" to "thin," you pretty much never see anyone struggling to maintain that new weight. Take it from someone who's lost (and gained) a LOT of weight - it's on your mind at every meal, every time you consider exercising, and every time you step on a scale. (If, of course, losing/keeping weight off is a major goal.)
One thing I loved about Bojack Horseman was that Diane was actually shown being happier after Gaining weight implying it was due to her taking her anti depressants. Being overweight absolutely does not mean someone is depressed, and I agree it should not be the only depiction people with a bigger body type get.
Watching Endgame the first time, I held my breath when he suited up for the final battle cause I was worried they’d turn him skinny, and then they didn’t and I was so relieved. He looked completely badass too. Love the braided beard completing the look
Thanks for discussing this. I never watched Endgame for a lot of reasons and Thor’s treatment (especially that “salad” line - which I think is out of character for his mom!) was one of them. I’m fat with a BED and lately struggled with accepting my weight, especially as an AFAB transmasc who wishes they had a body like Endgame Thor’s! I’m reminded to be a lot kinder to myself! Knowing there’s a lot of people who love Fat Thor helps 😊
Fat Thor is a tricky one. In some ways the framing of it is quite bad (linked to depression, self-loathing, etc.) while in other ways it's quite good (Fat Thor is much more earnest and vulnerable, and, as we ultimately see, no less capable). There are a lot of cheap fat jokes, but most of them come from characters who are themselves framed as (at best) rude in general, like Tony and Rocket; and the film as a whole takes far more pot shots at his drinking (which is its whole own problem). Some lines are out of place, like Thor's mom telling him to eat a salad, and should have been cut or at least reeled in. I will say though, as a fat person, seeing Fat Thor go full battle mode and wail on Thanos was pretty awesome. When he called down the thunder, I was absolutely certain it would make him thin and super ripped again, and when it didn't it was legitimately great to see. Definitely not good representation on the whole, but better than we would have gotten even a few years ago; and even if the film takes some cheap shots at it, Hemsworth himself seemed to be taking the role seriously, fatness included.
Endgame came out at a time when I was having a lot of body image issues. I've never been a skinny guy, but over the decade leading up to that point I had put on a lot of weight as a result of health issues and injuries that limited my ability to stay physically active. I didn't get fat from eating more - in fact I ate less - but from a dramatic decrease in exercise. (Keep that in mind for Thor's depressive weight gain; he didn't need to do anything even resembling compulsive eating to put on weight, just being too depressed to exercise will do that to a person.) I had put on over 70 pounds total, but that was probably an increase in 90 pounds of fat thanks to the muscle atrophy that I was experiencing. Thanks to the injuries that caused my inability to undertake regular excercise, there was pretty much nothing I could do to change that situation, and the stress of that was starting to turn to anxiety and depression. Thor's statement of, "I'm still worthy!" and his subsequent change into his battle armor without any magical transformation back to thin, muscuar Thor both literally brought me to tears. It was a reminder of a fact that I had forgotten: that my worth as a person isn't tied to my weight, apperance, or physical ability. I was still the same person I was before getting injured and sick, just in a different circumstance. Who says popcorn movies are all just stupid escapism? Sure, some of them are; but this proves that they don't have to be.
I wish I could have seen End Game alone. I wasn’t able to enjoy Big Thor on my first viewing. I was the only fat person in a large group of thin friends. When Fat Thor was revealed and they all laughed I immediately thought, oh no. And it just got worse because the framing encouraged viewing him as comedic. Every time Fat Thor’s friends made fun of him, my friends laughed and I wondered if that was how they really felt about me. By the time the big fight came around, I just desperately wanted to be anywhere else and to have better friends. If I had watched the film in isolation, and if it were made in a cultural vacuum, or if we were further along towards fat acceptance, I think more fat people would have had the positive experience your friends had, because I can see what they described, I just wasn’t allowed to experience the film that way because the ratio of fat-accepting people in my audience was too low. But with the correct ratio, it becomes subversive, because if only a few people laugh, those people are going to feel and look like real assholes when the fight scene happens. But as it was in my showing, the moment got washed out in all the other action set pieces because my audience was primed to not look for fat-acceptance metaphors. My take away was that there needed to be at least one Avenger who called the others out on the unequal treatment of Tony and Thor. In ten years, hopefully that would feel heavy handed, but at present, I think it was a necessary ballast that was needed to make sure everyone got the right message. Especially since some fat audience members got missed by the positive aspects, depending on the crowd, and that character needed to be for us, not for the people who wanted to laugh at Fat Thor. I recently rewatched it and I was able to enjoy it more. I still take a lot of issue with how the camera frames Fat Thor, the music cues, and the differences between how he and Tony are treated. But I like *him,* Fat Thor, in the same way that I like myself, even though I dislike the culture surrounding Fat Thor or myself. I feel liking Fat Thor is a bit of a reclamation project. I like the, “You Don’t Need Abs to be Worthy” t-shirts. And the Fat Thor cosplays. It’s like, try making fun of him/us now. He/we are still worthy, despite what the camera/culture say. And that’s very metal.
My feeling is the film was bad. As you said nobody got called out. That people can own fat thor and wear T shirts to honour the good aspects they found is good. That doesn't make the writing or direction excusable.
I think a big issue is that audiences seem to want both realistic representation (because we understandably want at least some degree of relatability) AND escapism (again, for very understandable reasons) - and I feel many media creators are caught in the middle, especially when it comes to properties that are so successful across many different demographics. Many people liked Fat Thor, and I'm sure they'd dig Dadbod Thor too... but just as many cherish Hotbod Thor because that's what the ideal of "heroism" has always been, at least in our Western framework. It's what happened with Captain America too - the superserum could have given him his powers without changing his appearance, but somehow nobody has ever entertained the idea...
As a person with depression, I felt Endgame Thor was so relatable. I don't even think of him as "fat Thor". One of the best things about the fat suit he's wearing is the distribution of the fat. He looks like a person who is self medicating with alcohol. Not necessarily over eating - he's over drinking. As for the snide comments made by his "friends", they weren't funny. They were tragic and realistic. Friends generally don't know what to say to a depressed person and some friends are actually jerks (Rhodes especially). It all felt real to me. He had those few friends who stuck with him and related to him on his level, where he was at. They didn't ask him to change. Thor was very lucky in that sense.
One semi connected thing that's irked me: people have seemingly become so blinded by Marvel actors getting inhumanly ripped that when Tenoch Huerta got a normal amount of fit to play Namor, you can bet the internet douchebags all started calling him fat because he didn't look like dehydrated Chris Hemsworth.
Thank you so much for this beautifully done video. I'm fat & have been since my early/mid 20's & I've had to deal with my fair share of people attempting to shame me for being fat, including my ex of 20yrs. I'm not ashamed. It can be done I think you're right about fat suits. It seems that fat people are one of the last groups it's socially acceptable to humiliate publicly. Slowly that's changing & it's changing by people talking about it like this. It's also changing because fat people are refusing to be shoved into the corner. There are also some fabulous fat people who are putting themselves out there showing the world how beautiful, sexy & fabulous like Lizzo & Tess Holliday. They make it look gooooood
I think it’s interesting that Hollywood never depicts a fat person with depression who can’t/struggles to eat. I know when my depression is bad I don’t eat.
From what I remember about this, the studio wanted Thor to be magically thin again and Hemsworth insisted on staying the way Thor was for the rest of the film. Now Hemsworth also has a workout app as well, so maybe he couldn’t just let go either. That being said, great video.
Thank you for this video! I just watched a vid about tumblr skinny trend coming back and all my anxiety that prompted a 6 years long e.d resurfarced. You genuine excitement around fat Thor aleviated it quite a bit right now.
As an obese man (325lbs), I'll throw in my two cents. Most of the time I don't really care about misrepresentation of fat people in movies. The worst thing fat guys have to deal with is getting type cast as 'the funny fat friend' or 'the sexist pig', it sucks but I know other groups like LGBTQ+ and BIPOC have it much worse when it comes to type casting, or even getting casted at all. Also, most of the discrimination I see towards fat people in movies is way more exaggerated than anything I've had to deal with in real-life. Nobody's coming up to me saying, "Ha ha, you're fat! You suck!" I more so deal with institutionalized discrimination, like needing to buy 2 plane seats, or not being allowed on roller coasters because the seats aren't big enough, and having to go to a special section of the store to buy clothes that fit me. I have a mixed view on fat suits. I do think you should always cast a fat actor if that's what the role requires, like with Darlene Cates in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." Some actors have gained weight for roles, which is entirely their choice. I do understand with some films like "The Whale" why it would not be safe for an actor to actually gain the amount of weight required for the role. I think fat suits are acceptable if a film can justify having character be obese for the story, if an actor of that size is not able to be cast, and if it would be otherwise unsafe to have an actor gain weight for the part. The only thing that actually bugs me is when fatness is used as a punishment or a form of karma for characters who where otherwise skinny throughout the rest of the movie. Like with Ben Stiller at the end of Dodgeball when he gains a bunch of weight after losing the tournament. Weight gain and depression go hand in hand, but it's not something anyone "deserves" for being an asshole. In my opinion, "Heavy Weights" is the best movie about the stigma of obesity. Yes it's a cheesy 90s summer camp film, but it gives all the characters distinct personalities other than just 'fat,' and the happy ending isn't all the fat kids becoming skinny, they gain self-respect while also learning how to take better care of themselves.
Regarding the Fat Suit Thing: I feel like a lot of people in Hollywood have body dysmorphia/body image issues to a higher degree than the general population, so I believe that they're generally not unqualified to portray fat people.. Like, not physically, and they can't understand what it's like to go to a store that's supposed to be inclusively sized and not finding anything that's big enough for you (which isn't a big thing, but even that can break you down, especially when you're younger), but the way people judge Hollywood actors for being almost normal weight instead of really underweight makes me think that they're at least somewhat equipped to portray fat people. Like, for this role especially, I understand using a fat suit, cause the whole 'having actors put on weight really fast' is extremely unhealthy and I personally would always prefer an actor to wear a fat suit as opposed to gaining a lot of weight for a role. Or losing weight. There is an image collection of Christian Bale's body transformations and that is downright scary... The whole fat flashback for comedic purposes? Such a tired cliché. Fat humor? Sucks a lot. Like, in Gilmore Girls, Melissa McCarthy wasn't always the butt of the jokes, so that's nice, but just about every Hollywood movie she's in after that? Fat butt of the joke. Sad. Like, I can't enjoy those female-lead comedies because of how they treat the fat one in everything. Like, I don't need that in my comedies, I get that enough in real life. Regarding Brendan Fraser, he has gained a lot of weight after his heyday, so that might be okay representation? I mean, I personally wouldn't want to see a movie called "the whale" at all, ever, cause I don't need that in my life.
@@Tamisday maybe? But they're also constantly shamed for their appearance, regardless of what that appearance is. I also haven't made that connection before, so I need to ponder that :3
The fat suit is annoying. As a stage actor, I hate it when thin actors get to play Shrek for example with a fat suit when I, a fat actor, can play the role and have in the past.
I really appreciate your nuanced and thoughtful discussion of this. I'm a fat transfem with C-PTSD and depression, amongst other conditions that exacerbate my weight and physical ability, going through a rather nasty flags up of these due to intense work in therapy and I am absolutely comfort eating to an unhealthy degree. I really didn't like seeing Thor like this and felt the depression/ PTSD and weight gain handled really poorly and played for laughs, which compounds existing stigma and misconceptions. I'm not saying it's impossible, but this really seemed too serious and personal an experience to have been handled well by the MCU, especially when played for mocking laughs and the cruel jibes of his friends normalising fat shaming. However, I truly appreciated you sharing positive reactions that have been shared with you, which really did all on me to really see and enjoy Thor doing his thing while fat. I'm also just so happy that it brings joy to others and larger cosplayers benefit. Great video. Thank you! Love and solidarity x
Something else that isn't really talked about when discussing fat people is the active discrimination we face every day, I've had people simply refuse to speak to me because of my size on more than one occasion or they talk about you whilst your standing in ear shot as if your deaf. Or the fact that in many places its one of the few things its still considered Ok to discriminate against. Especially notice this on the left where people where people who otherwise consider themselves woke and considerate will still actively hammer people for how much they weigh. This runs rampant within health care systems. Years ago I needed an operation on my nose to resolve an issue in my throat and was told in no uncertain terms I'd need to lose some weight, I then spent 2 years lost 240lbs my doctor was astounded and referred me to the consultant to perform the surgery, I walked in still 240lbs lighter than my previous high weight to have the consultant take one look at me and in 30 seconds say nope you need to lose another 150lbs. He'd didn't care how far I'd come or anything he just dismissed my entire existence in 30 seconds. I went to 3 more consultants before I gave up since I didn't have the money to go private. Even my doctor said they were being ridiculous.
It is really horrible, especially if you live somewhere like America or many other parts of the world where you have to pay for healthcare, everyone should be treated with respect especially medically, ESPECIALLY when you’re paying for it. But I think being fat is slightly different to other things people get discriminated against, like race, sexuality, or gender identity since it is something that the *majority* of people have the ability to change. I think discrimination based on weight is more linked to “pretty privilege” and societal beauty standards. Still no one should be discriminated against
Oh, I went to a public doctor because I just could not breathe properly through my nose, was told "to lose 18 kgs" before anything could be done. Many years later I paid dearly for a cornet intervention. Yes, I had a very big "stone" inside my nose, the doctor said "How were you able to breathe?" Like, that's the point, sir, I was not.
@@hbsupreme1499Firstly, i assure you people that reach the size of the above character cannot control their weight gain if they could they would never have reached that size to start with. Secondly i wasn't equating anything i was stating that people are every day discriminated against based on their weight, that is a fact.
As a fat & disabled person with mental health issues, I appreciated Fat Thor & didn’t mind the fat suit because rapid cycling of weight in either way can be unhealthy so it wouldn’t have been good to ask him to put weight on and then off again. There’s been a number of actors who have either lost weight or gained weight for a part and due to the RAPID cycling nature of it not because they were fat. Ironically, my mental health was so much worse when I was thin than now as a fat person.
What you glossed over when you pointed out that people have difficulty staying in shape due to their jobs and budgets is that this is not an accident. While the fat acceptance debate predictably falls into the camp of people who believe everyone is fine just the way they are and those who believe that the way they are is entirely a matter of personal responsibility, the actual winners are the corporations who have succeeded in normalizing spending eleven hours a day sitting in a cubicle only to go home, eat unhealthy food because that's what they make affordable and available and drink alcohol to unwind from the stress induced by this unnatural lifestyle. It wasn't always this way and it doesn't need to always be this way.
The idea that people only gain weight because of depression and overeating is so tired. Like; the chemical imbalance in my brain has nothing to do with my fat cells. That's a whole other medical thing called "My thyroid was killing me and now it's gone".
I find it really funny (in a sad way) that more often than not the people who say "but they're actors, they can play anything" are the people that first get ENRAGED when a character is casted as another gender or race in an adaptation of book or whatever (mostly when a woman plays a role associated with a man or when a poc plays a role associated with a white person)
Vera, i am 48 yo and always have been morbidly obesce my entire life....i can remember my mom put me on my first diet at the age of 7 (2rd grade) because the doctor told her i was too fat....putting a 7 yo boy on a diet????....until i dropped out of high school in my senior year i was bullied....i have heard the 3 Taboo Fat Jokes so many times....thank you for producing this video....when you said putting a skinny actor in a fat suit is like having a cis person play transgender....i also thought it is just as bad as having a white actor paint their face black like in the movie "Soul Man".....Movie and TV producers have to start facing the truth that they need to rethink A LOT of what they do
In terms of Love and Thunder, the plot of the film was about Thor and Jane Foster rekindling their love and getting closure on a previous relationship and I should not have to explain this but fat people are just as "worthy" of being loved and expressing their own love, I do not think that Jane would have rejected or shamed Thor if he at a similar weight when they reunited as he was during Endgame because he was still the man she first fell in love with and that heroism is both a trait they share as well as one of the main things that attracted her to him
being depressed = overeating is really overused wow! and in addition to being a failure of acknowledging the reasons a person can be fat, it is a failure of understanding the ways depression can manifest! sometimes my depression means i don't have the energy to prepare or eat food.
This is something that, to a lesser extent, bothered me with the ending of Shazam. You have the foster kids who are pretty diverse in terms of look and body type (Pedro is fat, Freddy is disabled, even Eugene and Darla are small and wear glasses), but once they turn into superheroes, they all get the standard muscular perfectly abled superhero body. It just would've been cool if Pedro could've still been a superhero while being fat or Freddy while still having his crutches, and the fact that they didn't (and the fact that those things are inadvertently implied to be "imperfections" that a perfect superhero form wouldn't have) is kind of a bummer.
As someone who would look like Fat Thor if I put on a robe and let my beard go nuts I will admit there was a part of me disappointed that he didn’t look like “classic Thor” for the big end fight. BUT over time and rewatches I have joined the camp that I am happy they didn’t since it fits his journey through the movie better than reverting would have. I agree the humor around it was off, Ragnarok and Infinity War established pretty clearly that Thor masks his pain with humor, so him making jokes here and there would have worked. But considering how much depression he was clearly dealing with, they just felt vicious coming from people that are supposed to be his friends.
I think Hunger by Roxanne Gay should be read by everyone. I’m fat. I am disabled. I spent a long time hating myself. People that make fun of fat people obviously hate themselves. Happy people can accept difference.
Tw: eating disorder discussion (restriction) When I was at my thinnest in high school I was *also* at the height of my depression. I was also at my most unhealthy in restrictive eating patterns (ie not eating as close to or literally nothing at all besides water or broth and also exercising off any/all calories I actually consumed). I still was what would be considered an “overweight” bmi for my height because of body shape, bone density for my race, and breast size. I was also exercising an extreme amount so I was genuinely “buff” or athletic looking and aesthetically I still think about that weight as a “goal” in my mind (as destructive and unhealthy as that is to my own current mental health). The thought that thin people are considered the standard or more superior to fat ppl is so so so bad. I lost abt 10% of my body weight last year while hospitalized for sepsis and it made me relapse into my restriction patterns because my brain realized how “easy” restriction brought me weight loss. It makes me so sad that my own boyfriend who has “bear “/“dad” bod who I find extremely sexy looks down on himself for not looking like a muscular chiseled god… it makes me sad that I see myself head on and I find myself ok, but to the side I get so sad and depressed bc I have more of a tummy and (horribly termed) “Fupa” than I ever have. But im taking care of myself now, eating meals when I’m hungry and snacks to keep my blood sugar stable, I’ve regained my weight lost from illness, and I know that to society that would be seen as a failure, but I’m taking active measures for myself to view it as a success for my *actual* health and wellness. Ps I love fat Thor and I do also wish he could have been as that bod in T:lot
thank you for acknowleging the gap in medical care if people are anything but skinny. I was told from age 16 to 40 to just go home when I was in agony. I had adenomyosis all along and only got that sorted this year.
The common rhetoric about fat people does real damage to A LOT of people, regardless of their size. There’s a reason diseases like anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are so rampant. There’s a reason people literally diet themselves to death. And maybe, just maybe, if we stopped the narrative that a person is lesser, that a person is unworthy, that a person is bad just because they don’t have a flat belly, then the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders wouldn’t be in the tens of millions.
I loved Love and Thunder. I'm a "fat" person. I never thought about what you presented and now wish that to be the thing that happened. I was just glad that they showed that he had to put in the work to get his original look back. I put quotes around fat because although I am fat and I've dealt with weight issues since grade school (I'll be 40 next year) I have been in the medium range of heavy set. I've never looked like Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. I've never needed the handicap go kart at the grocery store because of my weight. I did have to deal with my grandma saying things like "that's you if you don't start losing weight" when we'd see someone with thighs wider than two basketballs...or seeing someone in a fat suit. She would also tell me how I've got breast like a woman. Oddly enough, I never got those kinds of insults from my peers except for a few times. Most insults from them were from because I was weird. This comment is too long. Please feel free to delete this at your convenience.
It took me a while to finish this video, but I'm glad I did. Love the points you brought up. Would love a deeper dive at some point into the overall issue, maybe with a collab. And I also love that you curate your comment section. It always feels safe and welcoming here, even when people disagree. I also thought that the comments the other Avengers made came across as friends heavily invested in their own fitness not knowing HOW to address it. So they cracked jokes to underscore how upset they were by this, and how appalling that Thor didn't seem to care.
Even though I'm fat, depressed, and a stress eater, I honestly don't dislike the fact at a narrative level that Thor is back to his ultramuscular figure (honestly, if not more so - I don't recall the early scenes having anything anywhere near as frank an appraisal of his figure as shown in your clips of Love and Thunder in earlier movies, but I think his abs look *more* muscled there than they did). From when he was first introduced, Thor is clearly a character who either effortlessly has an ultrabuff body because that's how Asgardians are or he really puts in a lot of work to make himself look the way he does. Endgame removed the first possibility by giving us a depressed Thor who's let his body get away from him, proving its the second. So having Thor not be ultrabuff again means either there hasn't been time to put that work in, or there's still something in his head keeping him from doing so. Love and Thunder recognized that it took time, but also expressed that he was motivated to put in that effort again. Now, it's certainly possible the something in his head that kept him from putting the work in to get back to being ultrabuff is a realization that he doesn't need to prioritize that, and that he's still capable of doing what he needs to do and what he wants to do without that, but that's a level of nuance that has to be written into it. And it's not really something in keeping with the tone of Marvel movies. The MCU is extremely deep by action movie franchise standards...but the montage is still way more its speed than that level of intense character introspection. And while not everyone who's fat wants to lose weight, many do. I would hazard to guess that those people who become fat due to depression related eating habits and the like tend to be in that camp; I know I certainly am. (And was even before I read that MRI report that, uhh, let's just say it was highly motivating.) Personally, I find stories of people successfully losing weight and becoming fit are extremely uplifting and encouraging. (Personally, I have a cognitive bias that favours true stories like Angus Barbieri's story rather than something about Thor the literal Norse god of thunder, because it's generally easier to write fiction than actually do the thing depicted in it, but I can definitely see a big Marvel fan seeing the montage in that light. Conversely, the issue I do have with it is that movie productions have enough influence over their actors lives that they can force them into the sort of crushingly intense exercise to sculpt their body for the sake of a movie. I'm a big believer in bodily autonomy, and while that mostly means the big ticket issues like abortion and trans rights, it also covers the fact that people (and yes, actors are people, usually. The ones who aren't animated, I mean) should be free to decide what kind of look they want for themselves. Any other industry, if you heard about an employer that was saying an employee needs to put in time to make themselves look more muscular...I feel like I wouldn't exactly be in the minority in calling that an overreach in their authority...
Fatphobia has always been a bit of a blind spot for me so I really appreciate this video as well as everyone else's comments. Really helped me better understanded the nuances. Also made me realize how often I've been told the opposite things - that I should gain more weight or eat more junk food for being thin
I really appreciate your take on this! I have health issues that are best helped by medication that causes weight gain- and over the past year my body has gained a lot of weight. To be honest, it’s been devastating, and I don’t say that to be cruel, but to be honest about my experience. I had never experienced what it was to be fat before and it’s been really hard to see how some people’s views of me changed because of the change in my weight. The thing is, while I am now what our society sees as fat, I am also far, far healthier than I was when I was a “standard size” (whatever that means). I’ve talked about this a lot with a therapist and it’s been a really tough road to learn to love my body the way it is now- accepting it as worthy of love regardless of size. All that to say, this video (and the comments) made me feel less alone and for that I am so,so grateful. I know it takes a lot for you to do what you do on your channel and I just want you to know it makes a difference! You and your work really matter! Thank you so much!
Another example that sprung to mind was the Ronald D Moore Battlestar Galactica series during the New Caprica section were Lee Adama gains a lot of weight and it's implied that this is linked to Lee losing his edge and going soft during the year at New Caprica prior to the Cylon's arrival. Then after they"be escaped New Caprica Lee loses all that weight and regains his edge pretty much straight away.
Chris Evans did the natural look in The Red Sea Diving Resort on Netflix, and he looked *fantastic*: longish hair for the role, beard, body hair, and a bit of padding here and there. As someone said on Tumblr, he looked like a man who could carry three kids and six grocery bags without breaking a sweat, and there were plenty of reblogs of gifs of him getting out of bed naked, belly roll and all.
I agree with you, I personally hate ‘depressive fatness’ in movies, like the one they did with Thor. Yeah, it happens in real life. But I hate the extremeness with which they do it in movies. Like you have this person who is super super fit not only put in a fat suit, but put in an EXTREME obesity fat suit that they can just take off. Also, Thor would have likely just had a bit of a dad bod before he shifted to full fat Thor as depicted and it would have taken years of gradual change for his body to shift THAT much with him doing almost next to nothing at all. I’ve seen people at my gym fall off their routine for a bit and at most they lose a bit of muscle and gain a FEW pounds around the middle. The problem with fat suits is they often take a person from extreme fit to extreme obesity and then bring them back on screen ‘just by working out’ but in real life just by ‘stripping off the fat suit’. I am on a long journey to lose some weight because I do believe it’s better for my health and is in the way of activities I like, but I also know I will never be ‘Hollywood skinny’. There are people at my gym who work out less than I do that just have better bodies (by this I mean defined muscle because that is something I personally admire) and they likely have the genes to ensure they always will even if we do the exact same fitness routine for the rest of our lives. Also, plenty of people get depressed and STOP eating and get super skinny and to an unhealthy level, but this almost never gets portrayed in media.
I'm fat. Don't like it, not because of appearance, but because running fast is bloody hard, and other issues of movement. Was so glad thor didn't magically return to buff thor in Endgame. And pity they didn't let Chris take some time off his diet and fitness regime for love and thunder. Not to make him "fat" but to show weight loss takes a long time. Maybe an hour of fitness training a day instead of whatever he has been doing (I get it, the actor still needs some level of fitness to do the things without getting drenched in sweat and risking arthritis etc, but a little more soft than solid muscle tone.
Fat person here. I think one of the most egregious examples of a fat suit was John Travolta in Hairspray. Not only should it have been a fat person, it should have also been a crossdresser. I mean, Harvey Fierstein, who had played the role in on Broadway is the obvious choice, but there are others.
People had this problem with Insatiable too, and I'm not going to say the fatsuit is a great idea, or that that show didn't have it's big faults and controversies, but as someone who suffers from bulimia and disordered eating, I thought by talking about it, they still said more about those issues and explored the feelings and inner drama of suffering from those issues in a way that was very poignant in places. At least much more than a show that doesn't dare at least try to talk about challenging things. And I love fat Thor, not because there are no issues, but because he's fat and he's still worthy.
I feel as someone who's very invested in character design, this problem extends past just a representation level to basic visual distinctiveness. Live action often looks so bland to me and a lot of it might just be because how afraid live action is to just have a character look distinctive, we already HAVE a blonde, buff, physical brawler type hero in the MCU, infact we have too many, and their actors share a first name, that's how samey live action has gotten to. By just having thor be more on the chubby side, you now have a reason to pay attention to him over Starlord or the Old Captain America. Without that you basically have.. what, different weapons? That doesn't even extend to much because Old Cap can weild the hammer, different powers? Not really, most of the cast with powers has stuff that lights up the screen in basically the same way as lightning. Why is something as core to storytelling as character design thrown out in whats supposed to be the primary consumable form of visual media? I mean I know why, its because typically every movie has to fill some sort of hot guy/girl quota to get butts in seats and Hollywood hasn't exactly been super creative in its visualization of visually desirable traits so people are resistant to anything that isn't those traits.
It is kind of topical, seeing as the performance that everyone is saying Brendan Fraser is gonna win every Best Actor award for does involve him wearing a fat suit.
Brandon Fraser does have a lot of life experience being insulted and excluded for his weight. It's feel not so cut and dry as a skinny man in a fat suit
You said it's not topical, but I think it is because Thor in God of War (that just came out) is fat! And a muscly, fatter Thor would be great rep. for people like my husband whose very fit and eats well but still has a tummy. He always feels bad about it because there's this expectation he needs to be ripped with no fat. But like you said this is unobtainable to normal people who work 40+ hours a week with no spare money for a personal trainer or excessive time to work out. Also not to mention the fact that fat on your body is not only normal, but acceptable and attractive! 😤
Brilliant video, I like that it handled both sides of it (ie increased cosplay access/cheap jokes). For me personally (and I promise this is not just to plug the comic, there is context) it is something that I have had to deal with and explore in the work I do. I had a period where I was practically starving myself and I had a friend say "You looked really good back then" not realising it was horrible. I have had to explain that I struggle with it because I don't want to go back to being obsessive, counting calories and generally not enjoying life. Don't get me wrong, if you can enjoy living like that in a healthy way, awesome, don't want to go to the other extreme either. I hope this comes through when I write about it. Anyway, terrific video and as usual a great take.
This is an awesome video, I'm a fat woman and i can assure you I'd love to hear you speak of fatphobia if you ever want to do it, cause you explain everything so well and are always so kind in the way you speak on subjects, so I don't mind if you wanna discuss this topic more!! love u 💕
It sounds like you have Hemsworth to thank for "Lebowski Thor" staying through the end of Endgame, from Variety May 28, 2019: On set, Hemsworth called himself “Lebowski Thor,” a reference to the slacker played by Jeff Bridges in the Coen brothers comedy. “I like that anything goes,” Hemsworth says. “You’re not locked into expectations.” Originally, Thor was supposed to revert to his old self in the middle of “Endgame,” but Hemsworth fought to keep his pear-shaped body. “I enjoyed that version of Thor,” he says. “It was so different than any other way I played the character. And then it took on a life of its own.”
I refused to watch fat Thor. The ads were horrific, and I didn't want to watch him belittled for being fat. I don't plan to ever see it, but if I'm evern with a group that chooses that movie to watch while we hang out, I probably won't leave.
Actors aren't the people they play. Jennette McCurdy didn't need to be exactly like Sam Puckett loving food in order to be good in that role, and she didn't want to act and was suffering with an eating disorder. I don't remember fat jokes in Dan Schneider shows but they aren't the worst thing to age badly in Dan Schneider shows if there are fat jokes.
Cried a bit at the "you are beautiful" this time, especially after recently my mother made a comment regarding my size (which is in parts due to depression, cliché or not), that you would have deleted here 🙈 much love!
I remember you mentioning the same exact thing in a previous video. It was mostly a passing comment but when I went to see Love and Thunder, I kept thinking about it the whole time about how cool that would have been. I genuinely felt it took something away from his character. Also, fun fact - I once read an article somewhere on the internet that said a majority of woman (it didn't further define the precise demographic of woman, so my guess is straight, cis) find the 'dad bod' sexier / sexually more arousing than 'god bod'. I still found it interesting. I have friends who confirmed. Make of that what you will.
Well, that make sense. The "godbod" is simply not realistic. Not only the Chris Hemsworths of this world have access to recourses most people don't, but a lot of how he looks in the movie comes down to movie making techniques. Like the actor not drinking water for the whole day, so the skin sticks tighter to the muscle, and the oil they put on them and who knows what else.
The way Shallow Hal had me thinking I was disgusting and undesirable..shame. Also, in that movie Tony Robbins is the one to hypnotize Hal into being less shallow and knowing what I know about him now, that makes no damn sense. He's a disgusting mysoginistic human and there's no way he doesn't see fat people as "less than" End rant. And thank you so much for this. Being fat means being the butt of every joke in society and its so used up and exhausting.
Thanks for this, You always treat these issues with a lightness of touch which is appreciated. As someone on the wider extreme end of the rotund spectrum. Over the years I've been as high at 650lbs and down to 280lbs( which sounds crazy to most, but I was this weight at 17 y/o so that was normal to me. I both liked and disliked fat Thor in the movies, because firstly its rare that people even bother to show how people can become fat and the associated pain that goes along with it at all in Hollywood. His almost P.S.T.D like reaction to the events of his life, parents dying, lost his eye, had to kill his sister, watching his brother be murdered and finally his failure to stop Thanos from thumb snapping all combined to push Thor into a spiral of emotion and depression that I instantly recognized myself, and as someone who's been around other addicts my entire life (gambling, alcohol, drugs, food) its a pattern thats repeated with in millions. People looking to escape the pain through self medication even though its self destructive in nature. Once your in your in, only you can pull yourself out and many never do, it of course helps if others actively try to help. Sadly even though they nailed dead on the reasoning behind why Thor ended up in this predicament they then just played it for laughs fat jokes and all which was depressing cringe worthy. Chris Hemsworth wasn't the problem at all, he played his part perfectly it was more the reaction of those around him especially Rhodey.
Commenting because I was thinking about the whale (which has since won awards) and also thinking about a discussion I had with my mom and partner after seeing that Brandon Frazier won best actor for the whale. I am saying this as a lean asian woman, but I sort of view fat suits and thin people depicting fatness on screen as similar to orientalism and yellow face in film. To me, it’s deeply disrespectful and insulting for someone of a more powerful group to depict the life and sometimes even culture of someone from an oppressed group. Especially when it’s done for comedy, to gross out the audience, or to just generally alienate the audience from the oppressed group. It’s just.. gross and ugly and inhumane and narrow-minded and self-centered (my opinion) and to me it shows how lacking in thoughtfulness and compassion many people are. I’ve had people come at me for this opinion because Brendan Frazier is quite beloved, and I’m not necessarily blaming him-I’m sire he did the best he could with the script and role he was given- but just this in general, within the industry, is so gross and cruel.
Marvel has a history of erasing Thor's journey and experiences. Ragnarok let him grow - losing Mjolnir, cutting the hair, losing his eye. And Infinity War did a 180 on all of that. They did the same thing with his being fat. It turns all of these character-building moments and turns them into obvious plot devices.
As an overweight person myself, I have zero problems with actors using fat suits. Like, we cheer everytime someone refuses to lose weight for a role, so why double-standard with the opposite? Extreme body changes in short time-spans are not healthy, so I don't mind, if someone like Hemsworth didn't want to gain ton of weight to play fat Thor and then be back to his expected peak action movie star look in a month or two. I do have other problems with Fat Thor, but all of them come from writing and Hemsworth's performance not allowing Thor to be taken seriously anymore, which is something that started in Ragnarok. And I have limited tolerance for lazy fat jokes in general.
Yeah makeup has always existed. I’d rather the makeup artist get a job than have the actor destroy his body. I like Thor being a joke because to me he always was. Playing it more serious early on felt weird.
I suffer with daily debilitating migraines. I had no less than two neurologist tell me it my weight that is problem. Migraines have nothing to do with weight. I have lose weight in fact and my migraines are worst. so yes I feel you completely. I really can't see John Goodman seeing doing these bad roles.
Not only that but the Thor from the Norse myths also had a gut. It didn't get in the way of his feats of strength or his importance in those stories. If anything, Marvel could have given Thor the physique of a powerlifter rather than a bodybuilder, so he kept the huge muscles but could also have a layer of fat over them. Logically, it would make even more sense, since powerlifters work out in order to attain raw strength rather than a specific aesthetic. Also, this is actually a discussion that I've seen on social media on multiple occasions: why does every superhero, especially male ones, have to look like bodybuilders when most of them would make a lot more sense having other body types, from athletes to powerlifters. Some of them would even make more sense if they didn't look like they went through physical training at all, especially the ones who have stronger supernatural abilities or relied more on them than on physical strength
They had to make Thor fat to visually convey that he's let himself go, because the alternative was too terrible to consider - it would never fly with the mostly male fanbase and could cause a huge backlash, more so than potentially making some fat viewers upset. It would have been portraying Thor as skinny.
Y'all really need to get into M'Baku. The more love you show him, the more likely we are to get the superheroes that aren't chiseled, dehydrated bodies
There are only few things we know about thor. His hammer mjölnir has a very short handle, and he has a beard. In before, I am talking about the actual god, not a comic character.
And he is strong,but also a glutton. The welsh vikings channel about god of war thor, that he is likely to have some weight, being a glutton , i mean norse sagas about the feasts as ceöebrated, and his infamous appitite.
I remember hearing some people being attracted to Fat Thor when Endgame came out. I would like to see fat characters in movies/tv depicted as sexy and desirable because that is true of people of all different shapes and sizes.
It's sad that in superhero comics, fat people are usually either depicted as comedic or as villains. In Thor's own movies, they had Volstagg, but he's comedic more than anything (and I believe his actor was in a bit of a fat suit--but overall they did thin down the character a bit for the movies) and the MCU version is dead now, anyways. Villains generally have it work because the design is part of them trying to make villains "ugly" or the like. Penguin is the one who seems the most organic in the design, as it helps him look more like a penguin and the character seems to be played less for comedy regarding his weight. You also get characters like Kingpin, who is intimidating and is not played for comedy, but he's also one where the narrative often has to constantly assure the consumer that it's muscle, not fat. As far as main character fat superheroes in the comics, though, that is not as large of a list. I can think first and foremost of Zephyr from Valiant Comics' Harbinger, but that's not Marvel or DC at all.
When I was in the navy I weighed a solid 200 lbs. I found no need to workout 2-3 hrs a day when I got out. I gained 70 lbs and didnt really care for it. Thor was a character that helped through my feelings of inadequacy involving my weight. I now kickboxing to help with my girlish figure.
I didn't mind the fat suit on Thor for being a fat suit, but the entire framing of the thing STILL makes steam boil out my ears. He's broken! Look how fat he is! He's fat because he's broken! That's the joke, that none of them checked on him for five years and now he's broken and fat! It's honestly kept me from even watching love and thunder.
Fat shaming and fit shaming are equally vile. I say this because the woman that I love as much as I love air might be described as fact, but she is, in fact, a very fit powerlifter.
As someone whose always dealt with weight and has dealt with clinical depression, I will always love the scene with the hammer. "I'm still worthy." It's a fabulous moment.
This reminds me of a video from last year, from The Welsh Viking's channel (he's a PhD student studying archeology of the Viking period, and also does historical reenactment), commenting on the video game franchise "God of War"'s depiction of Thor from the medieval sagas standpoint, and he makes the point that a Fat Thor is actually *more accurate* than the dehydrated bodybuilder look that Hollywood likes so much. (The video's title is: "Is God of War's Thor the WORST THOR?") So a Thor with a belly is a canon depiction in at least two different franchises.
Oh the video talking about god of war thor , that is pretty good how thor usually represented, i mean the god, would probably be well not thin at all, still very fit and look like a heavy ringer. And yeah what mythological thor would look similar, as he is a glutton too I am pretty sure part was to have a clearly not hemsworth thor doe copyright nonsense, of a norse deity. But yeah good representation, ragnarok thor. Also god of war did him really well done, can you find just something more tasteful than a fatsuit. Marvel does amazing deepfakes, can they just stop using fatsuits, pleaaase.
@@marocat4749 I also like Jimmy's point that a lot of our ideas of the gods come from Victorian idolizing the Greco-Roman ideals, and the gods of the Norse would naturally have a different body type, considering Scandinavia has a different climate than the Mediterranean (and also, that real-life strongmen and wrestlers are all big, with natural amounts of fat)
As a fat person, I loved this wonderful video, so thank you. Also, I wanted to say that I once went through a two-year depression. I took no joy in food so I lost 66 pounds. So yes, depression and weight gain do not always go together.
Hemsworth wanted to gain weight but the studio didn't let him. He fought the studio for Thor to keep his weight at the end, the studio wanted to magically make him skinny. Hollywood has a 6pack starvation fetish for male actors and I hate it. I found the youtuber The Costume Codex and I learned a lot about fat awareness and fat representation. I can list ONLY ONE fat protagonist hero in media who gets to exist. Coop from the 2004 cartoon Megas XLR. He's not a joke, he's confident and happy.
You are so right about even medical professionals not looking past the weight. I am fortunate that most of my doctors acknowledge that my weight is more a symptom of my health issues than a cause. When I was undergoing tests to figure out a new problem, I was sent to a new specialist who, after being told that I was lucky to manage 1 meal each day, and several days a week I ate nothing, told me I was obese because I was eating too much!
Such an enlightening video! Thanks, Vera. Yes, I'm a fat woman, and I wish I was not. But if the alternative is starving, or not eating whatever I like, no, thanks.
As a fat disabled person who has had to deal with a lot of grief for it-including struggling with internalized fatphobia and my share of medical fatphobia-I have to admit I hesitated when I saw this video. It was hard for me to start it, but because it was you I did, and I appreciate your viewpoints and the nuance in which you present positive attitudes towards fat Thor. Part of what made it difficult is that Endgame was a very upsetting experience for me, and I personally still have not watched Endgame since seeing it in theaters. The sole reason for this is how uncomfortable and upset I was about the depiction of Thor's fatness, along with the audience reactions to it. I love the *idea* of a fat Thor, but the execution greatly upset me. There's the seed of a great narrative buried in the film, which is what you have so beautifully broken down here, and which many fat people watching picked up on, but I feel that it sadly fell short in execution. Which, honestly, I think might have been the intention. In my view, Marvel was trying to have it both ways. They wanted to exploit Thor gaining weight for cheap comedy (via framing, reactions from characters like Rocket and Tony, etc.), but then gain brownie points by throwing on the "but you're still worthy" at the end, similar to the way that (parent company) Disney will imply that, for instance, an already somewhat comedic character like Lefou in the live action Beauty and the Beast is gay by using hints at stereotypes, then throw in him dancing with a man for a half second at the end so they can get representation points. And it worked, to some extent. The packed audience in my theater roared with laughter the second a fat Thor appeared, and at all the jokes, and there are plenty of people that loved that we got a fat superhero who struggled with his depression. (Note: While I would say the former group are definitely an issue, I in no way want to downplay how impactful having this representation of Thor has been for the latter group, or say that they are wrong for being happy with it, because they aren't; this is just me calling out Marvel because I don't think it was an accident that they included both bad and good representation.) These are half measures from Marvel to try to appeal to both oppressor and oppressed, and for me that hurts almost even more than leaning into the offensive tropes would. Because it means that they *know* that it's harmful, but do it anyway, then get defensive and pretend they tried their best when we don't accept the crumbs they've thrown our way. One of the other big reasons I just cannot get on board with Endgame's Thor is that the original intent WAS to have the scene at the midway point, when he finds out he's worthy, restore him to his muscle-y ripped self. It was Chris Hemsworth himself that fought to keep Thor fat for the finale, despite the script calling for otherwise. This completely undermines the only positive message of having Thor gain weight: That he is still worthy, despite his perceived failure. Because that says that someone who is a failure is fat, and someone who is not a failure isn't. It implies the fatness part of why the "still" modifier is required, like it's saying "despite failing and letting yourself go physically, you're still worthy." Even a charitable read that instead substitutes "depression" in that sentence for the "letting yourself go physically" is still bundling depression and fatness together, and stating that if you believe you're worthy, you won't be fat or depressed anymore. Thor's spiral into depression is caused by his feelings of failure, and his perception of unworthiness stems from having a personal metric of worth that is affected by his level of success. If he couldn't stop the snap, then he is not worthy of being seen as a hero, and his whole life is turned on its head. This is a solid narrative, and fantastic to explore with the character. But the way they visually portray this is to show him having gained weight. Like you said, this does sometimes happen with depression. But in the narrative of this character arc-*especially* if we go with the original intent of having him return to his lean self when he realizes his own worth-what is serves to do is show us what THOR thinks (aka what Marvel thinks Thor would think) about what being a failure looks like, because it is then a manifestation of his perception. With the final version they went with, this is less explicit, but still present in tying the fatness to depression. And still, if it were handled tactfully, if the pacing, editing, and framing of the scenes had taken Thor's depression seriously, and literally anyone challenged the cruel jokes levied at Thor, it could have been a wonderfully nuanced look into the humanity and vulnerabilities of a literal god character. The filmmaking and characters could have made a clear statement, just in how they acted and treated Thor, about how how difficult depression and negative self-worth can be, and how cruel it is to mock, belittle, or ignore those that suffer and any unintentional side effects that may accompany that struggle. Instead what we got was the movie's narrative itself encouraging us to laugh at Thor. It encouraged us to laugh at the verbal bullying of Thor at the hands of his best friends who *knew* this was a side effect of how deeply the initial confrontation with Thanos scarred him, who kenw that he had watched his brother get murdered (for real this time, and while trying to save what was left of Asgard, no less), and witnessed the genocide of his people. Dark humor and laughing at tragedy are fantastic for lightening a heavy subject, but laughing at the person suffering for how they're struggling and/or failing to cope themselves is appalling. And then portraying weight gain as one of the chief aspects of a failure to cope is just the cherry on top, because (like you said many times), it is leaning into the trope of fat=depressed and "if you're fat there must be something wrong". That Marvel *wanted* to have the fat disappear as son as Thor realized he was "worthy" only nails home the idea that he was fat because that was what being a failure looks like. And I am glad you brought up "The Whale". I have talked extensively about "The Whale", actually often using both it and fat Thor at the same time as examples of how harmful and subtle fatphobia can be, though Thor is by far the more subtle of the two. I read through the original play "The Whale" is based on in a theater class in college, and it was absolutely awful. The worst kind of cautionary tragedy, where what is framed as the true tragedy isn't the loss of the main character's loved one, or losing a battle with mental health, but that this is a man who is eating himself to death. It upset me greatly then, and since my own weight gain due to the onset of chronic illness, it literally brought me to tears to see that *that* was the movie in which an actor I had dearly loved was going to be returning to the big screen. Again like you pointed out, Thor being fat didn't make him a worse fighter/superhero in the closing to Endgame, so there was no reason at all to show him intentionally "getting back into shape" for Love & Thunder. I hadn't thought about that angle, and I appreciate you having done so. Him deciding that he liked being how he was, whether fat or lean, would have been so much more impactful. I honestly will have this as my headcannon going forward, because I don't really intend to watch anymore Thor films. I didn't care for Ragnarok because it seemed to decide it wanted to stop having its own tone, and instead be Guardians of the Galaxy, and while I overall liked Love & Thunder more than Ragnarok, it still missed the mark for me. I enjoy the MCU films on the whole; they've brought me a lot of joy over the years and I love Hemsworth as Thor. I just really wish that, if they felt it was absolutely necessary to have Thor gain weight for this arc, they had taken it seriously and given it as much thought as you have. Edit: I just reread this and it is rambly as hell, so I apologize for that. It's hard to organize all of my thoughts and feelings on this subject, much less make a long comment coherent without just sitting down and writing a whole essay, and I am also on my phone so trying to make sure I have edited and not repeated myself too much is difficult. Unfortunately, I do not have the energy right now to rewrite it better. I'm sorry!
If anyone is interested in conversations like this I highly recommend The Big Fat Gay Podcast. It’s super insightful on society’s reaction to fat people and they have wonderful discussions like talking about Fat Thor and in December it sounds like they’ll be tackling The Whale too. It’s super funny, a bit teary eyed, but always wholesome.
It`s actually more true to how Thor`s described in Norse Mythology than the blond,blue-eyed,clean-shaven prettyboy the Germans and MARVEL turned him into.
I’m very fat, no denying it, and honestly I find nothing more cringeworthy than the idea of “fat representation” or anything that is supposed to support body positivity this way, it’s just unnecessary. Everyone who wants to promote this idea of “body positivity” is never actually promoting it, it’s more just a mental health focus. Basically, people are fat, we know it’s not healthy, some of us are working to deal with it, others aren’t. That’s it. Thor being fat does as much as Thor being chiselled. Which is, nothing.
My teenage daughter, who adores the Infinity Saga, has always taken issue with the fact that Thor’s “friends” didn’t care about his severe and debilitating depression. She’s angry that they just dismissed him and his pain.
On a side note, thank you for this thoughtful video and running the council meetings😸. You and Jessie are my go-to fandom geeks😻. It’s the safe space I wish I had in high school.
Fat dude here (stuck at 250 lbs no matter what I do due to meds). I loved Fat Thor. To me he exemplified what happens when the worst thing that you could think of happening happened but you have to find a way to still exist. Fat Thor reminded me of Simba when he was living with Timon and Pumba.
Also I’d rather a fat suit than a head digitally inserted on a fat body. The fat jokes didn’t really bother me because the Avengers level wisecracks at each other anyway. It would have been more notable if they didn’t take shots at Thor.
My partner has severe digestive system issues. He can’t usually get help from the medical system during a flare until he wastes away to a point where they think he’s lost enough weight. Since his normal is a bit overweight, that takes a few weeks of starvation to achieve.
I am also fat and I love Melted Ice-cream Thor. You mentioned that you're glad that he didn't just become muscular when he got Mjolnir back; Chris Hemsworth did that! Originally they were going to have him be sexy ripped Thor again once he got Mjolnir and he lobbied Marvel saying it was the wrong call. The movie definitely makes a joke out of the fat suit but he never does. He plays the pain, the mourning, the depression and I love him for that.
I'm disabled and I'm fat and I am unhealthy. I'm also broke. A few years ago I was sat down in front of a nutrition video by my doctor. I felt very condescended to. He's not going to *buy* all the groceries, after all. He doesn't have to look at a SNAP budget and determine how it can be stretched out for the month. It's not just time, or money, it's environment... And mine isn't the best exactly. There's so many factors that contribute to weight, for me it's a poor quality of everything on all fronts. The fat I have on my body has been there since I was seven, and that got worse when I was disabled by a doctor wanting a check from my CHIP insurance at the time. I got no settlement, no payout, no justice for what happened to my leg. There's so much that contributes to my body and health and all anyone sees usually is a fat woman that 'just doesn't know how to eat right'. Fattening, crappy unhealthy food is cheap and lasts long. You're exactly right- Chris Hemsworth can afford to have professional chefs cook the best meals for him and a personal trainer to motivate him to work out six hours a day. Money and time and lifestyle stagnation are major factors as to most people's weight and health. I'm fat, I'm disabled- and there's no "eat a salad" magic wand that will change that.
I have asked my doctor about losing weight and I get brushed off every time. Like, "here's a picture of the Diabetes Plate Method- just make all your portions like that!"
Like, okay, if it was that easy I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be fat right now. I've been considered fat since I was like 8 years old and I assure you I wasn't just gorging on junk food. People look at a fat person and just think they have poor willpower and aren't worth any time to try and understand what is actually going on with them.
I've been a thin person all my life, but boy does it rankle my chain when the "eat a salad" comments come from skinny people who live off of ramen and Red Bull. I mean, talk about cluelessness! The fact is, by most nutritionists' standards, virtually every single person in the US doesn't eat anywhere near as well as they should; it's just more visually apparent for some people than others. It's largely a question of LUCK.
I was #1 on the Fat Thor train while watching Endgame. One of my favorite moments in the film is when he summoned both weapons with a half up/half down hairstyle, braided beard, and a POT BELLY! I got so excited because he felt like the Thor we always deserved. I just knew they were going to take that aspect away because “superheroes gotta have those chiseled abs”. I’m not pro-skinny actors in fat suits, but I do feel like we missed out on something great in Love & Thunder.
In defense of love and thunder, unlike many other shows and mainly films, we did aee fat thor in love and thunder and even saw thor lose that weight as a way for him to work on self love and self care. And even better unlike with most training montages Thor's mental health isn't resolved. He still feels shitty despite meditation, lots of exercise etc. sure he gets his chilsed abs back but he is still working on his depression. Getting chilsed abs after a training montage isn't enough, it's something he must work on every day. And over time he finds ways to deal with it like becoming an uncle
"You're NOT concerned about fat people. You want them to feel shamed because YOU don't like looking at them."
I'm a large woman, I can't stand fat jokes. To me "Endgame" was different. The comments made by War Machine and Rocket are unnecessary and blunt, but the character of Thor has dignity. Also, he has never looked as Norse as he did in the final battle.
I want to thank you sincerly for this nuanced video. One of the best you done🙏🏻❤
I think I a case of, despite there being fat jokes, on a thematic level the movie says its fine that he's fat. Who cares, he's still worthy at the end of the day.
I've read a lot about Norse mythology, and I think the Norse people probably imagined Thor looking a lot more like "Fat Thor" than like Hemsworth's normal physique. Chubby face, bit of a beer belly, absolutely reliable and competent, like the guy who can put away a six-pack at one sitting but also fix anything that's broken, wrangle the kids, etc. (Thor was super popular in the Viking age, far more so than Odin.)
My dad has struggled with his weight for many year. He had depression and the anti depressants he was on caused significant weight gain and even after coming off of them many years ago his weight has fluctuated and he has struggled to lose the weight and keep it off and I know it really affects him and makes him upset. A few years ago he was at a fitting for a suit for his youngest sisters wedding and he saw how he looked in the suit in the mirror and he burst into tears because he hated how he looked in the suit because of his size and weight. I know that really got to him and also as he approached his 50's and having blood pressure concerns and issues for many years he decided for himself to make a commitment to losing weight and becoming healthier. He has manged to keep a steady trajectory for the weight loss. slowly but surely. For clarity my dad is 52 in a couple weeks. My dad has a very good sense of humour and I know has joked about his size in the past but like knowing how affected by his weight he is it is a very sensitive topic that needs nuance. People just need to read the room. I also know people who have suffered with eating disorders and I know that certain language around food, weight loss, diet culture and stuff like can be really triggering for people at both ends of the weight spectrum. Comedy is always something that needs a lot of care and thought. Certain subjects are not inherently funny and you need to figure out a way of discussing these topics within comedy without being out right rude and horrible.
I’m fat, severely physically disabled and I’ve been stuck on high dose steroids for years (the main reason I’m now fat). I’m stuck like this forever.
I loved fat Thor (with the exception of “eat a salad”, which really was awful). Seeing him realise he was still worthy and stay unrepentantly fat to the very end was wonderful. One of the few things I actually like about EG, which is a film I will be angry about until the day I keel over. Fat Thor thrilled me.
You are right about L&T. David Harbour bod would have been perfect.
“Eat a salad” and there’s also the unhealthy method of only eating one thing, of anything, whether it’s small amounts or big amounts. Salads aren’t exactly filling, I think
I used to be fat and now that I'm not anymore, I realize how much fiction has shaped how I used to perceive myself. When I was a teenager, I turned myself into a cliche, exaggerating my love for food, telling self-deprecating jokes because I thought that was expected of me. I had to be the funny guy, funny in a pathetic sort of way, like most fat characters on TV.
And whenever I see someone bullying fat people while pretending they care about their health, it makes me mad because I know that it had the exact opposite effect on me. It made me believe that my weight defined me so even though I wasn't happy with it, it was somewhat reassuring. I knew who I was, who I was supposed to be. And it's only when I grew up, isolated myself (for various reasons) and became less exposed to people's comments that I decided to lose some weight, not to please anyone but because I wanted to.
As someone who is fat, for a lot of reasons, I love fat Thor. As someone who recently lost a friend to anorexia, I 100% agree with your views on why it's problematic with how it's portrayed and it's reasoning.
Fat person here, I thoroughly appreciate your approach and the way you’ve laid out your arguments, Vera 💗 Thank you for this video, seriously
@@YourBeingParanoid I hadn’t really thought too much about it because I was under the impression that the excessive alcohol consumption was due to his depression (which they did mention), not the other way around. But you bring up a point worth exploring too.
I had a sports science lecture on the topic of weight last year. (My job is to take notes in university lectures for students with disabilities, so I pick up random facts all over the place.) Takeaway points:
1. The much-touted correlation between weight and poor health outcomes only applies to people who are unfit. If you're fit, your weight doesn't affect your health.
2. The gap in health outcomes between fat unfit people and thin unfit people is nowhere near as big as the gap between unfit people and fit people. Fitness matters more than weight.
3. At least some of the correlation between weight and poor health outcomes for unfit people is due to the fact (as you mentioned in this video) that many health professionals who see a fat patient will assume the fat is the problem and try and fix that rather than hunt down the real issue. Sometimes, and we had some hair-raising examples in the lecture, this can be quite dangerous.
4. Body fat can affect sports performance, but the specifics depend on the sport. The optimal amount of fat is minimal for a runner, a lot more for a swimmer, a lot more again for a sumo wrestler.
Regarding The Whale (which I have seen), Brendan Fraser, while not as fat as depicted in the film, is on the heavy side, so in his case he does know what it is to be fat (and at some point knew what it was like to be thin), and from what I've heard in interviews, the film allowed Fraser to confront several of his own demons, so I do think you should give the film a shot (I loved it, but I also loved it because I love the way Darren Aronofsky overwhelms me). Also, the film is based on a play written by someone who was overweight in his 20s, which is why I believe it depicts these issues with plenty of empathy (and in case this makes a difference, I was obese as a child, and now I'm still fat, though not to that level).
It's just so sad that Thor's depression in Endgame is treated as a punchline. Even his one heart-felt scene with his mother had to be punctuated with a joke.
I know they were trying to go for a lighter tone to balance how bleak Infinity War was but it felt out of place. Everyone is 5 years away from the worst thing that ever happened to them, you think they'd have more compassion and empathy for their friend/teammate.
I strongly disagree. Him being fat and still getting mjolnir saying he's still worthy happily with almost tears from his eyes and him fighting Thanos still fat I feel thematically and character wise keeps Thor having dignity
In addition to media often not showing the work to go from "fat" to "thin," you pretty much never see anyone struggling to maintain that new weight. Take it from someone who's lost (and gained) a LOT of weight - it's on your mind at every meal, every time you consider exercising, and every time you step on a scale. (If, of course, losing/keeping weight off is a major goal.)
One thing I loved about Bojack Horseman was that Diane was actually shown being happier after Gaining weight implying it was due to her taking her anti depressants.
Being overweight absolutely does not mean someone is depressed, and I agree it should not be the only depiction people with a bigger body type get.
Watching Endgame the first time, I held my breath when he suited up for the final battle cause I was worried they’d turn him skinny, and then they didn’t and I was so relieved. He looked completely badass too. Love the braided beard completing the look
The studio wanted to do that but Hemsworth fought them to keep it! It was really great
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 props to him then!
@@hatchetfieldharpie3276 I've also heard he wanted to gain weight, but the studio didn't let him.
But yeah, he seems to be a good one.
Thanks for discussing this. I never watched Endgame for a lot of reasons and Thor’s treatment (especially that “salad” line - which I think is out of character for his mom!) was one of them. I’m fat with a BED and lately struggled with accepting my weight, especially as an AFAB transmasc who wishes they had a body like Endgame Thor’s! I’m reminded to be a lot kinder to myself! Knowing there’s a lot of people who love Fat Thor helps 😊
Fat Thor is a tricky one. In some ways the framing of it is quite bad (linked to depression, self-loathing, etc.) while in other ways it's quite good (Fat Thor is much more earnest and vulnerable, and, as we ultimately see, no less capable). There are a lot of cheap fat jokes, but most of them come from characters who are themselves framed as (at best) rude in general, like Tony and Rocket; and the film as a whole takes far more pot shots at his drinking (which is its whole own problem). Some lines are out of place, like Thor's mom telling him to eat a salad, and should have been cut or at least reeled in. I will say though, as a fat person, seeing Fat Thor go full battle mode and wail on Thanos was pretty awesome. When he called down the thunder, I was absolutely certain it would make him thin and super ripped again, and when it didn't it was legitimately great to see. Definitely not good representation on the whole, but better than we would have gotten even a few years ago; and even if the film takes some cheap shots at it, Hemsworth himself seemed to be taking the role seriously, fatness included.
Endgame came out at a time when I was having a lot of body image issues. I've never been a skinny guy, but over the decade leading up to that point I had put on a lot of weight as a result of health issues and injuries that limited my ability to stay physically active. I didn't get fat from eating more - in fact I ate less - but from a dramatic decrease in exercise. (Keep that in mind for Thor's depressive weight gain; he didn't need to do anything even resembling compulsive eating to put on weight, just being too depressed to exercise will do that to a person.) I had put on over 70 pounds total, but that was probably an increase in 90 pounds of fat thanks to the muscle atrophy that I was experiencing. Thanks to the injuries that caused my inability to undertake regular excercise, there was pretty much nothing I could do to change that situation, and the stress of that was starting to turn to anxiety and depression.
Thor's statement of, "I'm still worthy!" and his subsequent change into his battle armor without any magical transformation back to thin, muscuar Thor both literally brought me to tears. It was a reminder of a fact that I had forgotten: that my worth as a person isn't tied to my weight, apperance, or physical ability. I was still the same person I was before getting injured and sick, just in a different circumstance.
Who says popcorn movies are all just stupid escapism? Sure, some of them are; but this proves that they don't have to be.
I wish I could have seen End Game alone. I wasn’t able to enjoy Big Thor on my first viewing. I was the only fat person in a large group of thin friends. When Fat Thor was revealed and they all laughed I immediately thought, oh no. And it just got worse because the framing encouraged viewing him as comedic. Every time Fat Thor’s friends made fun of him, my friends laughed and I wondered if that was how they really felt about me. By the time the big fight came around, I just desperately wanted to be anywhere else and to have better friends.
If I had watched the film in isolation, and if it were made in a cultural vacuum, or if we were further along towards fat acceptance, I think more fat people would have had the positive experience your friends had, because I can see what they described, I just wasn’t allowed to experience the film that way because the ratio of fat-accepting people in my audience was too low. But with the correct ratio, it becomes subversive, because if only a few people laugh, those people are going to feel and look like real assholes when the fight scene happens. But as it was in my showing, the moment got washed out in all the other action set pieces because my audience was primed to not look for fat-acceptance metaphors.
My take away was that there needed to be at least one Avenger who called the others out on the unequal treatment of Tony and Thor. In ten years, hopefully that would feel heavy handed, but at present, I think it was a necessary ballast that was needed to make sure everyone got the right message. Especially since some fat audience members got missed by the positive aspects, depending on the crowd, and that character needed to be for us, not for the people who wanted to laugh at Fat Thor.
I recently rewatched it and I was able to enjoy it more. I still take a lot of issue with how the camera frames Fat Thor, the music cues, and the differences between how he and Tony are treated. But I like *him,* Fat Thor, in the same way that I like myself, even though I dislike the culture surrounding Fat Thor or myself. I feel liking Fat Thor is a bit of a reclamation project. I like the, “You Don’t Need Abs to be Worthy” t-shirts. And the Fat Thor cosplays. It’s like, try making fun of him/us now. He/we are still worthy, despite what the camera/culture say. And that’s very metal.
My feeling is the film was bad. As you said nobody got called out. That people can own fat thor and wear T shirts to honour the good aspects they found is good. That doesn't make the writing or direction excusable.
I think a big issue is that audiences seem to want both realistic representation (because we understandably want at least some degree of relatability) AND escapism (again, for very understandable reasons) - and I feel many media creators are caught in the middle, especially when it comes to properties that are so successful across many different demographics.
Many people liked Fat Thor, and I'm sure they'd dig Dadbod Thor too... but just as many cherish Hotbod Thor because that's what the ideal of "heroism" has always been, at least in our Western framework.
It's what happened with Captain America too - the superserum could have given him his powers without changing his appearance, but somehow nobody has ever entertained the idea...
As a person with depression, I felt Endgame Thor was so relatable. I don't even think of him as "fat Thor". One of the best things about the fat suit he's wearing is the distribution of the fat. He looks like a person who is self medicating with alcohol. Not necessarily over eating - he's over drinking. As for the snide comments made by his "friends", they weren't funny. They were tragic and realistic. Friends generally don't know what to say to a depressed person and some friends are actually jerks (Rhodes especially). It all felt real to me. He had those few friends who stuck with him and related to him on his level, where he was at. They didn't ask him to change. Thor was very lucky in that sense.
One semi connected thing that's irked me: people have seemingly become so blinded by Marvel actors getting inhumanly ripped that when Tenoch Huerta got a normal amount of fit to play Namor, you can bet the internet douchebags all started calling him fat because he didn't look like dehydrated Chris Hemsworth.
Thank you so much for this beautifully done video.
I'm fat & have been since my early/mid 20's & I've had to deal with my fair share of people attempting to shame me for being fat, including my ex of 20yrs. I'm not ashamed. It can be done
I think you're right about fat suits. It seems that fat people are one of the last groups it's socially acceptable to humiliate publicly. Slowly that's changing & it's changing by people talking about it like this.
It's also changing because fat people are refusing to be shoved into the corner. There are also some fabulous fat people who are putting themselves out there showing the world how beautiful, sexy & fabulous like Lizzo & Tess Holliday. They make it look gooooood
See Queen Latifah as Mama Morton in "Chicago". She's way past hot!!!
I think it’s interesting that Hollywood never depicts a fat person with depression who can’t/struggles to eat. I know when my depression is bad I don’t eat.
From what I remember about this, the studio wanted Thor to be magically thin again and Hemsworth insisted on staying the way Thor was for the rest of the film. Now Hemsworth also has a workout app as well, so maybe he couldn’t just let go either.
That being said, great video.
Thank you for this video! I just watched a vid about tumblr skinny trend coming back and all my anxiety that prompted a 6 years long e.d resurfarced. You genuine excitement around fat Thor aleviated it quite a bit right now.
As an obese man (325lbs), I'll throw in my two cents. Most of the time I don't really care about misrepresentation of fat people in movies. The worst thing fat guys have to deal with is getting type cast as 'the funny fat friend' or 'the sexist pig', it sucks but I know other groups like LGBTQ+ and BIPOC have it much worse when it comes to type casting, or even getting casted at all. Also, most of the discrimination I see towards fat people in movies is way more exaggerated than anything I've had to deal with in real-life. Nobody's coming up to me saying, "Ha ha, you're fat! You suck!" I more so deal with institutionalized discrimination, like needing to buy 2 plane seats, or not being allowed on roller coasters because the seats aren't big enough, and having to go to a special section of the store to buy clothes that fit me.
I have a mixed view on fat suits. I do think you should always cast a fat actor if that's what the role requires, like with Darlene Cates in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." Some actors have gained weight for roles, which is entirely their choice. I do understand with some films like "The Whale" why it would not be safe for an actor to actually gain the amount of weight required for the role. I think fat suits are acceptable if a film can justify having character be obese for the story, if an actor of that size is not able to be cast, and if it would be otherwise unsafe to have an actor gain weight for the part.
The only thing that actually bugs me is when fatness is used as a punishment or a form of karma for characters who where otherwise skinny throughout the rest of the movie. Like with Ben Stiller at the end of Dodgeball when he gains a bunch of weight after losing the tournament. Weight gain and depression go hand in hand, but it's not something anyone "deserves" for being an asshole. In my opinion, "Heavy Weights" is the best movie about the stigma of obesity. Yes it's a cheesy 90s summer camp film, but it gives all the characters distinct personalities other than just 'fat,' and the happy ending isn't all the fat kids becoming skinny, they gain self-respect while also learning how to take better care of themselves.
Well said 🙏
Regarding the Fat Suit Thing: I feel like a lot of people in Hollywood have body dysmorphia/body image issues to a higher degree than the general population, so I believe that they're generally not unqualified to portray fat people.. Like, not physically, and they can't understand what it's like to go to a store that's supposed to be inclusively sized and not finding anything that's big enough for you (which isn't a big thing, but even that can break you down, especially when you're younger), but the way people judge Hollywood actors for being almost normal weight instead of really underweight makes me think that they're at least somewhat equipped to portray fat people.
Like, for this role especially, I understand using a fat suit, cause the whole 'having actors put on weight really fast' is extremely unhealthy and I personally would always prefer an actor to wear a fat suit as opposed to gaining a lot of weight for a role. Or losing weight. There is an image collection of Christian Bale's body transformations and that is downright scary...
The whole fat flashback for comedic purposes? Such a tired cliché.
Fat humor? Sucks a lot. Like, in Gilmore Girls, Melissa McCarthy wasn't always the butt of the jokes, so that's nice, but just about every Hollywood movie she's in after that? Fat butt of the joke. Sad. Like, I can't enjoy those female-lead comedies because of how they treat the fat one in everything. Like, I don't need that in my comedies, I get that enough in real life.
Regarding Brendan Fraser, he has gained a lot of weight after his heyday, so that might be okay representation? I mean, I personally wouldn't want to see a movie called "the whale" at all, ever, cause I don't need that in my life.
It makes them more unqualified. They are afraid of becoming fat. They are the walking definition of fatphobic.
@@Tamisday maybe? But they're also constantly shamed for their appearance, regardless of what that appearance is.
I also haven't made that connection before, so I need to ponder that :3
The fat suit is annoying. As a stage actor, I hate it when thin actors get to play Shrek for example with a fat suit when I, a fat actor, can play the role and have in the past.
I really appreciate your nuanced and thoughtful discussion of this.
I'm a fat transfem with C-PTSD and depression, amongst other conditions that exacerbate my weight and physical ability, going through a rather nasty flags up of these due to intense work in therapy and I am absolutely comfort eating to an unhealthy degree.
I really didn't like seeing Thor like this and felt the depression/ PTSD and weight gain handled really poorly and played for laughs, which compounds existing stigma and misconceptions. I'm not saying it's impossible, but this really seemed too serious and personal an experience to have been handled well by the MCU, especially when played for mocking laughs and the cruel jibes of his friends normalising fat shaming.
However, I truly appreciated you sharing positive reactions that have been shared with you, which really did all on me to really see and enjoy Thor doing his thing while fat. I'm also just so happy that it brings joy to others and larger cosplayers benefit.
Great video. Thank you! Love and solidarity x
Something else that isn't really talked about when discussing fat people is the active discrimination we face every day, I've had people simply refuse to speak to me because of my size on more than one occasion or they talk about you whilst your standing in ear shot as if your deaf. Or the fact that in many places its one of the few things its still considered Ok to discriminate against. Especially notice this on the left where people where people who otherwise consider themselves woke and considerate will still actively hammer people for how much they weigh. This runs rampant within health care systems. Years ago I needed an operation on my nose to resolve an issue in my throat and was told in no uncertain terms I'd need to lose some weight, I then spent 2 years lost 240lbs my doctor was astounded and referred me to the consultant to perform the surgery, I walked in still 240lbs lighter than my previous high weight to have the consultant take one look at me and in 30 seconds say nope you need to lose another 150lbs. He'd didn't care how far I'd come or anything he just dismissed my entire existence in 30 seconds. I went to 3 more consultants before I gave up since I didn't have the money to go private. Even my doctor said they were being ridiculous.
It is really horrible, especially if you live somewhere like America or many other parts of the world where you have to pay for healthcare, everyone should be treated with respect especially medically, ESPECIALLY when you’re paying for it. But I think being fat is slightly different to other things people get discriminated against, like race, sexuality, or gender identity since it is something that the *majority* of people have the ability to change. I think discrimination based on weight is more linked to “pretty privilege” and societal beauty standards. Still no one should be discriminated against
Oh, I went to a public doctor because I just could not breathe properly through my nose, was told "to lose 18 kgs" before anything could be done. Many years later I paid dearly for a cornet intervention. Yes, I had a very big "stone" inside my nose, the doctor said "How were you able to breathe?" Like, that's the point, sir, I was not.
@@hbsupreme1499Firstly, i assure you people that reach the size of the above character cannot control their weight gain if they could they would never have reached that size to start with. Secondly i wasn't equating anything i was stating that people are every day discriminated against based on their weight, that is a fact.
As a fat & disabled person with mental health issues, I appreciated Fat Thor & didn’t mind the fat suit because rapid cycling of weight in either way can be unhealthy so it wouldn’t have been good to ask him to put weight on and then off again. There’s been a number of actors who have either lost weight or gained weight for a part and due to the RAPID cycling nature of it not because they were fat. Ironically, my mental health was so much worse when I was thin than now as a fat person.
What you glossed over when you pointed out that people have difficulty staying in shape due to their jobs and budgets is that this is not an accident. While the fat acceptance debate predictably falls into the camp of people who believe everyone is fine just the way they are and those who believe that the way they are is entirely a matter of personal responsibility, the actual winners are the corporations who have succeeded in normalizing spending eleven hours a day sitting in a cubicle only to go home, eat unhealthy food because that's what they make affordable and available and drink alcohol to unwind from the stress induced by this unnatural lifestyle. It wasn't always this way and it doesn't need to always be this way.
The idea that people only gain weight because of depression and overeating is so tired. Like; the chemical imbalance in my brain has nothing to do with my fat cells. That's a whole other medical thing called "My thyroid was killing me and now it's gone".
I find it really funny (in a sad way) that more often than not the people who say "but they're actors, they can play anything" are the people that first get ENRAGED when a character is casted as another gender or race in an adaptation of book or whatever (mostly when a woman plays a role associated with a man or when a poc plays a role associated with a white person)
Vera, i am 48 yo and always have been morbidly obesce my entire life....i can remember my mom put me on my first diet at the age of 7 (2rd grade) because the doctor told her i was too fat....putting a 7 yo boy on a diet????....until i dropped out of high school in my senior year i was bullied....i have heard the 3 Taboo Fat Jokes so many times....thank you for producing this video....when you said putting a skinny actor in a fat suit is like having a cis person play transgender....i also thought it is just as bad as having a white actor paint their face black like in the movie "Soul Man".....Movie and TV producers have to start facing the truth that they need to rethink A LOT of what they do
In terms of Love and Thunder, the plot of the film was about Thor and Jane Foster rekindling their love and getting closure on a previous relationship and I should not have to explain this but fat people are just as "worthy" of being loved and expressing their own love, I do not think that Jane would have rejected or shamed Thor if he at a similar weight when they reunited as he was during Endgame because he was still the man she first fell in love with and that heroism is both a trait they share as well as one of the main things that attracted her to him
being depressed = overeating is really overused wow! and in addition to being a failure of acknowledging the reasons a person can be fat, it is a failure of understanding the ways depression can manifest! sometimes my depression means i don't have the energy to prepare or eat food.
This is something that, to a lesser extent, bothered me with the ending of Shazam. You have the foster kids who are pretty diverse in terms of look and body type (Pedro is fat, Freddy is disabled, even Eugene and Darla are small and wear glasses), but once they turn into superheroes, they all get the standard muscular perfectly abled superhero body. It just would've been cool if Pedro could've still been a superhero while being fat or Freddy while still having his crutches, and the fact that they didn't (and the fact that those things are inadvertently implied to be "imperfections" that a perfect superhero form wouldn't have) is kind of a bummer.
(Also the actor who plays adult superhero Pedro is a white Italian guy instead of Hispanic but that's a whole other thing)
As someone who would look like Fat Thor if I put on a robe and let my beard go nuts I will admit there was a part of me disappointed that he didn’t look like “classic Thor” for the big end fight. BUT over time and rewatches I have joined the camp that I am happy they didn’t since it fits his journey through the movie better than reverting would have. I agree the humor around it was off, Ragnarok and Infinity War established pretty clearly that Thor masks his pain with humor, so him making jokes here and there would have worked. But considering how much depression he was clearly dealing with, they just felt vicious coming from people that are supposed to be his friends.
I think Hunger by Roxanne Gay should be read by everyone. I’m fat. I am disabled. I spent a long time hating myself. People that make fun of fat people obviously hate themselves. Happy people can accept difference.
Tw: eating disorder discussion (restriction)
When I was at my thinnest in high school I was *also* at the height of my depression. I was also at my most unhealthy in restrictive eating patterns (ie not eating as close to or literally nothing at all besides water or broth and also exercising off any/all calories I actually consumed).
I still was what would be considered an “overweight” bmi for my height because of body shape, bone density for my race, and breast size. I was also exercising an extreme amount so I was genuinely “buff” or athletic looking and aesthetically I still think about that weight as a “goal” in my mind (as destructive and unhealthy as that is to my own current mental health).
The thought that thin people are considered the standard or more superior to fat ppl is so so so bad. I lost abt 10% of my body weight last year while hospitalized for sepsis and it made me relapse into my restriction patterns because my brain realized how “easy” restriction brought me weight loss.
It makes me so sad that my own boyfriend who has “bear “/“dad” bod who I find extremely sexy looks down on himself for not looking like a muscular chiseled god… it makes me sad that I see myself head on and I find myself ok, but to the side I get so sad and depressed bc I have more of a tummy and (horribly termed) “Fupa” than I ever have.
But im taking care of myself now, eating meals when I’m hungry and snacks to keep my blood sugar stable, I’ve regained my weight lost from illness, and I know that to society that would be seen as a failure, but I’m taking active measures for myself to view it as a success for my *actual* health and wellness.
Ps I love fat Thor and I do also wish he could have been as that bod in T:lot
thank you for acknowleging the gap in medical care if people are anything but skinny. I was told from age 16 to 40 to just go home when I was in agony. I had adenomyosis all along and only got that sorted this year.
The common rhetoric about fat people does real damage to A LOT of people, regardless of their size. There’s a reason diseases like anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are so rampant. There’s a reason people literally diet themselves to death. And maybe, just maybe, if we stopped the narrative that a person is lesser, that a person is unworthy, that a person is bad just because they don’t have a flat belly, then the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders wouldn’t be in the tens of millions.
I loved Love and Thunder.
I'm a "fat" person.
I never thought about what you presented and now wish that to be the thing that happened. I was just glad that they showed that he had to put in the work to get his original look back.
I put quotes around fat because although I am fat and I've dealt with weight issues since grade school (I'll be 40 next year) I have been in the medium range of heavy set. I've never looked like Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. I've never needed the handicap go kart at the grocery store because of my weight. I did have to deal with my grandma saying things like "that's you if you don't start losing weight" when we'd see someone with thighs wider than two basketballs...or seeing someone in a fat suit. She would also tell me how I've got breast like a woman.
Oddly enough, I never got those kinds of insults from my peers except for a few times. Most insults from them were from because I was weird.
This comment is too long. Please feel free to delete this at your convenience.
It took me a while to finish this video, but I'm glad I did. Love the points you brought up. Would love a deeper dive at some point into the overall issue, maybe with a collab. And I also love that you curate your comment section. It always feels safe and welcoming here, even when people disagree.
I also thought that the comments the other Avengers made came across as friends heavily invested in their own fitness not knowing HOW to address it. So they cracked jokes to underscore how upset they were by this, and how appalling that Thor didn't seem to care.
Even though I'm fat, depressed, and a stress eater, I honestly don't dislike the fact at a narrative level that Thor is back to his ultramuscular figure (honestly, if not more so - I don't recall the early scenes having anything anywhere near as frank an appraisal of his figure as shown in your clips of Love and Thunder in earlier movies, but I think his abs look *more* muscled there than they did). From when he was first introduced, Thor is clearly a character who either effortlessly has an ultrabuff body because that's how Asgardians are or he really puts in a lot of work to make himself look the way he does. Endgame removed the first possibility by giving us a depressed Thor who's let his body get away from him, proving its the second. So having Thor not be ultrabuff again means either there hasn't been time to put that work in, or there's still something in his head keeping him from doing so. Love and Thunder recognized that it took time, but also expressed that he was motivated to put in that effort again.
Now, it's certainly possible the something in his head that kept him from putting the work in to get back to being ultrabuff is a realization that he doesn't need to prioritize that, and that he's still capable of doing what he needs to do and what he wants to do without that, but that's a level of nuance that has to be written into it. And it's not really something in keeping with the tone of Marvel movies. The MCU is extremely deep by action movie franchise standards...but the montage is still way more its speed than that level of intense character introspection.
And while not everyone who's fat wants to lose weight, many do. I would hazard to guess that those people who become fat due to depression related eating habits and the like tend to be in that camp; I know I certainly am. (And was even before I read that MRI report that, uhh, let's just say it was highly motivating.) Personally, I find stories of people successfully losing weight and becoming fit are extremely uplifting and encouraging. (Personally, I have a cognitive bias that favours true stories like Angus Barbieri's story rather than something about Thor the literal Norse god of thunder, because it's generally easier to write fiction than actually do the thing depicted in it, but I can definitely see a big Marvel fan seeing the montage in that light.
Conversely, the issue I do have with it is that movie productions have enough influence over their actors lives that they can force them into the sort of crushingly intense exercise to sculpt their body for the sake of a movie. I'm a big believer in bodily autonomy, and while that mostly means the big ticket issues like abortion and trans rights, it also covers the fact that people (and yes, actors are people, usually. The ones who aren't animated, I mean) should be free to decide what kind of look they want for themselves. Any other industry, if you heard about an employer that was saying an employee needs to put in time to make themselves look more muscular...I feel like I wouldn't exactly be in the minority in calling that an overreach in their authority...
Fatphobia has always been a bit of a blind spot for me so I really appreciate this video as well as everyone else's comments. Really helped me better understanded the nuances.
Also made me realize how often I've been told the opposite things - that I should gain more weight or eat more junk food for being thin
A point I feel was missed, Fat Thor was waaaaaaay hotter.
I really appreciate your take on this! I have health issues that are best helped by medication that causes weight gain- and over the past year my body has gained a lot of weight. To be honest, it’s been devastating, and I don’t say that to be cruel, but to be honest about my experience. I had never experienced what it was to be fat before and it’s been really hard to see how some people’s views of me changed because of the change in my weight. The thing is, while I am now what our society sees as fat, I am also far, far healthier than I was when I was a “standard size” (whatever that means). I’ve talked about this a lot with a therapist and it’s been a really tough road to learn to love my body the way it is now- accepting it as worthy of love regardless of size. All that to say, this video (and the comments) made me feel less alone and for that I am so,so grateful. I know it takes a lot for you to do what you do on your channel and I just want you to know it makes a difference! You and your work really matter! Thank you so much!
Another example that sprung to mind was the Ronald D Moore Battlestar Galactica series during the New Caprica section were Lee Adama gains a lot of weight and it's implied that this is linked to Lee losing his edge and going soft during the year at New Caprica prior to the Cylon's arrival. Then after they"be escaped New Caprica Lee loses all that weight and regains his edge pretty much straight away.
Chris Evans did the natural look in The Red Sea Diving Resort on Netflix, and he looked *fantastic*: longish hair for the role, beard, body hair, and a bit of padding here and there. As someone said on Tumblr, he looked like a man who could carry three kids and six grocery bags without breaking a sweat, and there were plenty of reblogs of gifs of him getting out of bed naked, belly roll and all.
I agree with you, I personally hate ‘depressive fatness’ in movies, like the one they did with Thor. Yeah, it happens in real life. But I hate the extremeness with which they do it in movies. Like you have this person who is super super fit not only put in a fat suit, but put in an EXTREME obesity fat suit that they can just take off. Also, Thor would have likely just had a bit of a dad bod before he shifted to full fat Thor as depicted and it would have taken years of gradual change for his body to shift THAT much with him doing almost next to nothing at all. I’ve seen people at my gym fall off their routine for a bit and at most they lose a bit of muscle and gain a FEW pounds around the middle. The problem with fat suits is they often take a person from extreme fit to extreme obesity and then bring them back on screen ‘just by working out’ but in real life just by ‘stripping off the fat suit’. I am on a long journey to lose some weight because I do believe it’s better for my health and is in the way of activities I like, but I also know I will never be ‘Hollywood skinny’. There are people at my gym who work out less than I do that just have better bodies (by this I mean defined muscle because that is something I personally admire) and they likely have the genes to ensure they always will even if we do the exact same fitness routine for the rest of our lives.
Also, plenty of people get depressed and STOP eating and get super skinny and to an unhealthy level, but this almost never gets portrayed in media.
I'm fat. Don't like it, not because of appearance, but because running fast is bloody hard, and other issues of movement.
Was so glad thor didn't magically return to buff thor in Endgame.
And pity they didn't let Chris take some time off his diet and fitness regime for love and thunder. Not to make him "fat" but to show weight loss takes a long time. Maybe an hour of fitness training a day instead of whatever he has been doing (I get it, the actor still needs some level of fitness to do the things without getting drenched in sweat and risking arthritis etc, but a little more soft than solid muscle tone.
Fat person here. I think one of the most egregious examples of a fat suit was John Travolta in Hairspray. Not only should it have been a fat person, it should have also been a crossdresser. I mean, Harvey Fierstein, who had played the role in on Broadway is the obvious choice, but there are others.
People had this problem with Insatiable too, and I'm not going to say the fatsuit is a great idea, or that that show didn't have it's big faults and controversies, but as someone who suffers from bulimia and disordered eating, I thought by talking about it, they still said more about those issues and explored the feelings and inner drama of suffering from those issues in a way that was very poignant in places. At least much more than a show that doesn't dare at least try to talk about challenging things. And I love fat Thor, not because there are no issues, but because he's fat and he's still worthy.
I feel as someone who's very invested in character design, this problem extends past just a representation level to basic visual distinctiveness. Live action often looks so bland to me and a lot of it might just be because how afraid live action is to just have a character look distinctive, we already HAVE a blonde, buff, physical brawler type hero in the MCU, infact we have too many, and their actors share a first name, that's how samey live action has gotten to. By just having thor be more on the chubby side, you now have a reason to pay attention to him over Starlord or the Old Captain America. Without that you basically have.. what, different weapons? That doesn't even extend to much because Old Cap can weild the hammer, different powers? Not really, most of the cast with powers has stuff that lights up the screen in basically the same way as lightning.
Why is something as core to storytelling as character design thrown out in whats supposed to be the primary consumable form of visual media? I mean I know why, its because typically every movie has to fill some sort of hot guy/girl quota to get butts in seats and Hollywood hasn't exactly been super creative in its visualization of visually desirable traits so people are resistant to anything that isn't those traits.
It is kind of topical, seeing as the performance that everyone is saying Brendan Fraser is gonna win every Best Actor award for does involve him wearing a fat suit.
Brandon Fraser does have a lot of life experience being insulted and excluded for his weight. It's feel not so cut and dry as a skinny man in a fat suit
People also really like him and are glad he’s back.
You said it's not topical, but I think it is because Thor in God of War (that just came out) is fat!
And a muscly, fatter Thor would be great rep. for people like my husband whose very fit and eats well but still has a tummy. He always feels bad about it because there's this expectation he needs to be ripped with no fat. But like you said this is unobtainable to normal people who work 40+ hours a week with no spare money for a personal trainer or excessive time to work out.
Also not to mention the fact that fat on your body is not only normal, but acceptable and attractive! 😤
Brilliant video, I like that it handled both sides of it (ie increased cosplay access/cheap jokes). For me personally (and I promise this is not just to plug the comic, there is context) it is something that I have had to deal with and explore in the work I do. I had a period where I was practically starving myself and I had a friend say "You looked really good back then" not realising it was horrible. I have had to explain that I struggle with it because I don't want to go back to being obsessive, counting calories and generally not enjoying life. Don't get me wrong, if you can enjoy living like that in a healthy way, awesome, don't want to go to the other extreme either. I hope this comes through when I write about it. Anyway, terrific video and as usual a great take.
This is an awesome video, I'm a fat woman and i can assure you I'd love to hear you speak of fatphobia if you ever want to do it, cause you explain everything so well and are always so kind in the way you speak on subjects, so I don't mind if you wanna discuss this topic more!! love u 💕
It sounds like you have Hemsworth to thank for "Lebowski Thor" staying through the end of Endgame, from Variety May 28, 2019:
On set, Hemsworth called himself “Lebowski Thor,” a reference to the slacker played by Jeff Bridges in the Coen brothers comedy. “I like that anything goes,” Hemsworth says. “You’re not locked into expectations.” Originally, Thor was supposed to revert to his old self in the middle of “Endgame,” but Hemsworth fought to keep his pear-shaped body. “I enjoyed that version of Thor,” he says. “It was so different than any other way I played the character. And then it took on a life of its own.”
Imagine how seeing a more chubby Thor being still desired by Jane would have felt
I refused to watch fat Thor. The ads were horrific, and I didn't want to watch him belittled for being fat. I don't plan to ever see it, but if I'm evern with a group that chooses that movie to watch while we hang out, I probably won't leave.
Honestly,he looked more like well,Thor. I mean, in God of war,Thor is fat
Actors aren't the people they play. Jennette McCurdy didn't need to be exactly like Sam Puckett loving food in order to be good in that role, and she didn't want to act and was suffering with an eating disorder. I don't remember fat jokes in Dan Schneider shows but they aren't the worst thing to age badly in Dan Schneider shows if there are fat jokes.
Cried a bit at the "you are beautiful" this time, especially after recently my mother made a comment regarding my size (which is in parts due to depression, cliché or not), that you would have deleted here 🙈 much love!
I remember you mentioning the same exact thing in a previous video. It was mostly a passing comment but when I went to see Love and Thunder, I kept thinking about it the whole time about how cool that would have been. I genuinely felt it took something away from his character. Also, fun fact - I once read an article somewhere on the internet that said a majority of woman (it didn't further define the precise demographic of woman, so my guess is straight, cis) find the 'dad bod' sexier / sexually more arousing than 'god bod'. I still found it interesting. I have friends who confirmed. Make of that what you will.
Well, that make sense. The "godbod" is simply not realistic. Not only the Chris Hemsworths of this world have access to recourses most people don't, but a lot of how he looks in the movie comes down to movie making techniques. Like the actor not drinking water for the whole day, so the skin sticks tighter to the muscle, and the oil they put on them and who knows what else.
what people don't know???? is that in norse mythology? thor is fat always!
The way Shallow Hal had me thinking I was disgusting and undesirable..shame. Also, in that movie Tony Robbins is the one to hypnotize Hal into being less shallow and knowing what I know about him now, that makes no damn sense. He's a disgusting mysoginistic human and there's no way he doesn't see fat people as "less than"
End rant.
And thank you so much for this. Being fat means being the butt of every joke in society and its so used up and exhausting.
Thanks for this, You always treat these issues with a lightness of touch which is appreciated. As someone on the wider extreme end of the rotund spectrum. Over the years I've been as high at 650lbs and down to 280lbs( which sounds crazy to most, but I was this weight at 17 y/o so that was normal to me. I both liked and disliked fat Thor in the movies, because firstly its rare that people even bother to show how people can become fat and the associated pain that goes along with it at all in Hollywood.
His almost P.S.T.D like reaction to the events of his life, parents dying, lost his eye, had to kill his sister, watching his brother be murdered and finally his failure to stop Thanos from thumb snapping all combined to push Thor into a spiral of emotion and depression that I instantly recognized myself, and as someone who's been around other addicts my entire life (gambling, alcohol, drugs, food) its a pattern thats repeated with in millions. People looking to escape the pain through self medication even though its self destructive in nature. Once your in your in, only you can pull yourself out and many never do, it of course helps if others actively try to help.
Sadly even though they nailed dead on the reasoning behind why Thor ended up in this predicament they then just played it for laughs fat jokes and all which was depressing cringe worthy. Chris Hemsworth wasn't the problem at all, he played his part perfectly it was more the reaction of those around him especially Rhodey.
Commenting because I was thinking about the whale (which has since won awards) and also thinking about a discussion I had with my mom and partner after seeing that Brandon Frazier won best actor for the whale. I am saying this as a lean asian woman, but I sort of view fat suits and thin people depicting fatness on screen as similar to orientalism and yellow face in film. To me, it’s deeply disrespectful and insulting for someone of a more powerful group to depict the life and sometimes even culture of someone from an oppressed group. Especially when it’s done for comedy, to gross out the audience, or to just generally alienate the audience from the oppressed group.
It’s just.. gross and ugly and inhumane and narrow-minded and self-centered (my opinion) and to me it shows how lacking in thoughtfulness and compassion many people are. I’ve had people come at me for this opinion because Brendan Frazier is quite beloved, and I’m not necessarily blaming him-I’m sire he did the best he could with the script and role he was given- but just this in general, within the industry, is so gross and cruel.
Marvel has a history of erasing Thor's journey and experiences. Ragnarok let him grow - losing Mjolnir, cutting the hair, losing his eye. And Infinity War did a 180 on all of that. They did the same thing with his being fat. It turns all of these character-building moments and turns them into obvious plot devices.
As an overweight person myself, I have zero problems with actors using fat suits. Like, we cheer everytime someone refuses to lose weight for a role, so why double-standard with the opposite? Extreme body changes in short time-spans are not healthy, so I don't mind, if someone like Hemsworth didn't want to gain ton of weight to play fat Thor and then be back to his expected peak action movie star look in a month or two.
I do have other problems with Fat Thor, but all of them come from writing and Hemsworth's performance not allowing Thor to be taken seriously anymore, which is something that started in Ragnarok. And I have limited tolerance for lazy fat jokes in general.
Yeah makeup has always existed. I’d rather the makeup artist get a job than have the actor destroy his body.
I like Thor being a joke because to me he always was. Playing it more serious early on felt weird.
I suffer with daily debilitating migraines. I had no less than two neurologist tell me it my weight that is problem. Migraines have nothing to do with weight. I have lose weight in fact and my migraines are worst. so yes I feel you completely. I really can't see John Goodman seeing doing these bad roles.
Not only that but the Thor from the Norse myths also had a gut. It didn't get in the way of his feats of strength or his importance in those stories. If anything, Marvel could have given Thor the physique of a powerlifter rather than a bodybuilder, so he kept the huge muscles but could also have a layer of fat over them. Logically, it would make even more sense, since powerlifters work out in order to attain raw strength rather than a specific aesthetic.
Also, this is actually a discussion that I've seen on social media on multiple occasions: why does every superhero, especially male ones, have to look like bodybuilders when most of them would make a lot more sense having other body types, from athletes to powerlifters. Some of them would even make more sense if they didn't look like they went through physical training at all, especially the ones who have stronger supernatural abilities or relied more on them than on physical strength
They had to make Thor fat to visually convey that he's let himself go, because the alternative was too terrible to consider - it would never fly with the mostly male fanbase and could cause a huge backlash, more so than potentially making some fat viewers upset.
It would have been portraying Thor as skinny.
Y'all really need to get into M'Baku. The more love you show him, the more likely we are to get the superheroes that aren't chiseled, dehydrated bodies
There are only few things we know about thor. His hammer mjölnir has a very short handle, and he has a beard.
In before, I am talking about the actual god, not a comic character.
And he is strong,but also a glutton. The welsh vikings channel about god of war thor, that he is likely to have some weight, being a glutton , i mean norse sagas about the feasts as ceöebrated, and his infamous appitite.
I remember hearing some people being attracted to Fat Thor when Endgame came out. I would like to see fat characters in movies/tv depicted as sexy and desirable because that is true of people of all different shapes and sizes.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Thor from God of War Ragnorok as a more positive depiction for fat folks. He is glorious. 😘👌🏽 *chef's kiss*
Aaaaaand much closer, realistically, to what Viking warriors looked like than a protein-shake-and-chicken-breast-fed, 'roided up, dehydrated gym bro.
It's sad that in superhero comics, fat people are usually either depicted as comedic or as villains. In Thor's own movies, they had Volstagg, but he's comedic more than anything (and I believe his actor was in a bit of a fat suit--but overall they did thin down the character a bit for the movies) and the MCU version is dead now, anyways. Villains generally have it work because the design is part of them trying to make villains "ugly" or the like. Penguin is the one who seems the most organic in the design, as it helps him look more like a penguin and the character seems to be played less for comedy regarding his weight. You also get characters like Kingpin, who is intimidating and is not played for comedy, but he's also one where the narrative often has to constantly assure the consumer that it's muscle, not fat.
As far as main character fat superheroes in the comics, though, that is not as large of a list. I can think first and foremost of Zephyr from Valiant Comics' Harbinger, but that's not Marvel or DC at all.
When I was in the navy I weighed a solid 200 lbs. I found no need to workout 2-3 hrs a day when I got out. I gained 70 lbs and didnt really care for it. Thor was a character that helped through my feelings of inadequacy involving my weight. I now kickboxing to help with my girlish figure.
I didn't mind the fat suit on Thor for being a fat suit, but the entire framing of the thing STILL makes steam boil out my ears. He's broken! Look how fat he is! He's fat because he's broken! That's the joke, that none of them checked on him for five years and now he's broken and fat!
It's honestly kept me from even watching love and thunder.
Fat shaming and fit shaming are equally vile. I say this because the woman that I love as much as I love air might be described as fact, but she is, in fact, a very fit powerlifter.
As someone whose always dealt with weight and has dealt with clinical depression, I will always love the scene with the hammer. "I'm still worthy." It's a fabulous moment.
This reminds me of a video from last year, from The Welsh Viking's channel (he's a PhD student studying archeology of the Viking period, and also does historical reenactment), commenting on the video game franchise "God of War"'s depiction of Thor from the medieval sagas standpoint, and he makes the point that a Fat Thor is actually *more accurate* than the dehydrated bodybuilder look that Hollywood likes so much. (The video's title is: "Is God of War's Thor the WORST THOR?")
So a Thor with a belly is a canon depiction in at least two different franchises.
Oh the video talking about god of war thor , that is pretty good how thor usually represented, i mean the god, would probably be well not thin at all, still very fit and look like a heavy ringer. And yeah what mythological thor would look similar, as he is a glutton too
I am pretty sure part was to have a clearly not hemsworth thor doe copyright nonsense, of a norse deity. But yeah good representation, ragnarok thor.
Also god of war did him really well done, can you find just something more tasteful than a fatsuit.
Marvel does amazing deepfakes, can they just stop using fatsuits, pleaaase.
@@marocat4749 I also like Jimmy's point that a lot of our ideas of the gods come from Victorian idolizing the Greco-Roman ideals, and the gods of the Norse would naturally have a different body type, considering Scandinavia has a different climate than the Mediterranean (and also, that real-life strongmen and wrestlers are all big, with natural amounts of fat)
I have both of Thor’s hammers on my arms as tattoos bc this version of Thor. I was in such a familiar state, that I felt attacked by Endgame.
As a fat person, I loved this wonderful video, so thank you. Also, I wanted to say that I once went through a two-year depression. I took no joy in food so I lost 66 pounds. So yes, depression and weight gain do not always go together.
Hemsworth wanted to gain weight but the studio didn't let him. He fought the studio for Thor to keep his weight at the end, the studio wanted to magically make him skinny. Hollywood has a 6pack starvation fetish for male actors and I hate it. I found the youtuber The Costume Codex and I learned a lot about fat awareness and fat representation.
I can list ONLY ONE fat protagonist hero in media who gets to exist. Coop from the 2004 cartoon Megas XLR. He's not a joke, he's confident and happy.
You are so right about even medical professionals not looking past the weight. I am fortunate that most of my doctors acknowledge that my weight is more a symptom of my health issues than a cause. When I was undergoing tests to figure out a new problem, I was sent to a new specialist who, after being told that I was lucky to manage 1 meal each day, and several days a week I ate nothing, told me I was obese because I was eating too much!
Such an enlightening video! Thanks, Vera.
Yes, I'm a fat woman, and I wish I was not. But if the alternative is starving, or not eating whatever I like, no, thanks.
As a fat disabled person who has had to deal with a lot of grief for it-including struggling with internalized fatphobia and my share of medical fatphobia-I have to admit I hesitated when I saw this video. It was hard for me to start it, but because it was you I did, and I appreciate your viewpoints and the nuance in which you present positive attitudes towards fat Thor. Part of what made it difficult is that Endgame was a very upsetting experience for me, and I personally still have not watched Endgame since seeing it in theaters. The sole reason for this is how uncomfortable and upset I was about the depiction of Thor's fatness, along with the audience reactions to it.
I love the *idea* of a fat Thor, but the execution greatly upset me. There's the seed of a great narrative buried in the film, which is what you have so beautifully broken down here, and which many fat people watching picked up on, but I feel that it sadly fell short in execution. Which, honestly, I think might have been the intention. In my view, Marvel was trying to have it both ways. They wanted to exploit Thor gaining weight for cheap comedy (via framing, reactions from characters like Rocket and Tony, etc.), but then gain brownie points by throwing on the "but you're still worthy" at the end, similar to the way that (parent company) Disney will imply that, for instance, an already somewhat comedic character like Lefou in the live action Beauty and the Beast is gay by using hints at stereotypes, then throw in him dancing with a man for a half second at the end so they can get representation points. And it worked, to some extent. The packed audience in my theater roared with laughter the second a fat Thor appeared, and at all the jokes, and there are plenty of people that loved that we got a fat superhero who struggled with his depression.
(Note: While I would say the former group are definitely an issue, I in no way want to downplay how impactful having this representation of Thor has been for the latter group, or say that they are wrong for being happy with it, because they aren't; this is just me calling out Marvel because I don't think it was an accident that they included both bad and good representation.)
These are half measures from Marvel to try to appeal to both oppressor and oppressed, and for me that hurts almost even more than leaning into the offensive tropes would. Because it means that they *know* that it's harmful, but do it anyway, then get defensive and pretend they tried their best when we don't accept the crumbs they've thrown our way.
One of the other big reasons I just cannot get on board with Endgame's Thor is that the original intent WAS to have the scene at the midway point, when he finds out he's worthy, restore him to his muscle-y ripped self. It was Chris Hemsworth himself that fought to keep Thor fat for the finale, despite the script calling for otherwise. This completely undermines the only positive message of having Thor gain weight: That he is still worthy, despite his perceived failure. Because that says that someone who is a failure is fat, and someone who is not a failure isn't. It implies the fatness part of why the "still" modifier is required, like it's saying "despite failing and letting yourself go physically, you're still worthy." Even a charitable read that instead substitutes "depression" in that sentence for the "letting yourself go physically" is still bundling depression and fatness together, and stating that if you believe you're worthy, you won't be fat or depressed anymore.
Thor's spiral into depression is caused by his feelings of failure, and his perception of unworthiness stems from having a personal metric of worth that is affected by his level of success. If he couldn't stop the snap, then he is not worthy of being seen as a hero, and his whole life is turned on its head. This is a solid narrative, and fantastic to explore with the character. But the way they visually portray this is to show him having gained weight. Like you said, this does sometimes happen with depression. But in the narrative of this character arc-*especially* if we go with the original intent of having him return to his lean self when he realizes his own worth-what is serves to do is show us what THOR thinks (aka what Marvel thinks Thor would think) about what being a failure looks like, because it is then a manifestation of his perception. With the final version they went with, this is less explicit, but still present in tying the fatness to depression. And still, if it were handled tactfully, if the pacing, editing, and framing of the scenes had taken Thor's depression seriously, and literally anyone challenged the cruel jokes levied at Thor, it could have been a wonderfully nuanced look into the humanity and vulnerabilities of a literal god character. The filmmaking and characters could have made a clear statement, just in how they acted and treated Thor, about how how difficult depression and negative self-worth can be, and how cruel it is to mock, belittle, or ignore those that suffer and any unintentional side effects that may accompany that struggle.
Instead what we got was the movie's narrative itself encouraging us to laugh at Thor. It encouraged us to laugh at the verbal bullying of Thor at the hands of his best friends who *knew* this was a side effect of how deeply the initial confrontation with Thanos scarred him, who kenw that he had watched his brother get murdered (for real this time, and while trying to save what was left of Asgard, no less), and witnessed the genocide of his people. Dark humor and laughing at tragedy are fantastic for lightening a heavy subject, but laughing at the person suffering for how they're struggling and/or failing to cope themselves is appalling. And then portraying weight gain as one of the chief aspects of a failure to cope is just the cherry on top, because (like you said many times), it is leaning into the trope of fat=depressed and "if you're fat there must be something wrong". That Marvel *wanted* to have the fat disappear as son as Thor realized he was "worthy" only nails home the idea that he was fat because that was what being a failure looks like.
And I am glad you brought up "The Whale". I have talked extensively about "The Whale", actually often using both it and fat Thor at the same time as examples of how harmful and subtle fatphobia can be, though Thor is by far the more subtle of the two. I read through the original play "The Whale" is based on in a theater class in college, and it was absolutely awful. The worst kind of cautionary tragedy, where what is framed as the true tragedy isn't the loss of the main character's loved one, or losing a battle with mental health, but that this is a man who is eating himself to death. It upset me greatly then, and since my own weight gain due to the onset of chronic illness, it literally brought me to tears to see that *that* was the movie in which an actor I had dearly loved was going to be returning to the big screen.
Again like you pointed out, Thor being fat didn't make him a worse fighter/superhero in the closing to Endgame, so there was no reason at all to show him intentionally "getting back into shape" for Love & Thunder. I hadn't thought about that angle, and I appreciate you having done so. Him deciding that he liked being how he was, whether fat or lean, would have been so much more impactful. I honestly will have this as my headcannon going forward, because I don't really intend to watch anymore Thor films. I didn't care for Ragnarok because it seemed to decide it wanted to stop having its own tone, and instead be Guardians of the Galaxy, and while I overall liked Love & Thunder more than Ragnarok, it still missed the mark for me. I enjoy the MCU films on the whole; they've brought me a lot of joy over the years and I love Hemsworth as Thor. I just really wish that, if they felt it was absolutely necessary to have Thor gain weight for this arc, they had taken it seriously and given it as much thought as you have.
Edit: I just reread this and it is rambly as hell, so I apologize for that. It's hard to organize all of my thoughts and feelings on this subject, much less make a long comment coherent without just sitting down and writing a whole essay, and I am also on my phone so trying to make sure I have edited and not repeated myself too much is difficult. Unfortunately, I do not have the energy right now to rewrite it better. I'm sorry!
If anyone is interested in conversations like this I highly recommend The Big Fat Gay Podcast. It’s super insightful on society’s reaction to fat people and they have wonderful discussions like talking about Fat Thor and in December it sounds like they’ll be tackling The Whale too. It’s super funny, a bit teary eyed, but always wholesome.
Do we learn how Thor lost all that weight between movies? Because that’s not easy; in fact it can be extremely difficult.
I take it you haven't seen Love And Thunder? There's a sort of montage, story telling bit at the start that deals with that.
I like big thor🤩
It`s actually more true to how Thor`s described in Norse Mythology than the blond,blue-eyed,clean-shaven prettyboy the Germans and MARVEL turned him into.
@@1993MovieMan We demand crossdressing Thor slaughtering the giants!
Plus-Size Thor was great
@@andyt7295 Perhaps one day soon American society shall progress to allow such a glorious representation!
I’m very fat, no denying it, and honestly I find nothing more cringeworthy than the idea of “fat representation” or anything that is supposed to support body positivity this way, it’s just unnecessary. Everyone who wants to promote this idea of “body positivity” is never actually promoting it, it’s more just a mental health focus. Basically, people are fat, we know it’s not healthy, some of us are working to deal with it, others aren’t. That’s it. Thor being fat does as much as Thor being chiselled. Which is, nothing.