Tropes and Cliches

Formally Fat

So this is the polar opposite of Formally Fit, but important to talk about none the less, due to recent news from Netflix about a show where a girl loses a lot of weight and goes on a revenge spree. 

Now we've all loss weight for a number of reasons : a simple change in diet, health scares, summer bods, whatever. Now there is a massive difference between healthy weight loss and an eating disorder. Why is this am I talking about this? Well we come across characters that had a dramatic weight change at some point in their life.  There are some instances where part of a character's personality is driven by the fact that they were once overweight. Having a thin character revealed to have once been fat can tell you plenty about them. Mental health issues like depression can cause weight changes. Even self esteem issues can come into play. Hell, I was a bit overweight as a kids, but when I joined marching band I lost a lot of weight and it fluctuated for a while, but I'm a healthy weight according to my doctor. 

Any way,a formerly fat background is not always all sunshine and rainbows. It can also imply a lot of self loathing and damaged self esteem, too. Why? Well taking a cultural perceptive on things, there aren't many cultures in the word that see plus sized as beautiful. In the past ( only in certain cultural groups) if you had a bit of weigh on you, you were seen as rich. But then Europeans came and fuck shit up for everyone else. 

-Amy Wong from Futurama was a chubby as a child, and subject to many childish jokes from her parents. 

-Nazz from Ed, Edd n Eddy revealed to be chubby when she was younger. 

-Yuta of Kiznaiver is popular with girls and otherwise charming, but his biggest secret is that he was overweight as a middle schooler until he went on a diet.

But going back to the who mental health and self esteem part, a lot of formally fat characters we recognize were often the but of someone's jokes (going back to Amy). An episode of Law and Order SVU dealt with a girl who was sodomized and beaten. When they found the motive behind the attack, it turned out she herself had attacked and beaten an obese man (her own attackers being relatives of his taking revenge). She took part in victimizing the man because of her own self loathing and anger at herself for having once been like him. In another episode an overweight girl was bullied constantly. By the end of the episode, her bullies' karma took over and they landed in jail, but the bullied girl wound up killing someone because they made fun of their weight. 

That is on top of the other possible health issues that comes along with it (anorexia, bulimia,  diabetes[ yes. It's possible though I'm not sure how]) organ failure, black outs that could lead to concussions,etc.  Talking to your doctor about healthy weigh loss and not listening to the Kardashians is a start. But little things like replacing soda and junk foods with water and healthy options (or just cut back on how much is consumed is a start) can be a good first step.

I'll touch on revenge bodies later.