How To Fuck A Fat Chick
'Fat Monica' is the ghost that continues to haunt Friends 25 years afterwards
Fat Monica continues to be a polarizing figure, not simply in pop civilisation history but likewise in the show that created it.
Friends
Discussing the legacy of Friends can atomic number 82 to a lot of disagreement. Some praise it equally one of the funniest sitcoms of all time. Some dismiss it equally a Living Single rip-off. Some rightfully call out how white and homogenous information technology was for a show based in New York in the '90s. Some adopt to view the prove with rose-colored, nostalgic-tinged glasses. Some indicate out characters similar womanizer Joey (Matt LeBlanc) have certainly not aged well.
And speaking of characters from Friendsthat did not age well, "Fat Monica" is some other big point of contention for some fans. Endless think pieces accept explained why the graphic symbol was problematic. "Problematicness" is one matter, simply it's more authentic to say that Fat Monica is an intrinsic office of Friends'canon that it cannot seem to escape, even 25 years after.
Why is that?
Fat Monica is an incredibly lazy part of Friends' comedic relevance
Even if you overlook the fatphobia that follows this character around like a shadow, you'll find that the biggest problem with Fat Monica is how the show used her to garner cheap laughs in the laziest ways possible.
Everything from how the character was designed — à la the svelte Courteney Cox in a fat suit rather than an actual person who was, gasp, fatty — to how the character acted was greatly exaggerated to elicit laughs — and not much else. In an alternate opening sequence, Fatty Monica hops onto the gang's couch and virtually tips it over — and nosotros're supposed to laugh. Fatty Monica is often seen eating sloppily, wiping chocolate from her face, or licking powdered sugar from her fingers. In "The One That Could Have Been" a two-parter where Monica never loses weight in an alternate timeline, she remains a virgin for the longest fourth dimension (because apparentlyfat people didn't take sexual activity in the '90s?). And the testify plays up the character's hallmark neuroses for laughs when she is overly concerned with someone having sat on her Kit Kat bar (because beingness neurotic or struggling with OCD is complex…unless you lot're fatty) in the aforementioned episode.
Could the show have treated her meliorate? Certain. But that would accept deprived information technology of "reliable" laughs at the expense of a fictional fat character doing normal things like eating, dancing, or but living. Fat Monica worked in a horrendously offensive sense in that — in an era where SlimFast was popping, extremely thin models similar Kate Moss were I tgirls, and "heroin chic" was the prevailing manner trend — popular culture fed a hysteria over being or condign fatty. And Fat Monica allowed people to have those anxieties about fatness, projection them onto the graphic symbol, and laugh at them. And be comfortable in laughing because whatever happened, they would neverbe as fat, sloppy, and socially inept as "Fat Monica."
The "Fat Monica Dance" is a wildly of import example of this
Nostalgia chasers volition remember her trip the light fantastic toe as "cute" or "adorable," simply that'south not exactly the case. On one hand, Fat Monica appears to be unbothered and unconcerned with people staring at her while she dances, which itself would be great, simply her dancing is played for laughs and is normally done with some type of nutrient in mitt — famously a donut. A scene that could have been used to demonstrate that Fat Monica was cool and confident regardless of living in a fatphobic order instead becomes another example of Friends'lazy approach to fatness every bit comedy. Information technology morphs into a recurring gag of, "Hey, await at this fat person MOVING. Come watch her make funny faces! And her fat jiggle! Hilarious!" It's ugly, specially in a 2019 context, but to be clear, it was e'er ugly, and that "dance" continues to be a litmus examination on determining how much the general public finds joy and hilarity in laughing at and ridiculing fat people.
What is likewise ugly is the fact that this character is weaved into other parts of the series by being the thing that normal (read: skinny) Monica is repeatedly slapped over the head with. Fifty-fifty outside of increased appearances in flavor 2, the balance of the Friends ensemble continuously revisit Monica'southward fat past, unearthing home videos to kiki at and, in more extreme cases like Ross pointing out that she used to be fat equally some sort of Yu-Gi-Oh! trap carte du jour (like his recurring nightmare of her eating him and her manifestly crushing a equus caballus) when he thinks she's gotten the meliorate of him. Joey, who never knew Fat Monica famously shouts, "Some daughter ate Monica!" at one of these videos in "The One With The Prom Tape." And while it'south played for laughs, it unintentionally makes some very important points.
Monica's character trajectory plays directly into the dreaded "Reformed Fattie" trope and positions Fat Monica equally the "bottom" version of Monica
It is unfathomable to people like Joey that Monica existed and would have certainly eaten "the existent" Monica if she had. In "The One With All the Thanksgivings," a young Monica and Chandler (Matthew Perry) finally encounter and though she develops a crush, she is put off past him when she overhears his disgust at her weight so gets "revenge" on him a year later on by losing weight and finally revealing herself as — what the show deems — an bonny woman.
Credit: Danny Feld/NBCU Photo Bank
Barring the absurd (but relatable) quest to lose weight then that a human can run across you equally fully (and attractively) human, it's a grim demonstration that even her friends and family unit didn't value her until she was no longer fatty and thus "normal." This is aggravated by the fact that information technology's as well her so-called friends that deem it appropriate to routinely use her fatty past as some sort of "gotcha" against her soon skinny cocky. Thus, Friendsaccidentally demonstrates how fatphobia and fatty-shaming are used as forms of control and regulation regarding beauty and specifically respectwhere cis women are concerned.
Information technology didn't thing how much skinny Monica had grown. And it didn't matter that she was ironically the aforementioned assured, uptight, competitive, and caring person that she was even every bit Fat Monica. Information technology didn't even matter that in an alternate timeline, she would take supposedly ended up with Chandler fifty-fifty with her being fat. Her beingness fat, to begin with, and the show's treatment of it, still lingers like a putrid stench or an unshakable specter in the background of the show, telling us — with the aid of a express joy runway — that being fat is a disqualification for basic human decency, but does sure make for a practiced laugh.
And that'southward something Friendshas to alive with.
Related content:
- An exclusive wait at the making of Friends
- Here'due south why Monica's apartment walls were purple on Friends
- Friends: A-to-Z Guide
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Source: https://ew.com/tv/2019/09/04/fat-monica-friends-25-years-later/
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