Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You. Sofie Hagen

thing, in a lot of ways.^fn15 Diversity on TV is important and the show touched upon many important topics such as race, sexism, feminism, family, morality and so on. Which is probably why it hit me right in the chest when this scene happened.

      Aziz’s character Dev goes on ten dates with ‘different kinds of women’. And boy, are they different. There is, for example, a thin, young, nondisabled, femme brown woman, a thin, young, nondisabled, femme blonde woman, a thin, young, nondisabled, femme brunette, I mean, the list goes on. It was so freeing to see Dev date all the women on the front covers of all of the magazines. It is refreshing to see just how many versions of essentially the same woman exist. And it is far from the worst example on TV. But when you zoom out – and look at the two seasons in total – there are two fat people in the entirety of the show. There is a scene where the character Dev and the woman he is on a date with see a fat person walk into a restaurant, and conclude that therefore the food must be good. And there is a three-second scene where a fat woman climbs on top of a man, who tries desperately to get out from underneath her.

      When a show that is trying to do the right thing, trying to be diverse and inclusive, fails to include, it somehow hurts more than when an obviously oppressive show does the same.

      Hollywood is so full of thin, white women that it is hard to comprehend. There are whole films I have not been able to enjoy because I found it impossible to tell the two lead women apart. Tall, thin, blonde, symmetrical faces. At least give one of them a hat or a different haircut, Hollywood.

      Hollywood feels like such a closed, glamorous exclusive place that I was surprised they allowed me to go there a few years ago. I simply bought a plane ticket and when I landed, I was in Hollywood. I think I had expected someone at the airport to measure my thighs and then send me to a lesser Hollywood. B-Hollywood. Paul Hollywood. But I went. To do meetings. Meetings, in my industry, often means meeting with people who tell you that they adore you, that they love all of your stuff and that they can’t wait to work with you, after which you never hear from them again. There is a lot of networking – which is you dropping hints about how successful you are and how well you are doing but also how you are actually pretty free at the moment to be in lots of television. I have always been quite rubbish at this. My manager knows this so he decided to come with me to Hollywood to sit in on all of these meetings