Portrayals and Pitfalls of Fatness in Games

[Music] This is my talk. You can see its title right there. So, I'm not going to read it out loud, but I am going to say my name because, as I said, I'm a raging eoomaniac. Uh, my name is Todd Harper. I'm currently a visiting professor at the University of Baltimore where I teach in the program simulation and digital entertainment, which is a mouthful. Uh, and I'm here to talk to you about portrayals and pitfalls of fatness in games. Game games. Uh just to give you a couple disclaimers, there's not a lot of triggery stuff in this talk, but I do discuss some fat phobia and other problem things. So just to forewarn things that may bother you. Um, also I tried to bring up as much intersectional stuff as I could, but a lot of the examples and uh topics that I'm thinking of came from my life where I identify as abled, cis, gay, male, and obviously uh so now you know, but just keep in mind, right, that the impact of all the things that I talk about can change

depending on lots of different like confluent identity stuff. you know, whether or not you're you identify in any range of the gender spectrum, sexuality, etc., etc. So, what's up? I love this shirt. And when I gave a version of this talk at Gamer X last summer, the people who made this shirt were like, "Our shirt was in a talk at Gamer X." That made me feel really good. Uh, so before we go anywhere in this talk, what do I even mean by fat? Uh, generally speaking, at least in terms of what I'm going to talk about, I mean obese rather than muscular. Uh, whoop, sorry. Uh, muscular has its own set of potential problems, especially people who are kind of like really heavy, like a a range of muscularity that we consider quote abnormal unquote. Also, warning, I use rabbit quotes/air quotes to talk about things that aren't really true a lot. Uh, muscular has its own problems. Trust me, it really does. Um, but generally speaking, the stigma towards muscular bodies is not the same as the stigma that gets attached to fat

bodies. So, in general, I'm not talking about muscular bodies. Uh, also, please remember our cultural ideas about bodies impact people that even aren't fat, which we'll talk about later. So, so what is this talk not about? I am not here to make you change your views on your body. Bam. I'm not here to make you go, I super wish I was fat at the end of this talk. Um, if that's where you are and you're happy with that, cool. I'm really pleased for you. But like, I'm not here. This isn't a conversion thing, right? Just please set that aside. I'm not here to change what bodies you're attracted to if you're not into fat people. That's fine. That's a thing. That's okay as long as you respect them as people. Uh, on the other hand, I am pretty freaking adorable. So, if you have some sort of inexplicable urge at the end of the talk, it's it's just a power I have. Um, and also, I'm not really here to shame or blame any particular game or dev. Uh, these are like pervasive, insidious cultural

things that hit all of us, even on a subconscious level. So, I'm not here to like call a whole bunch of people out, even though I have very specific examples from some games. What is this talk about? It's about cultural attitudes. It's about what we think about bodies, specifically fat bodies. But, as I said, it all loops around. um some mistakes and problems that we make when we make characters for games in particular, but also sometimes storylines and ideas and uh some ways that we can maybe rethink how we talk about bodies to dial down some of that problematic stuff. Uh here's the entire talk in one slide. Spoiler alert. We are three minutes in. Here's the whole talk. Everyone, regardless of their body type, deserves to feel good about their body and not be the victim of abuse or shame, intentional or otherwise. Congratulations. Go home. Talk's over. Uh, so why are people like this? I made the really stupid mistake

of googling the phrase, "Why is it okay to hate people?" Um, uh, if you pick up my slides on the vault later, uh, because we make them available, you can click these links. I'm not going to go through them, but that top blog from Matt Walsh where he says, "It's not about shaming people. I don't want to shame people. Nobody should be shamed, but here's all the reasons that being fat is shameful." Thanks, bro. Uh that trivia.com story where the 10 things I hate about fat people. One of them is why is when did fat become a dirty word? And I'm like the start of this story. Uh The Atlantic had a really great story about um the case for shaming fat people tastefully. So, you know, did do you ever feel bad about your body? Well, you should. Uh, no. Uh, and finally, um, Dan Savage, who just notoriously threw fat people under the bus to make a case for samesex marriage, which as a fat gay guy, I was like,

uh, I was not pleased with that. He's basically like, well, if gay people can't get married because they don't make because they wouldn't have kids, which some do, so shut it. uh including Dan Savage, right? Um then maybe we shouldn't let obese people marry cuz obesity is like contain I don't know whatever just click the link. It's stupid. Dan Savage can go [ __ ] himself. Sorry. Uh the problem is that we get these pervasive attitudes and myths, right? That fat is always ugly, right? You could never feel attractive or uh or just good about how you look if you're fat, right? Uh that fat people deserve anything they get, right? Like the idea of you did it to yourself. If you just stopped eating or if you just exercise or whatever, then I wouldn't be such an [ __ ] to you all the time. Uh that fat people need you to intervene. I'm assuming that's the logic behind the guy when I lived in Milwaukee and took walks in my neighborhood for exercise decided to follow behind me in

his car with some of his friends chatting fat insults at me and what and at one point trying to run me off the sidewalk. I mean, I'm guessing he thought I didn't know. I was like, "Hey, you're fat." I'm like, "Congratulations, you win." Uh, there's lots of other different examples, right? Like the fact that um doctors will frequently blame anything that happens to a fat person about their health on their weight, even if it's not even remotely related. So fat people will have a demonstrated tendency to avoid medical care which then increases complications for things that have nothing to do with their weight. So actual demonstrable health negative impact because of fat shaming by the medical profession. How messed up is that? Um of shaming fat people helps them, right? It's just like, well, if I make them feel really bad about their body, they'll lose weight, and then they'll be more in line with how I think their body should be instead of how they think their body should be.

H uh there are links to stories debunking all of this nonsense. Uh they're all by Melissa Mcuan, who blogs at Shakesville, um has really great uh uh series of blog posts called Fastronauts. That's kind of a 101 level. here's all the things you think about fat people and here's all the reasons that they're all wrong. Um that third link and the this this and this is just uh fat people need you to tell you that they're fat and her answer was just no. That's the whole post by the way. Uh so we have some problem associations that come out of those myths, right? Fat automatically feels gluttonous or selfish or insatable, right? Like mediated portrayals of fat pill is always you can't stop eating. You always want to eat. Food is your whole life, right? And that's why you're fat is because you can't stop eating. um that we're lazy, right? Because the assumption is, well, if you exercise, then you're not fat anymore. So, if you're fat, then you're not exercising, so you're just lazy, right? Circular logic. Uh that we're delusional, right? Especially about our attractiveness, cuz remember, fat automatically equals ugly.

So, if you're fat and you think you're attractive, then you're delusional because you're automatically ugly, right? Uh and that it's just considered ugly, unattractive by other people. Media portrayals kind of reinforce this over and over. fat characters are frequently villainous or evil. And for male IDing characters, it also crosses over with kind of homophobia and fem phobia, too. Um, this is a really specific example, but any fans of Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS, remember the character Excelis, who's kind of just this like big hulking guy with very feminine features who's just as evil as humanly possible, right? Because it's so othering, right? How do we let them know he's evil? Well, we can make him fat and look like a lady. Uh, fat characters are often the punchline, right? Or the victim. Uh, does anybody remember the movie Shallow Howal? Uh, that's another one of those double deuce situations. Sorry. Um, right. So, it's their it's their body is our punch

line, right? It's that something bad happens to them, but haha, they're fat. That's just funny, right? Um, and the common goal of a fat character is usually not being fat anymore, right? the diet storyline or the exercise storyline is a huge deal. The Biggest Loser is a television show entirely based on that. Right. So, let's talk about fat characters in video games. Uh, not always the best history. When I first made these slides, I didn't even realize that King Hippo and Wario were doing the same gesture. So, that was kind of fun. Uh, if you don't recognize these characters, it's King Hippo from Punch Out, Wario from basically everything. uh fat princess and groggas from League of Legends. Can I just say I'm going to get this out of the way. Can we not do this anymore? The fat character with the offensive fart mechanic. Uh offensive in lots of ways. Look, I'm not against a good fart joke, right? If you've ever played Zoe Quinn's realistic dating simulator, that is a weaponized fart joke and it's

amazing. Uh but that's not what this is. These are all just kind of built on this idea that these characters are gross and offsetting or off-putting or offsetting. I guess maybe that they're gross and off-putting, right? And their their bodies are gross and so they attack with their gross. Oh god, no. Just stop. Stop. Don't do that anymore. Okay, so now I'm going to show you a short video. [Music] It's you. Can I help you? [Music] K masters. I told you I've got the wrong guy. Don't play. You think you can't beat

them? Join them and pick up a cool body like mine. [Music] Uh, so does anybody recognize that? It was a promo trailer for Street Fighter cross Tekken from a few years back which actually came out around a GDC time. Those characters were Bob from Street Fighter 4 and Rufus or guess who's going to get letters from the fighting game community about that. Bob from Tekken and Rufus from Street Fighter 4. Um, and they're kind of complicated characters for me as fat characters. Uh, and I thought there would be maybe a good intro to some of the stuff we're going to talk about. So, here's the good part, right? Bob and Rufus are really highly skilled martial artists, right? And Rufus in particular is a martial artist who uses a style that is not necessarily like a big guy style, right? He's not a wrestler. He's not a sumo. Uh, something like that. He uses kind of Bruce Lee

inspired kung fu, right? It's very acrobatic. And of course, if you listen to them, if you listen to the developers give interviews about Rufus, they talk about how they wanted an inongruous character, right? And so like, well, he's fat, but he kung fu, right? So, but it is kind of cool. Um, they're not joke characters, right? Like when Street Fighter 4 came out, he was actually a very strong character in terms of that game's play. He was used in highle competitive play. Um, and they seem pretty okay, pretty comfortable with their bodies. It's not like Bob wins a fight and then goes, "Wow, I should really lose a lot of weight." Right? Um, however, there are some downsides to Rufus and Bob. Rufus is pretty much seen as delusional, right? That whole shtick right there is that Rufus Rufus' deal is that he thinks he's a rival to Ken Masters, who's kind of like a typical hot American blonde, right? Um, and so he thinks every blonde guy he sees who's a fighter is Ken Masters and he confuses Bob for Ken Masters, which blah blah blah. Then they fight.

It was probably hard to hear that he said during the fight like uh when Bob says, "You've got the wrong guy." Rufus says, "No, you thought you can't beat him. Join him, so you got a cool body like mine." Right? The punchline there is that we're looking at Rufus going, right? So any self-esteem he has is kind of viewed as a product of of self-d delusion rather than him actually having good self-esteem or actually rather deserving good self-esteem. Right. Um Bob as a character got fat on purpose in the Tekken backstory. Uh he felt like he needed more of a challenge so he made it harder for himself. Right. Uh, although hilariously, there is a side character named Slim Bob, which is Bob as a thin guy who is incapably weak. I actually think that's pretty great. Um, that Bob, non-fat Bob, is actually useless. Um, and Bob's moves are named after food. Don't do this. Fat people think about

things other than food all the time. Like, I don't know. Right now, I'm thinking about nervousness and giving a GDC talk. uh to talk about fat women in games for a bit. Fatness and body image policing for women have this whole second layer that malecoded characters don't have, right? And it mostly kind of centers around this idea of women's bodies as a thing that men possess or want to possess. And so they have to be attractive to um to an imagined heteromale gaze, right? And since fat always equals ugly, attractive means thin, right? Uh, and often fat women are reduced to their need to be thin and then that's the defining characteristic of themselves, right? Like I need to be thin so I can be hot or whatever, right? And men can kind of get away with being fat in a way that women characters often can't. I call it the sitcom effect. Like watch a lot of late 80s, 90s, even early 2000s sitcoms in the US and you'll see

lots of kind of not hegeimmonically attractive, sometimes pretty hefty guys who are married to like supermodel hot wives, right, on sitcoms because we can't have a non-hot slash fat woman on TV, right? But a guy meh, right? It kind of all circles around this idea of women women being objectified reduced to being possessive objects that thus need to be thinned. Um, Shadows of the Damned literally does everything wrong you could possibly do, uh, with a side character named Justine Dangelo, who is an opera singer who's very, very large. Um, I was going to play some of this video, but actually the language in it is pretty triggering even for me, so I'm gonna skip it. You can watch it on your own if you want. Um, but her story is about how she's a fat opera singer. Everyone loves her, but she doesn't love herself. She thinks she's too fat. She wants to be thinner. Uh, there's a patron who really loves her and is trying to convince her that

she is attractive, but she rejects him all the time. Um, so he leaves her and then she kills herself in order to become thin, right? And the game then presents her as this wild shrieking man-killing harpy who's now thinned, but she's also like an undead succubus or something. So that was the that's what she gets, right? Um, so all of these things, right? She's fat shamed. She they make frequent jokes about her being bulimic, which are really gross. Like eating disorders are a serious thing. Don't make jokes about those. Um, the fat auto equals ugly. uh they make fun of the guy who's attracted to her because the idea of him being attracted to her is thus delusional, right? And it validates her self harm in the pursuit of being thin, right? There's Fat Princess, right? She's literally the ball in that game. If Fat Princess were soccer, she is the ball. That's not cool, right? And they kind of conflate this link between, oh, we have

to make her fat, so you can't carry her, right? But there's also this kind of underscoring tone of but you wouldn't want her either, right? Uh she's actually a playable character in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. I think that's the whole name of that game. Um and it's diffused a bit where she gets some agency. She's actually a playable character. But on the other hand, she also has an attack where she kills people by running through them because she's trying to reach a slice of cake. And most of her attacks actually involve summoning like the the the actors from Fat Princess and just so terrible. Um, fat characters of color and queer characters. These types of characters are already so rare in AAA games that finding intersectional fat versions of them is actually quite a challenge. Um, when we do find them, what do we see? We see sumo guy, right? When do you generally see fat Japanese male characters in pop culture? sumo guys, right? We also see the big bald black guy um in the sense that often black

male bodies are portrayed as kind of like hulking, right? Which sometimes vacasillates between muscular and fat. It's a little weird. Um but it's also kind of a way to dehumanize their bodies, right? It strips away their humanity by making them kind of weird and otherred instead of just treating them as having a range of different body types, right? Uh, the very few examples of women of color that were fat I could find tended to be older women. Um, old lady Sheraki from Persona 4, right, who owns the store. And when the in Persona 4 Golden when it turns to nighttime, right, she puts on a jewel tone dress and she has what a friend of mine called drag queen makeup, right? Like she she's a joke at our expense, right? Like why would an old fat woman want to look sexy and attractive? She shouldn't be sexy and attractive. She's an old fat woman, right? Wampwamp. Uh, Plum Kataki. I have not actually played Apollo Justice, but I'm I'm told she's actually kind of a great character. Uh, she's a former I

think a former Yakuza boss or something of that stripe. But she's kind of also this big, stoutly built, redoubtable mom, right? And it seems like the mom is when it's okay for for women to be fat characters, right? Because they don't need to be sexually attractive anymore. Please note the quotes. Right? So once the mom does not need to be attractive to men anymore, it's okay if she fills out, right? That's another part of our weird cultural association. Uh pandarin and World of Warcraft are really interesting example. They're this weird pan-Asian fusion orientalist thing where they're like this mishmash of lots of different Southeast Asian cultures that are never named. Um they're kind of the species stand in, right? And they're pandas. Come on. Uh they're pretty much all portrayed as gluttonous drunkards, right? Like they love to eat and they love to drink, especially beer. Uh the males in particular play into this jolly fat guy stereotype where everyone

expects the the fat guy who likes to eat and he's just whole like that Santa thing just oh god don't do that. Thank you. Uh and also there's some intersection with disability too. uh you know disabled characters are rare enough in the AAA space that these are also pretty infrequent but there's a very persistent stereotype right of um kind of big hulking characters that have some sort of perceived mental disability right the idea that they're just kind of both large and slow and it's weird it's very weird uh probably a good example of this would be um Michael Clark Duncan's character in the green mile uh who als also as a black body, right? A black male body where you get all of this stuff kind of lumped together, right? That's more common than you might think. So, I want to talk about some ways that we can actually maybe improve. Uh, I want to talk about Ellie from Borderlands 2. Uh, she's actually really

great. She's a side character. She's an NPC character, but she has a lot of great qualities, right? She's smart. She's self-sufficient. She's able to live on her own in this really dangerous area of the Borderlands world. Um, she's freely sexual and flirty, right? She owns her body. She constantly refers to herself as hot or attractive and nobody really questions her on that, right? So, she's just like, "Hey, how you doing?" Right? Uh, also, if you've never heard her voice actor before, good times. Um, she has no issues with her body type at all, right? She constantly just feels good about herself and that's really great and affirming. And she's defined by her body in the sense that it's really visual, right? So, it's kind of impossible to deal with her in a visual way and not have it be in your frame, but she's not limited by her body, right? Everything she does, she can do no matter what her body type would be. Uh, kind of the problem that happens with Ellie is the context of the game doesn't always support her in ways

that it could. Um, she's the only character of her model type in the entire game, right? Um, there are no other fat characters in Borderlands. Uh, which is kind of a big deal because it turns her into the unicorn, right? It's just like, well, she feels really good about herself and there's literally only one of her anywhere. Uh, also, nobody in game really thinks of her as attractive or says that she's attractive except her biological brother. So, that's a little weird. So, again, it kind of codes her self-love and her self-esteem as slightly delusional, right? Like, she's into her, but nobody else is, so why should we care? Um, plus, Borderlands is a comedy game, right? And everything is a joke in a comedy game. So, it's kind of impossible to get away from the idea that she's a joke in some small way. Um, her mom is Moxy, who, if you've never played a Borderlands game, is kind of the stereotypical sex bomb, right? So they then have this link between stereotypical hot woman gives has this

kind of, you know, really big fat lady who's, you know, good with herself, but they they're juxtaposed in a really weird way. Uh, who here has played Pokemon X or Y? Who here loves the hell out of Tiero? Well, you should have more hands up, damn it. Uh, this is Tiero. He's a side character in Pokemon X and Y. Um, he's great in a way I would not have expected when I played that game. Uh, he's clearly okay with his body. His friends don't comment on it, right? Like he's one of your characters closest friends. And so he pops up, you know, time and time again in the game, but you know, he's nobody's ever just like, "Oh, Tro, you're such a good friend. I kind of wish you would lose some pounds, though." Right? Like that never happens. Um, he's into a physical thing that might be kind of a challenge for a person of her size. He's a dancer, right? and his whole Pokemon goal is that he wants to make a Pokemon dance team um of so his Pokemon are all the Pokemon that have dance in their move set of some kind. It's actually kind of

fantastic, right? But um uh but he's clearly good at it and his friends encourage him to do it, right? They don't treat his desire as weird or abnormal or tell him, "Well, you could be a dancer, but you're fat, so sorry." Right? Um so he is kind of he's a he's a bigger character. is a fat character, but it's not his defining characteristic, which is really important. And finally, I want to talk about the Lady Boss. Uh, if you've never played a Saints Row game, I'm a huge fan of the Saints Row series, and their character creator actually gives you a lot of different options for body type, size, kind of you can really customize your body uh pretty well in Saints, at least Saints the third and Saints Row 4. Um, creative avatars kind of have their downsides, too, right? The player isn't forced to inhabit a body that's different than theirs, but if you're a person who's not used to seeing your body in games, it's kind of a huge boon to be able to do that. And, uh, so you

kind of get to play around with this body that you inhabit while you're playing the game. Uh, this is my lady boss. Uh, which is also, if you follow me on Twitter, my brand, hashtagbr. Uh, and I I love her. like I kind of made kind of this big hefty red-headed woman who is is another me in kind of a tiny way. Uh she's my way of living the dream, which is to wear anything I want whenever I want. If you've never shoed for clothes as a fat person before, being fat means shopping at specialty places. Um having kind of a limited range of styles and colors, you're often paying a huge markup. Uh you kind of have to make do. And in Steelport and Saints Row, I can wear whatever I want, whenever I want. It always looks fantastic, and that's amazing. So, kudos to you, Volition. Uh, give you an example. Here's my lady boss wearing a few outfits. And here is me as my lady boss wearing a few of those outfits. I own one of those, and I'm not going to tell you which one.

Uh, just to sum up, a lot of what we see of fat characters in games kind of reinforces these existing stereotypes in other media like film and TV where fat characters and fat people are lazy, greedy, food obsessed, glutton. Um, and if they like themselves, then they're delusional, right? Like they how could you possibly like yourself because being gay is already always terrible. Um, so what can game Wow, that's small text. So what can games do? Give us a space where our body type maybe just doesn't matter for five seconds, right? Like I'm not going to lie. I leave the house and somebody shouts some sort of fat joke at me from the street as a total stranger pretty much every day of my life and that's been since I was a teenager and I am almost 40, right? So that sucks a lot. Uh maybe don't do that in your game. Uh maybe instead tell a respectful or supporting narrative. Have a fat character who's not like I really need to diet. Have a fat character who's just like I really want to find a sequin

dress that looks awesome on me. Um, don't reinforce all these negative cultural ideas. Right? If you're thinking, uh, well, I need to make a character who's really gluttonous, like really selfish. I should make him a big fat guy. No, stop that. Um, just think about what you're associating, right? Like, question your associations for 5 seconds. Um, and just don't make us the unicorn. Just don't have the one fat person in the whole world. That sucks because a lot of fat people sometimes feel that way, right? Like you have this internal feeling of I'm the only person in the world who just feels gross and terrible about myself every time and everyone else is really pretty and life sucks, right? That's how people can often feel in real life, so maybe don't replicate that in the game. And if you're thinking all of these suggestions are also good ways to represent other aspects of diversity, that's not a coincidence. Also, just remember that our body image ideas about fatness hurt thin people, too, right? Like being fat often feels

like the worst thing you could possibly be. And thin people's reactions to things like food and exercise are based on this fear of becoming fat that is irrational and terrifying, right? Um, for example, if you're sorry, if you're a thin person, it's perfectly reasonable to want the body you want, right? If you feel fat and you want to lose weight, cool, because I want you to have the body that feels good for you. But if you're really thin and you're standing next to me and you go, "Oh my god, I look so fat." I swear I will body check you into the street. You don't mean any harm by it because you're just thinking about your body, but then me, I'm just like, "Oh, okay. So, your greatest fear is that you're going to look like this, right? That makes me feel terrible. Um, please don't do that." And this focus on thin being beautiful is at the root of like lots of eating disorder problems and body dysmorphia issues and stuff with real

important real life consequences. Right? So please don't think that caring about the representation of fat people only helps fat people. It helps everybody. Uh and just remember thin people and thinness are not the enemy. Thin people are fine. Some of my best friends are thin people. Um, [Applause] so it's okay. I can say whatever I want about them, right? Uh, thin people are not the enemy, but body norms that treat fatness as the enemy are the real problem. Uh, so with further ado, thank you for coming. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]