What goes best with a pig in lipstick?

A pig in heels.

This is the picture that accompanies Details’ feature story, Why Fat Is Back in Hollywood. Who’s “fat,” according to the article? Catherine Zeta-Jones, Drew Barrymore, Rachel Weisz, Kate Winslet, Scarlett Johansson, Liv Tyler, and “an increasingly curvy Mandy Moore.” Yeah, real heifers, those gals. Now, I’ve got no problem with a story that celebrates women who don’t starve themselves into a skeletal form devoid of feminine curves (and naturally thin women, please don’t think I’m hatin’ on ya—I’m referring to the women we can all name who have, before our eyes, replaced an already slim form with a gaunt hollowness reminiscent of Holocaust victims). But likening Liv Tyler to a pig in heels to claim that “fat is back,” when fat was never “in” in the first place, is utterly asinine. “Boobs are back,” maybe.

Just last night I mentioned the lack of actresses who could truly be described as fat. Dawn French, Kathy Bates, Queen Latifah, Camryn Manheim, Marisa Winoker, Della Reese, Dianne Wiest—these are fat girls, but the closest you’ll get to an A-list fat girl is Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit. And it irritates me that I’m expected to pretend otherwise.

Now, I’m not going to get into some big discussion of gender disparity—how Alec Baldwin can increasingly thicken and still get a lead role on a new network sitcom, while the brilliant Kathleen Turner is forgotten, for example—but I’d just like a modicum of perspective on what “fat” really means.

This is what a fat girl looks like.














Not everyone has to find her beautiful, or any other fat girl for that matter, any more than everyone has to find any thin girl beautiful, or anyone in between. Taste is taste, and a preference for thinness is as viable as a preference for a big round ass and boobs. But let’s not call women fat who aren’t, which does a disservice to them and to real fat girls, by ignoring their existence. Fat is not "back in,"and by substituting as evidence that is someone like Liv Tyler for a true fat girl, it only perpetuates the invisibility of genuinely fat women.

And, for the record, this pig wears sneakers.