How Remarkably Unremarkable!

by Shaker PlusSizedWomanist, a young, plus-sized woman of color and full-time college student studying nursing, who most definitely plans on incorporating HAES into every single care plan she makes.

[Trigger warning for discussion of body size and fat hatred.]

Below is the newest Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer, titled "There's a Soldier in All of Us." Now, normally, I wouldn't find this video remarkable, seeing as how I can't play first-person shooter games to save my life, but there is one specific part that stood out to me like nothing I'd ever seen:

Location: A war zone. Scene 1: View of helicopters flying in the background in a worn down area. Scene 2: A young black woman wearing a gray business suit is shown walking away from an explosion holding a semi-automatic machine gun, aiming at unknown assailants. Scene 3: Two men drop down hanging in suspension, shooting machine guns at unknown assailants and then drop down even further. Scene 4: A young woman wearing glasses and a purple button-up shirt shooting at a door to possibly open it and then moves to the side as her female friend kicks down the door and and a young black male wearing hospital scrubs throws a grenade into the room. Scene 5: A male construction worker in a helicopter shooting at unknown assailants, and a man in the building being shot uses a rocket launcher to bring down the helicopter. Scene 6: An older bald man hides behind a pillar, struggling to get a cell phone out as Kobe Bryant runs in, shooting at a military Jeep, causing it to explode. Another man springs up and shoots another military Jeep, and it also explodes, causing a running young man wearing a jersey to tumble forward in the blast. Bryant smiles at the sight and shoots out at another man, who is brandishing a shotgun. Scene 7: The camera goes into first person view through the eyes of the aformentioned shotgun brandishing man, and then goes to a view of Jimmy Kimmel struggling to get to his feet, aim a rocket launcher with the words "proud noob" inscribed on it, and shoots. Scene 8: A man wearing a diner employee outfit is shown walking away from an explosion, shooting two pistols to the side. The screen pans out to show the battlefield. It pans back in to the diner employee dropping his empty pistols, with the screen reading "There's a soldier in all of us." Scene 9: The cover of Call of Duty: Black Ops is shown.

Can you guess what scene stood out to me? You can't if you didn't/couldn't watch the video, because I left something out of my description.

Scene 4. Twelve seconds into this trailer. What makes this scene remarkable is the fact that this young purple button-up shirt wearing woman is a FAT woman. *gasp*

And no, I'm not talking about the BS "Anything over a size 4 is considered fat" drivel that America's Next Top Model and the like purports. No folks. I mean a VISIBLY FAT WOMAN is being shown in this video. Somebody get the smelling salts. I'm sure we're gonna need them.

Because guess what else? There was nothing derogatory mentioned about her. She was treated as an equal human being, as an essential part of the team effort to find whatever fictional video game perpetrators that stood in their way. Fat hatred has permeated our culture so much that to see fat people being shown as something other than the stereotypical headless fatty, or the fat person who is so deep in self loathing and self hated, the fat person who is continually apologizing for even THINKING of existing while fat; to see ANYTHING other than that is an amazing feat.

It is sad that this is something that extraordinary. But right now, I'm cheering my butt off for the badassery of this purple shirt wearing fat girl brandishing a shot gun, because she's showing what we all knew: Fat people are capable human beings.

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Commenting Guidelines: This post is not about the inclusion of accused and acquitted rapist Kobe Bryant and such discussion will be considered off-topic, not because his continued role as go-to advertiser isn't a legitimate conversation to have, but because it's not a conversation that can be had in this thread without derailing from its primary (and important) topic. Ditto on any other unrelated though legit convos, like violence as entertainment, etc.

Related Reading: Fat Ladies UK.