Whenever the reality show Big Brother comes onto Australian screens (for better or more likely worse), you will hear me lament that the show will never surpass the quality of its third season in 2003.
At that time, I was a 21-year-old fat woman living in regional Queensland. I was working at a fish and chip shop, which was unsuccessful for some reason (nothing to do with the fact that we were very far away from the ocean and any fresh seafood).
At this point in my life, my confidence was at an all-time low, and it affected every part of my life. As someone who loves television, I was always searching for positive representations of fat women. I was desperately in need of something to show me that bigger women were more than the butt of other people's jokes; more than the undesirable and disgusting creatures they were (and still are often) portrayed as.
“Nothing confuses people more than the idea of a fat woman who doesn’t spend every waking moment hating her body - who in fact loves her body (shock horror) because we are told over and over from an early age that we shouldn’t.”
Before 2003, there had really only really been Roseanne Barr, and then Sookie from the show Gilmore Girls. Then Big Brother S3 came along - and Chrissie Swan arrived.
It is rare to see positive representations of non-thin women in entertainment (even though they make up a large amount of the population – no pun intended).
It is hard to for people who are constantly shown representations of themselves to understand how much this can affect you, especially when you are in the throes of figuring out who you are, and who you believe you can become.
And so, when this woman appeared on Big Brother, this woman who was not skinny, who was confident, who was outgoing, nice, and most importantly for me, funny, it had a big impact on me.
This was a reality show. This wasn’t some fantastical product of a writer’s imagination; this was a real Australian woman. And she was popular. People loved her, and she almost won the entire thing.
I already knew that being funny was my best weapon against the prejudice people hold against fat women, but watching Chrissie use her humour on the show, then on small-time radio and television (in various forms), and now in her current very successful radio show, has shown me what is possible if you are confident and demand that society takes you as you are.
This was why, when I saw the recent cover of a New Idea magazine apparently quoting Chrissie Swan on her radio show criticising her body, calling her thighs “repulsive” and wishing for a “magic slimming pill”, my 21-year-old self was a bit disheartened, and my 31-year-old self was very surprised.
Once I found out that the comments had been wrongly attributed to her, and that they had actually been said by her co-host Jane Hall (while Swan was audibly encouraging Hall to embrace her body), I was annoyed.
New Idea claims that they had received the audio file from the show and inadvertently attributed the comments to the wrong person. There is no way to know if the mistake was made because based on the conversation the two women were having, someone at New Idea assumed that it must be the fatter of the two who was being negative about her body, but I would not be surprised.
Nothing confuses people more than the idea of a fat woman who doesn’t spend every waking moment hating her body - who in fact loves her body (shock horror) because we are told over and over from an early age that we shouldn’t.
This, of course, isn’t to say Chrissie hasn’t dieted or tried to lose weight at some point. It’s virtually impossible to avoid that trap in the fat-shaming, fat-fearing world we live in, especially when it assumes you are unhealthy (just read the comments on literally any story involving a fat woman, likely including this one).
Even so, it appears as though her attitude has been to embrace her body, and encourage women not to feel inferior because of the body they inhabit. To inspire women not to live a life in constant apology for existing, just because you have extra flesh on your body, and not to think it’s weird that people like you, or find you attractive, or want you on their television.
Furthermore, Chrissie has launched her own plus-size clothing range (available in a national department store) that promotes the idea that fat women don’t have to hide away from the eyes of the world in hideous and uncomfortable clothes; apparently designed by someone who has never met a fat woman and doesn’t know why we wouldn’t want short sleeves and vertical lines on everything.
It is astonishing that the magazine took comments out of context (regardless of the topic) and published them on the front cover without double-checking who said them.
That they attributed body-negative comments to someone whose entire personality and brand is the opposite is very disappointing. The magazine has now apologized for the mistake, and Chrissie has accepted the apology.
I guess she’s the bigger woman after all.
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