(Contains spoilers for Wall-E and mild spoilers for The Incredibles)

I saw the last post on Wall-E, and it got me thinking, mainly because, in spite of its flaws (which are many), it’s my favorite Pixar movie.

Is it fat-hating? Absolutely, but not in the way a lot of movies are fat hating (not that that makes it okay).

Wall-E, by making every human character fat, allows two fat characters to have a really adorable romance, and also allows fat characters to be heroic and fat at the same time (the aforementioned couple, who save a large number of children from being crushed to death, and the captain, who saves everyone and turns the ship back to Earth). The assumption that everyone absolutely would become fat is ludicrous, not to mention that even the less fat hating science they use is wrong, you don’t lose bone density in a full-gravity environment, which the ship is. You would lose muscle mass by not ever walking, but not bone density; actually, I need to stop talking about the science because I could write an entire essay on how bad it is (how do the characters use the toilet if they never get up? They’d have to go a lot, they’re all on liquid diets). Also, it sucks beyond words that we can’t have fat heroes and romantic pairings unless everyone is fat first.

So yeah, the decision to skip this movie is one that I absolutely understand, but at the same time, it does have fat heroes, and the only other sci-fi I’ve encountered with fat heroes is a book called “Such a Pretty Face” (an AMAZING sci-fi and fantasy anthology that specifically features only fat heroes).

The Pixar film that, for me, is the most offensively fat hating is The Incredibles (another movie I love, but acknowledge that it has a lot of problems). The worst scene for me was the one where Mr. Incredible goes on his first assignment in 15 years, and they’re putting him in a capsule to air-drop him onto the island where the killer robot is, and he doesn’t fit in the tube. They get him in there, but it’s ghastly. Not to mention that it was a clear example of thin people having no idea how fat bodies behave, since I’ve had to squeeze myself into spaces like that, and it fucking HURTS. Yet there’s Mr. Incredible with this mildly bemused/concerned expression on his face while they jam his stomach into this tube over and over again. There was also a scene in most of the ads (but not in the movie itself) where he was trying on his new uniform and the belt didn’t fit, leading to lots of “hilarious” antics with him trying to suck in his belly to make it fit. After that mission is a success, there’s a “getting in shape” montage, which of course includes weight loss, and only then does he become a good dad and a heroic figure again.

And of course the weight he loses stays off.



So yeah, all of this is to say that though I completely understand why so many fat people hate Wall-E (and are right to hate it), I don’t. The dialogue-free first act is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on film, and I won’t even lie, I cheered when the captain beat the ship's computer.

On a side note, I notice that there isn’t a tag for fat in entertainment/pop culture.