Extract
Fat characters in recent young adult fiction.
Imagine someone tells you about a character named Joe, or Josephine. You don't know anything about the character. Then you find out that he, or she, is fat. What images come to mind? Do you feel like you've learned something about this character's soul, morality, or amount of power? Many things in literature are symbolic, but this particular symbol carries a damaging influence that is common but often unnoticed. Fatness is used overwhelmingly to connote corruption of inner character, weakness, immaturity, and flaws that need to be fixed. The message is sent through both fat characters who are two-dimensionally flawed, and fat characters who ...
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