"Fat" Monica in Friends isn't even fat

[TallGirl24]

As per title. Rewatching all the old Friends episodes. How in the name of the wee donkey was this a recurring joke? She's basically normal sized but beside some very slim costars. I know it was a different time but it is so jarring to watch now.

The 90s were the glory years for me and I'm becoming more and more nostalgic for them.

Same for me.

Meh, I wasn't. I was the "fat one" in the group. Actually I was top end of the healthy weight range , but most others were simply skinnier. Then I actually did get fat.

The woman says it in the book too, IIRC the woman is on Daniel’s roof sunbathing in the buff.

Im pretty sure in the film Bridget’s friends family and colleagues refer to her weight. But I’d have to watch it again - I might just do that this fine Sunday!

So you don't know what clothes size you are and you don't use it as a guide for picking stuff off the rails to try on then? You may be a size 8, but you'll take a size 18 off a rail to try. Yeah right.
And I know different brands deviate from the standard chart - that's precisely why we have vanity sizing and skimp sizing - and we all learn from experience how different brands will fit us, but very few of us will deviate by more than one size from brand to brand.
The point is that it's the STANDARD size chart that has enabled us to track the change in average clothing size over the decades.

Well we can do this for days...
She was chunky. She was chubby

Look again. She was NOT. There was a lot of talk earlier about people's view being distorted now and not seeing fat people as fat. I agree with that, but it also cuts both ways. If you genuinely see Martine McCutcheon as 'chunky' in that role, you have perception issues. She isn't skinny, but she isn't 'chunky'. She is probably smaller than Renee as Bridget Jones. She is a perfectly average size.

People have a really distorted perception of a body that’s carrying excess weight.

It's always easy to look back on the past with rose tinted glasses. That probably has more to do with the age that you were during the 90s. I do agree that some things are less good than they were then (clothing quality has fallen by quite a way, and I don't much care for music now as compared with then) but a lot of things have got better, as well. Standards of living have risen, not fallen. The internet has improved a lot of aspects of life, as well as disimproved some others. Certain things which were acceptable in the nineties, like rampant misogyny and sexual harassment, are far less acceptable now. Yes, there is a backlash to that (see Andrew Tate et. al) but the reason that there is a backlash is that a LOT of these angry, toxic men's automatic power over women has been taken away and they are angry about it. If it hadn't been, there would be no need for the Men's Right's Movement.

That cuts both ways. See the commenter above who insists that Martine McCutcheon's character in Love Actually was 'chunky'.

it also cuts both ways. If you genuinely see Martine McCutcheon as 'chunky' in that role, you have perception issues. She isn't skinny, but she isn't 'chunky'. She is probably smaller than Renee as Bridget Jones.
I would have said Martine was absolutely perfect, slim , fit, in proportion with a healthy glow.

Exactly. She looks gorgeous. I think that after that film, she lost a lot of weight and with it, her glow. She had years where she looked really gaunt and haggard and not as good, because she isn't built to be like Keira Knightley.

She wasn't chubby, which is why it's been written and talked about a million times and Richard Curtis has had to address it over and over again 🙄

Richard Curtis is an arsehole. His daughter also has an eating disorder. Gee, wonder why 🙄

She is fat - she is bigger than me and I am fat!

I don't agree with this at all. I don't agree that standards of living have improved. I see salaries at the same level as 90s/00s but prices increased massively. Disposable income is far less for most people. I think the problems caused by the Internet outweigh any positives and I think misogyny is far worse now than it was then. More overt violence towards women that makes me fearful for my daughters.

Exactly. She looks gorgeous. I think that after that film, she lost a lot of weight and with it, her glow. She had years where she looked really gaunt and haggard and not as good, because she isn't built to be like Keira Knightley.
Yep, torturing herself when she was absolutely perfect already.

See I do agree with it, and I suspect it is about your own perspective. I grew up very poor indeed. I would now be considered affluent, my social circle all have better standards of living than I saw growing up.

the poster raises multiple points where things have changed, for the better or worse, and I fundamentally think they are correct. But add the over rider that some people do not have it better.

Where are you seeing 90s salaries!? I just don't agree. I think that if we were all to magically drop back into the 90s, we would see a lot wrong with it, although there are certain things that I miss about it (Borders bookshop, absence of Kardashians/Love Island/Reality 'star' trash/clothing quality) I think as well that people see things as being worse than they are because of 24 hour news.

Indeed. I agree that not everything is better now, and I agree with your caveat as well. But I sometimes get a bit annoyed with people who say 'everything was better then'. For one thing, it is quite a privileged perspective, as you say. As a mixed race woman, I can tell you that there was far less diversity in the 90s, and it was considered perfectly acceptable for major makeup brands to not have a full range of shades (and that is a very minor example) For another, I am sure that people in the nineties also harked back to the sixties and seventies as a golden era. People usually don't appreciate what they have good in their own era.

Standard of living has definitely improved. I grew up in a working class area, my parents had a mortgage but it was a low income area.

I moved back, obviously there are sadly people unemployed, disability, addiction who struggle, but overall most people are far better off than we were as children.

2 cars, yearly holidays, big birthday parties, never happened when I was a child.

The gap has definitely closed a little between rich and poor.

Tradesmen out earning professional roles. WC grow up thinking about 3rd level education, something that wasn't an option in the 90's.

Where are you seeing 90s salaries
Maybe not 90s but definitely early 2000s. In my profession salaries were high at this point and haven't risen with inflation. It's well documented that UK wages have been stagnant for at least 15 years

Many salaries move with inflation, possibly not every year, but as people rotate in, it is usually at a higher salary. I think you’re making very sweeping statements based on your own personal circumstances and then trying to say the whole of the uk is in your situation,

Fat Monica was definintely fat, sorry!
I think a lot of people have skewed ideas of what someone of normal weight should look like. An average person with medium build who isn't a body builder.

I am small built, just below average height and my waist is too thick if I get over a size 12. Your waist for optimal health should be no more than 30 inches as a woman.

This is one of the things I love about mumsnet, a trail of thought sending a post about whether the younger version of a fictional TV character is fat into a conversation about salary stagnation

Me too. Well said.