"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.

She's overweight but not enough for it to have merited all the lines about no men liking her. She still extremely beautiful. In real life she would never have struggled for male attention... but I guess wearing a fat suit on tv is the same as putting on a pair of glasses suddenly makes everyone not see how hot you are.

They should have got a new actor if whichever one of the Sprouse boys it was that played Ben wasn't available.
It was just odd to never see Ben.

Remember it was teenage Monica who broke the porch swing during 1985's Hurricane Gloria, OP.

If it took MONICA to break the swing where her 6 ft 3" father or 6 ft 1" brother could not, I think it's safe to say she was pretty fat.

Didn't Frasier ask Niles how Daphne's diet was going and he said 'really well, she's lost 7lbs 8oz' or something like that?

I agree re the jokes but that was the humour of the time. However, people did not weigh as much back then so she was fat. I remember at school in the 80s we had one overweight boy in our class, now I see so many overweight primary school children.

I don't remember, but that's clever writing if so!

She was fat even by today’s standards.

Is an 18 average? Jaysus.. I mean I know people men & women are larget than before but I certainly didn't think it was "average"

Full disclaimer I have an eating disorder so my thoughts & opinions might (are very likely) to be skewed.. also yes the jokes weren't funny especially considering how tiny she was in the episodes

Anyway she should have married Richard 😆😍

She was very obviously fat. In the past we were allowed to say so and find it funny. Now, lots of people (many of them possibly overweight themselves) get upset about it, although apparently it's fine to say if someone is 'too thin', even when they quite clearly have a healthy shape. I'm glad to have been born early enough to remember a time when people were a lot more laid back.

They sent her to a weight loss retreat. The therapist said she’d gained weight because she couldn’t live up to Niles’ idealised version of her.
Size zero culture was the thing in the 90s. Ally McBeal, Geri and her yoga video, SJP, Victoria Beckham and the Friends cast were all either seen as aspirational or underweight on any given day in the media.

Ha, that's excellent!

To clarify I mean in the early normal episodes.. she was tiny

Of course she was fat. She was fat to the extent that if you saw her at the school disco you’d notice it. I think it’s worrying that obesity is now so normalised that someone starts a thread saying Monica wasn’t fat!

I think she means Ben

Normal?
Wow 😯 😳

She was definitely fat. And I say this as someone who is very fat. Bearing in mind that she would have been high school age I think she'd even be noticeably fat by today's standards for her age.

She was fat. We just can't say that now.

Oh god yeah remember Geri used to be accused of being fat & then she left the Spice Girls & became the tiny version of herself prancing around in the leotard.. Ally McBeal was competitive weight loss down to a fine art...I never watched Frasier so I don't know about Daphne but yeah the late 90's & 2000s were all about the 00's or god forbid size 0

No, she was fat. Don't be daft

What a horrible idiom

Nah you couldn’t be any more wrong!

Kids watch it now, there is friends merch in shops still. My 9 year old has started watching it to keep up with her friends. I am watching it with her and loving it again.

Plus it was never really about the children.

I don't think she was as big as she was portrayed to be in the stories and jokes that came before the flashback scenes and 'the one that might have been' where she hadn't lost the weight into adulthood.
She was fat though, and I would still consider her so by 'todays' standards. Though the jokes etc made it sound like she was much bigger than she was when she appeared in the fat suit scenes.
I'm overweight, tipping into obese and she's bigger than I am.

Who are you trying to kid? She is obese (is it the word fat which offends?) by anyone who's a normal weight's standards

Call a spade a spade. She was fat.

What?
I'm not even sure of the point you're trying to make so can only interpret it as 'Fat Monica isn't fat and only "seriously" skinny (as opposed to light heartedly silly?) people would think she was?'

Which a) of course she was fat, by any decades' standard. Maybe she wouldn't stand out nowadays on your average US (or UK) street as being noticeably so, but surely nobody with half a brain cell can think she's a healthy weight?

and b) You don't have to be slim to accurately note other people's weight. Fat people have eyes too, you know.
I am perfectly able to identify and accept when both I, myself, and other people, are fat.