Muriel’s Wedding- Toni Collette not fat

[Choppychop]

Im just watching the Aussie 90’s film Muriel’s Wedding and the character Muriel is constantly referred to as being fat. Throughout the movie. Fat fat fat. It’s a 90’s movie so I know times were different, and similar to Renee in Bridget Jones where we are supposed to see these ladies as fat. But (and I’m a slim woman) I just think she looks lovely and healthy and not fat in the slightest? Did people really think this character was fat at the time? It’s only 20 odd years ago. Great film by the way, if you haven’t seen it.

@ChoppychopI'm 5'9, 74kg, size 12 BMI 24.
That makes me the absolute top end for "normal" weight. If I gained 2kg that would put me in the overweight category, so in my mind absolutely not fat but not in the healthy range either.
I work hard to keep under that weight so it's not like I'm a natural skinny person.
I grew up in the 80s, every one I was at high school with was thin, we have just got used to the population being heavier and heavier.

Normal size is not size 8-10 in the UK .

Just the other day I saw a feature with a photo of a woman and how it was photoshopped to show the desirable image in their country. It merely reflected the different natural physical attributes of their female population.

This

Size 8-10 is not the average in the UK, (it's size 14-16 I think.) But remember that size 8-10 was a 12-14 around 30 to 40 years ago.

So people who are size 8-10 NOW aren't that thin really. They have a 27 to 29 inch waist. That's OK and they're not fat, but they're not as teeny tiny as they like to think they are.

Size 8-10 pre mid 1990s was a 23-25 inch waist.

This! I don’t know why so many people don’t get this? “But she’s a regular size. But she looks normal”. She but sadly today average is fat.

I was referring to the poster who seemed to say that 8-10 is the norm for now.

It was Shallow Hal guys, rather than “Hall”.

I watched this with my daughter recently.

Totally spot on, couldn't agree more. Great post. I hate the whole use of "skinny" as an insult and also the references to "heroin chic" being celebrated in the 1990s. It was a throwaway line used by the media now and again, it wasn't seen as a viable lifestyle choice.
There seems to be a number of threads just now discussing how thin people were in the past, and implying that everyone was anorexic and unhealthy. The implication from lots of posters is that we are all fatter and healthier now. We're all fatter but costing the NHS a fortune.

We have indeed moved on within a short spell of time from when people were thin to the present where many people are overweight. I think of my mother who was a child during WW2 and never saw a banana until she was an adult. Many of them then were malnourished as in not enough of the right food. Her mother came from a fishing community and again malnourished and as a result suffered illness and death from diseases resulting from that. Thin isn't always good but was a direct result of circumstances at the time.
Now we have the opposite - too many young fat women again as the result of circumstances - poor food choices, availability of certain foods, lack of education, poverty, lack of exercise and yes body positivity. It's ok to be fat is the message. Medics have to be careful about what they say. Shaming people doesn't help! There's little point to me in comparing how people used to be like historically.

Martine McCutcheon’s Natalie in Love Actually was referred to as fat several times in that film, too. Bridget Jones, fat. Muriel, fat. Certainly, if I transport myself back to my early-mid twenties self, when these movies were released, I would have considered all of these characters fat. And my size 8 self, fat.

It's not really about being fat is it, that film. It's about being happy / self actualised.

She looks way better at the end of the film because she's happy and I don't think particularly thinner but if she is, it's not a happy ending because she's thin. That would be literally the most boring film ever.

MW is a brilliant depiction of escaping a miserable existence confined by other people's narrow, bigoted, and judgemental views. Just saying.

@gowlett- I’m sure I read than when Martine McCutheon was cast, she was much larger. I’m not sure if you remember, but she yo-yo dieted in the 90s/early 00s and kept being papped larger in the papers, then slimmed down and sold her diet /exercise routines to the same papers. I remember at least 2 times she had a series in a Sunday paper of diet tips.

This is a strange thread. Muriel at the start of the film appeared a solid size 16-18, and was definitely overweight. I am not saying she wasn’t pretty, but I think in the film a lot of her “unattractiveness” was due to her overall demeanour and the way she was deliberately dressed in garish clothes and makeup to emphasise her size. I love Toni Collette and it was a wonderful performance from her.

Movie actresses haven’t got any bigger over the intervening years, indeed due to weight loss injections they appear to have got even smaller recently. I guess it’s because the general population has got larger, Muriel would look less out of place these days. I remember at my school we made a skirt when we were in last year of primary so age 11. Myself and one other girl had to get the pattern for a size 12 ( and that would have been more like today’s size 8-10) and I definitely remember being shamed and embarrassed about it as the teacher drew attention to it, so average weight was a lot less then.