Body Image, Gender, Social Class, and Ethnicity on Glee
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Sonya C. Brown
Body Image, Gender, Social Class,
and Ethnicity on Glee
Glee (2009-present) debuted on the Fox television network in
May of 2009; the series chronicles a fictional high school glee club called
the “New Directions” of McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio. The series
earned general praise from television critics and over seventy awards in its
first season (“Glee TV Series”). Glee focuses on how the underdog glee
club members and several adult high school personnel change as they go
through various challenges or become comfortable enough with each oth-
er to reveal themselves truthfully. Along the way, Glee investigates body
image and its intersections with gender, social class, and ethnicity.
Like the songs the glee club performs, which often blend or “mash
up” disparate musical styles into a single episode or performance, the
show is a hybrid of several television genres, being in part musical, part
situation comedy, and part high school drama. In contrast with traditional
situation comedies, which tend to rely on static character tics for laughs,
Glee frequently sets a character up with qualities that may seem stereotyp-
ical, only to knock those qualities aside in later episodes as the character’s
experiences change. In some ways, then, the show has its cake and eats it,
in that it relies on stereotypes related to a character’s visual ethos at times
for brief laughs, but then contradicts the stereotypes later, as characters
evolve or reveal more depth than the straw men they appeared to be in ear-
lier episodes. Even those who seem to be in a position of hegemonic pow-
er might also be or become the “underdogs” the show revolves around.
For example, football player Karofsky (Max Adler), who bullies gay Kurt
Hummel (Chris Colfer) in the first and second seasons, turns out to be gay
himself. It is therefore at times difficult to determine whether the show is
exploiting a stereotype, such as the bullying homophobic jock, or
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setting up the stereotype only in preparation to undercut that stereotype.
Glee is original on network television in its presentation of gender,
body image, and diversity. Not only has the show featured two characters
with Down’s syndrome, two major characters and one minor who have
used wheelchairs, and a transvestite, but also the show features not one but
two teenaged fat actresses in important roles within the “New Directions.”
While other television shows have featured fat actresses in starring roles,
those actresses’ bodies are frequently exploited on situation comedies for
comedy connected to their size and purportedly grotesque sexuality (con-
sider Kathy Kinney as Mimi Bobeck on The Drew Carey Show [1995-
2004]), or the actresses featured in dramatic genres are adult women rather
than teens (such as Camryn Manheim on The Practice [1997-2004]). Glee
is also original in that it lends at least one episode (“The Rocky Horror
Glee Show” 2.5) partially to an examination of male body image concerns
among teenagers, rarely examined in popular entertainment at all.
Glee’s representation of its fat characters does not ignore how their
body size—and others’ perceptions of their body size—are influenced by
gender, ethnicity, and social class. While exploring body size stereotypes,
however, the show sometimes trivializes potentially serious conditions,
such as anorexia nervosa, and the so-called “Adonis Complex,” a form of
body dysmorphic disorder or exercise bulimia in which men obsess that
their bodies are insufficiently muscular and therefore are prone to hyper-
exercizing and potentially abusing drugs in order to appear visibly mus-
cular (Pope, Phillips and Olivardia). Though the show has so far avoided
many stereotypical portrayals, it does occasionally rely on subtler stereo-
types about gender, fatness, race, ethnicity, and social class, drawing on
audience’s expectations based on stereotypes in lieu of developing the
characters in other ways. Thus the show demonstrates a body project that
ultimately promotes diversity but lapses at times into relying too shallowly
on body size and shape as a form of visual confirmation of a character’s
ethos.
While several characters express concerns about their bodies in
terms of ability, gender identity, and shape across the four seasons aired
thus far, this article focuses on the four teenaged characters within the
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“New Directions” club whose story lines most frequently involve con-
cerns about body shape and size: Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), Mercedes
Jones (Amber Riley), Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink), and Marley Rose (Me-
lissa Benoist).
Finn
The glee club’s initial lead male vocalist and club co-leader is also
the quarterback of the football team and the son of a veteran who died in
Desert Storm. While his leadership of the football team seems to destine
him to be a dominant masculine presence, Finn Hudson’s complicated life
and indecisiveness make him socially vulnerable and unable to exemplify
his roles as star athlete, romantic lead, or glee club leader. His football
teammates toss vivid red slushies in his face, along with the faces of other
glee club members, when they discover that he is performing with the glee
club, for what they view as the effeminate behavior of dancing and singing
on stage. Finn’s girlfriend is the head cheerleader and her name rhymes
with his—it is Quinn (Dianna Agron)—but this foreshadowing of harmo-
ny rapidly devolves into discord. On the pilot, Quinn joins the “New Di-
rections” with two other “Cheerios” (Santana, played by Naya Rivera, and
Brittany, played by Heather Morris) in an attempt to sabotage the group
from within on the orders of the tyrannical cheerleading Coach, Sue Syl-
vester (Jane Lynch), who hates the glee club and especially the teacher who
sponsors the club, Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison). Finn’s relationship
with Quinn is also problematic because, as revealed in an episode entitled
“Preggers” (1.4), despite being president of the school’s abstinence club,
she is pregnant with Finn’s best friend’s child. Quinn tells Finn the baby
is his because she believes he will make a better father than its biological
father, Noah “Puck” Puckerman (Mark Salling). Although Finn is a virgin
(another “problem” from the perspective of being a dominant patriarchal
figure), Quinn convinces him that she was impregnated while they were
in a hot tub together. Finn, then, begins the series with a set of problems
preventing him from being the stereotypical “manly man.” If hegemonic
masculinity “requires all other men to position themselves in relation to
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it, and it ideologically legitimates the global subordination of women to
men” (Connell and Messerschmidt 832), then Finn, rather than asserting
the type of masculinity that requires others to position themselves in rela-
tionship to it, is instead constantly in the more dubious position of having
to position his masculinity around others, having his form of masculinity
derided by others, including his football teammates but also the outspoken
glee club and his family.
New challenges assail his potential for male dominance even as
they develop his sympathetic character. One story line has him befriend-
ing and then becoming the step-brother of Kurt, the cast’s openly gay
character, a relationship that does not improve Finn’s relationship with
the football team. Finn waffles romantically, unable to determine whether
he wants to forgive Quinn or date Rachel (Lea Michele), the diva-like
self-imposed leader of the glee club who pursues him. Finn’s acceptance
of non-normative male sexuality and the dominance of the female char-
acters over him both pose problems for him from the perspective of hege-
monic masculinity.
In season three, Finn also questions his career aspirations, unsure
of whether to apply for college or drama school, or join the military, or
whether to move to New York with Rachel or to California with Puck after
graduation. He doubts he is talented or driven enough to succeed outside
Lima, and feels predestined to take over his stepfather’s automotive ga-
rage. It is also revealed that Finn’s father, whom he always thought was a
Gulf War hero, was actually discharged from the military for mental insta-
bility and ultimately committed suicide (“Yes/No” 3.10). Thus cuckolded
by one woman and pursued by another, bossed by both, unable to lead his
football team or the “New Directions” to glory, rudderless and drifting,
Finn’s character embodies ambivalence and ambiguity, much more than
the other characters.
It is little surprise, therefore, that Finn is the male character around
whose body image concerns the show focuses for an episode and then jest-
ingly refers to in future episodes. The “Rocky Horror Glee Show” episode,
in which the glee club attempts to put on the infamous musical, focuses
in particular on Finn’s abdominal muscles—or really the supposed lack
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thereof.
Finn is disturbed that his football teammate and fellow “New Di-
rections” cast member Sam (Chord Overstreet), whose physique Finn finds
enviable, will play Rocky, while Finn himself will play Brad, a casting
that necessitates that both appear scantily clad onstage. Sam attempts to
help Finn with his abdominal “problem” by prescribing his own strenuous,
borderline disordered, workouts and eating patterns in an amusing but poi-
gnant scene that may represent only too accurately the pressure on male
teenagers to conform to the current athletic ideal. As Charlotte A. Jirousek
suggests in “Superstars, Superheroes and the Male Body Image,” both star
athletes and movie stars have increased in muscularity after “the standard
for the heroic body became Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzeneg-
ger” (7). Thus Finn’s worries are represented as part of a typical range
of abnormal body image concerns for high school males, especially ath-
letes, who compare their bodies both to each other’s and to figures from
popular culture. Psychological studies suggest that Finn’s comparisons to
others are realistic depictions of male body image reactions. For example,
in their article “The Impact of Media Exposure on Males’ Body Image,”
Daniel Agliata and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn report that men exposed to im-
ages showing an ideal physique in advertisements had increased levels of
“muscle dissatisfaction” and depression compared to those who viewed
ads with neutral images. Another study led by Todd G. Morrison suggests
that adolescent males are more likely to encounter body image dissatisfac-
tion when they compare their physiques with their peers, though the media
in the form of magazines can also have a negative effect (Morrison, Kalin,
and Morrison). Thus whether Finn compares himself with stellar athletes,
movie stars, or merely friends like Sam, he sees evidence everywhere that
he lacks the visual qualities of the superstar, corresponding to his fears of
inability to shine in these areas.
Finn’s concern over lacking physical strength, however, is por-
trayed as a real physical problem that could be solved through the appli-
cation of willpower to diet and exercise, and, as his belly is a problem
he could solve but does not, the issue makes him an object of continued
rebuke and derision. In their study of situation comedies, Gregory Fouts
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and Kimberley Vaughan found that heavier men are underrepresented on
screen and much more likely than other male characters to be given nega-
tive dialogue about their own bodies. They conclude that these characters
may be modeling the concept that it is acceptable to deride other males
who are overweight (441). Finn’s obsession with his midsection, and his
fear of revealing it (as depicted in a nightmare he has of walking the halls
of the high school in only the white boxer shorts of his Brad costume while
peers leer and turn away in disgust) convey his overall vulnerability to
criticism. The consistent derision of Finn thus reinforces the pressures that
real teenagers like Sam and Finn feel to present a hypermuscular body in
order to be deemed appropriately masculine. An apparently minor change
in typical costuming further symbolizes Finn’s body image woes and
their relationship to his ambivalent hold on hegemonic masculinity: Brad
usually appears in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in white briefs (so-
called “Tighty Whities”) but Finn appears in white boxers instead, while
Sam dons Rocky’s gold bikini briefs. The boxers cover Finn’s genitals
discreetly while the briefs might have outlined them. Vivanco and Kramer,
borrowing Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan’s humorous description of “the
Mighty Wang” in romance novels, suggest that the large penis symboliz-
es not merely individual sexual prowess but also “the hero’s socio-sexu-
al body,” a “demonstration of the socio-cultural attributes of masculine
sexuality.” By refusing to showcase Finn’s “Mighty Wang,” while allow-
ing other male performers to routinely appear in Speedoes and briefs, the
show visually downplays Finn’s masculinity.
Further, Finn’s putatively flabby gut corresponds to his fears that
he is destined to working class status. He is tabbed by his stepfather Burt
Hummel (Mike O’Malley) as the person to take over the family’s auto
repair shop, whereas presumably his stepbrother Kurt will go on to fame
on stage. While small-business ownership is not to be scoffed at, by com-
parison with the more artistic aims of the other “New Directions,” running
the garage seems prosaic and working class.
The association of working class status and fatness is much ex-
plored both in the real world (Sobal; Sobal and Stunkard; Ernsberger)
and in fictional entertainment. In both realms, fatness is often a symptom
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of and a signifier of lower social status, especially for women, though in
the case of fictional entertainment fat women rarely appear in major roles
onscreen, with a few notable exceptions, such as Roseanne Barr on The
Roseanne Barr Show (1988-1997) and Melissa McCarthy on Mike and
Molly (2010-present). Consider, by contrast, that sitcoms regularly em-
ploy fat men as often bumbling and sometimes abrasive husbands with
working class jobs, from The Honeymooners (1955-1956) through Rose-
anne, The Simpsons (1989-present), Family Guy (1999-present), and The
King of Queens (1998-2007). By contrast, American presidents and cor-
porate executives in films and on television are more frequently lean, like
Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko (Wall Street, 1987), whose very name
suggests the reptilian cold-bloodedness necessary for social dominance
that his lean body symbolizes in its designer suits. Thus Glee’s scrutiny of
Finn’s belly (generally hidden beneath a workingman’s plaid shirt) reso-
nates with a tradition that associates the fat male belly with a masculinity
that has failed to achieve social dominance and/or wealth, adding to the
overall suggestion that Finn’s future success is dubious.
Finn’s supposedly weak or flabby belly also symbolizes his inad-
equacy as a leading man in the romantic portions of the show. Not only
is he unable to maintain athletic dominance over his football teammates,
he is also unable to dominate any of the women for whom he could be
a romantic lead. As Laura Vivanco and Kyra Kramer have argued about
romance novels, a male character’s physical “hardness” corresponds to
his wealth and power in the social realm. Finn’s failure to have “the guts”
to dominate his romantic partners is symbolized partly by his putatively
weak center. Glee, following a long tradition of love triangles in media
aimed at adolescents and teenagers, puts Finn into the position of oddman
out repeatedly across the seasons, as Finn struggles to be leading man to
Quinn against Puck, to Rachel against first Jesse (Jonathan Groff), then
occasionally Puck, then Brody (Dean Geyer); finally he even kisses Mr.
Schuester’s fiancée, Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays), devastating the re-
lationships among all three. Although the show’s teleology has suggest-
ed that Finn will eventually re-partner with Rachel, the end of the fourth
season had not repaired their relationship, and with the death of Monteith
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from a drug overdose in July of 2013, Finn will remain a character who
never achieved success in romance or career.
One problem with the representation of Finn’s body image woes is
that Monteith was far from chubby; indeed, Monteith’s abdominal muscles
in the “Rocky Horror” episode are visibly defined, if perhaps somewhat
less so than Overstreet’s. The visual evidence then, is that Finn in fact
does have a hegemonically appropriate body, something the show could
explore further by suggesting that his discomfort with his belly represents
his psychological rather than physical reality, just as in the fourth season
it will suggest that Marley Rose’s insecurity allows her to be duped by a
romantic rival into becoming eating-disordered.
Yet the show suggests instead that Finn’s abdomen negatively
affects his ethos. His purported belly fat is the butt of several jokes or
awkward moments, such as when Rachel tells him she accepts him even
though he “has a different body type,” and when Rachel’s father (Jeff
Goldblum) similarly suggests that Finn’s stomach is large, during a dinner
supposedly celebrating the engagement of the teenagers (“Heart” 3.13) in
the third season, or when Coach Sue calls him a “chubby nineteen-year-
old,” which notably occurs in the same episode (“I Do” 4.14) in which
Marley Rose begins to develop her eating disorder. Though Coach Sue is
known for her exaggerated and unkind comments, the show never makes a
connection between the harsh view others have of Finn’s physique even as
audiences are encouraged to empathize with Marley Rose’s misperception
of her weight.
After Rachel and Finn split, Finn discovers that her current boy-
friend is also a prostitute. Finn then travels to New York to fight Brody
(“Sweet Dreams” 4.19), punching his face and exclaiming “Stay away
from my future wife!” Finn emerges the winner of their fight. It is clear
that Finn is asserting himself physically to protect a woman he believes
belongs to or with him. When Rachel compliments him soon after on his
looking “cute,” he smiles and says he has been dieting. Finn becomes
more attractive through physically dominating another man whose sexual-
ity is considered improper and who is viewed as deceitful, even as Finn’s
attractiveness and physique are also credited with improving.
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In short, the show’s version of body image disorders seems to be
that when it happens for women, they are serious social issues, whereas
when they happen to men, they are comedic commentary on the charac-
ter’s faults.
Mercedes
A second character on the show whose body image concerns are
occasionally explored in a storyline is Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley).
Like Finn’s, Mercedes’ characterization is tied to, but not limited to, her
body and body image concerns, and these are connected to her gender
and race. By casting Riley in the role, the show might be said to buck cer-
tain conventions in casting, as the actress reportedly wears a size sixteen
(Ingrassia), in contrast with her predominantly much slimmer female co-
stars.
In early episodes of season one, Mercedes is depicted as vocally
talented, confident, and strong-willed. The show relies on Riley’s talents
to impress viewers, and seems to rely on its audience’s familiarity with
a tradition of African-American female performers, like Aretha Franklin
and Riley’s avowed role model Queen Latifah (Ingrassia), whose larger
bodies have not impeded their ability to garner fame. In The Embodiment
of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Politically Unruly Bodies, Andrea
Elizabeth Shaw argues that these African-American women’s curvaceous
bodies express rebellion against the norms of slenderness that idealized
European-American women’s bodies are supposed to exhibit, as well as
rebellion against the muscular bodies former slaves exhibited. Their vo-
luptuous bodies are thus openly in rebellion to conventional ideas that lim-
it women’s assertion of such powers and desires, and African-American
women’s assertions in particular. Such a characterization suits Mercedes
Jones, who describes herself as focused on developing her career as a sing-
er, is depicted as at times unwilling to work the way Mr. Schuester wants
her to, and rebels against the fact that her cast-mate, Rachel (Lea Michele),
usually gets top billing in the “New Directions” performances. Little at-
tention, however, is paid early in the first season to Mercedes’ body size
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as the characters are selected for the glee club and begin to develop story
lines; no obvious connections between her size and her rebellious charac-
terization are made.
Yet her body size as potential self-image problem was not com-
pletely ignored: the “Home” episode (1.16) puts Mercedes in a different
social context when Coach Sue attempts yet again to destroy the “New
Directions” by recruiting some of its talent to the “Cheerios” squad. Mer-
cedes is by then depicted as tired of Rachel getting most of the solos when
Mercedes believes she herself sings better. Coach Sue demands that Mer-
cedes lose weight to be a cheerleader, and Mercedes goes on a near-starva-
tion diet until Quinn intervenes, after which Mercedes sings “Beautiful,”
originally performed by Christina Aguilera, to the whole school, in a ges-
ture promoting self-acceptance.
While the episode maintains Glee’s typical framework of having
cast members resist changing themselves dramatically to fit a social con-
text outside of the glee club, this particular episode failed to please many
critics or fans. Some critics of the episode decried the after-school special
feel even as others lamented that anorexia nervosa, a serious psychologi-
cal ailment that can lead to death, was presented as a relatively tidy prob-
lem, solvable via a simple heart-to-heart with a friend. The episode falters
in the show’s overall characterization of Mercedes by having her rebel
against the glee club’s apparently arbitrary and unfair assignment of lead
roles to Rachel, then only to have her fall under the temporary domina-
tion of Coach Sue, who represents the wrong-headed notion that women
should abuse their bodies to conform to her and to hegemonic ideals of
femininity that cheerleading squads seem to represent. Perhaps to redeem
the awkwardness of the episode and its lapse in Mercedes’ body confi-
dence, by the seventh episode of the second season (“The Substitute” 2.7),
Mercedes has regained her appetite and her rebellious voice, which she
evidences when she incites a lunchroom riot against restrictions on serving
tater tots, also a Coach Sue decree.
For almost two seasons, though, the character does not have a
romantic interest. This quiet absence of sexuality correlates to fat studies
literature on representations of fat women as generally either stereotyped
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as asexual or hypersexual (Murray; Braziel; Frater). It was also a lack that
fans noticed and complained about, especially in contrast with the number
of romantic relationships other characters experienced (see, e.g., Frater).
Jennifer Fuller argues that within the context of a predominantly
European-American society, a fat African-American woman’s sexuality
can be seen as comedic (because her body’s sexuality is seen as poten-
tially grotesque) but also as contained and managed (because her fat body
is undesirable). In order even to dispute those problematic representa-
tions, however, they must first be invoked. As Mercedes is the only Af-
rican-American female consistently present onscreen in the show’s first
through third seasons, Glee demurs on the stereotypical portrayal of Mer-
cedes’ fat African-American female body as a potential site of hypersex-
ual, grotesque comedy, focusing instead on her ambition and talent. Glee
then, refuses to invoke one stereotypical portrayal, but in the process in-
vokes another—the asexual fat woman. Prior to season three, Lara Frater
contended that:
[T]he character Mercedes who is a regular on Glee is non-sexual
(she remains the only main character in Glee who has not had a
long term relationship) where Lauren (who is reoccurring) is hyper-
sexual. Fat women are often characterized (especially in media) as
either giving it freely so people will like them or not getting it at
all because no one wants them. Mercedes is not, however, rejected
by any potential romantic partners; it is simply for two seasons as if
her sexuality does not exist at all.
In short, she is the asexual fat woman.
By the end of season two, however, the show remedies the lack of
romantic partners by offering Mercedes a promising story arc of a secret
romance with Sam, an intriguing choice as Sam is both European-Amer-
ican and impoverished, sometimes homeless, sometimes working as a
stripper to help his family stay financially afloat. When it appeared that
Chord Overstreet would not return as Sam for season three, the show de-
veloped a second, replacement romantic interest for Mercedes in Shane
Tinsley (Lamarcus Tinker), himself what producer Brad Falchuk called “a
big Bubba kind of guy” (qtd. in Rosen).
Mercedes’ new boyfriend Shane is, like her, fatter than most of the
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other Glee characters, and the producers seem to have chosen Lamarcus
Tinker partly for his size, partly for the comedic skills he evidenced in his
recurring role on Cougar Town (2009-present), and partly for his ability
to portray a kind and supportive boyfriend for Mercedes, whose character
had begun to reveal a less-confident self in recent episodes (Rosen). In
casting Tinker, Glee’s producers expand the range of male love interests’
body types portrayed on the show, and also avoid the stereotype of the
large-and-therefore-domineering football player so prevalent in the first
season when Kurt Hummel’s homosexuality was the focus of anxiety.
When Chord Overstreet returned as Sam in the third season af-
ter all, Mercedes’ need to choose between Sam and Shane featured as a
recurrent storyline through the episode in which the senior cast members
attend prom (“Prom Queen” 2.20). Thus partly by accident, Mercedes’
initial asexuality morphs across the seasons into a love triangle, not unlike
the girl-boy-boy triangles made popular for European-American teenagers
in Glee itself, and in such formats as the Twilight series of books and films
(2008-2012) and The Vampire Diaries series on WB (2009-present). The
development of Mercedes into a character with ambition, talent, and sex-
uality proves that fan criticism—and even happenstance—can ameliorate
concerns in characterization in episodic television.
Lauren Zizes
Both Finn and Mercedes can be intriguingly contrasted with Lau-
ren Zizes, the other fat female character cast in “New Direction.” Zizes
begins as a recurring minor character. Her fat body and status as a wres-
tler—on the boys’ team—might seem to relegate her to outcast status. She
also appears dressed and made up as a “Goth,” another symbol of the
rejection of hegemony. Zizes moves from minor recurring character to
romantic interest and “New Directions” cast member in the second season
after she rescues Puck from a port-o-potty in which he has been locked,
but not without first requiring he promise her “seven minutes in heav-
en.” Audiences are led to believe this coerced make-out session will be a
further punishment for Puck, as it will occur with the brutish fat girl, but
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ultimately it is Zizes who rejects Puck, telling him she’s bored after only
a few moments (“Special Education” 2.9). Puck’s response to rejection is
to pursue Lauren, much to his ex-girlfriend Santana’s disgust, causing a
dispute between the women that culminates in a physical fight that Lauren
wins (“Silly Love Songs” 2.12).
Like Finn, then, Zizes does not demonstrate a gendered identi-
ty consistent with patriarchal norms, but unlike Finn, her lack does not
make her sympathetic as she does not become an underdog by encour-
aging others to be more fully who they are, but instead, when slighted,
issues threats. To dramatize exactly how domineering Zizes is, the show
depicts Zizes as trying to teach Mercedes how to get star treatment by issu-
ing absurd demands and refusing to perform unless the demands are met,
disrupting the “New Directions” by causing additional friction between
the competing talents (“A Night of Neglect” 2.17). In other words, Zizes
out-divas Mercedes. Unlike Mercedes, however, whose talent undergirds
her rebelliousness, and whose appearance follows a well-established tradi-
tion of fat African-American musicians, Zizes seems to lack musical talent
altogether, and is only in the “New Direction” to ensure there are enough
members to compete, as the club has low popularity at McKinley High.
As for pop culture forbears, Zizes seems to follow the tradition of
stereotyping communist-bloc female athletes as emotionally cold, brutal,
and masculine. The use of her last name to refer to her stems in part from
her participation on a boys’ athletic team, but has militaristic overtones,
and emphasizes her “otherness.” Stereotypes of strong Communist-bloc or
Eastern European female athletes and soldiers abound in American popu-
lar culture, no doubt bolstered by 1980’s revelations that female athletes
from Communist bloc countries were taking steroids and thus becoming
physically more manlike. Consider Missi Pyle’s portrayal of super-fit ath-
lete “Fran” in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004). To emphasize
these stereotypical athletic or militaristic characters’ sexual inappropriate-
ness, they are often, as in DodgeBall, the object of sexual excitement for
a man who wholly lacks hegemonic masculinity, or they are rejected by
men who represent hegemonic masculinity (as Bruce Willis’ Corbin Dal-
las in The Fifth Element [1997] rejects Major Iceborg, played by Julie T.
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Wallace).
Glee seems to have been less attentive to avoiding stereotypes
about fatness, gender, and ethnicity with Lauren Zizes than with Mercedes
Jones. Perhaps for that reason, the character of Lauren Zizes divided fans.
The most famous, or perhaps infamous, critique came from Rosie O’Don-
nell, who, when interviewed on Access Hollywood, suggested that Ash-
ley Fink was unattractive and the character of Zizes “so unlikable” (qtd.
in Galkin). Seth Abramovitz of TV.com also disliked Zizes, arguing that
while her size need not be an issue, her character is too physically brutal
to be liked. Some critics, on the other hand, responded positively to the
newness of seeing a fat teenager on network television as a romantic inter-
est for a handsome jock; some even appreciated Zizes’ toughness. Tasha
Fierce explains that fat women are usually the ones described as having “a
great personality,” and asserts that perhaps Zizes’ aggressive self-love de-
bunks that stereotype. Lesley Kinzel, author of the blog Two Whole Cakes,
writes:
Fat ladies are rarely portrayed in media as anything other than sad
and self-loathing so Lauren’s bravado is impressive and likely a
total mindfuck for many viewers, but is it bluster? In this episode, if
not in any episodes prior, she reads as a remarkably confident
young woman who knows she deserves to be treated with respect,
and who isn’t about to settle for whatever attention she can get. My
worry, of course, is that this is will [sic] all be a facade, and I don’t
want Lauren to be a facade — I want her to be tough and sharp and
smart for real.
The division in fan response is clear.
As Frater suggests, many fat female characters are portrayed as
using sexual availability to get male attention because they lack the type
of body that would more easily earn male admiration. Fat studies literature
suggests that the fat female body represents inappropriate female desires
and appetites, so that both the asexual fat woman and the hypersexual
fat woman manifest symptoms of their rejection from the category of he-
gemonically-approved sexual female body types. With Lauren Zizes, the
show exploits these stereotypes for potential laughs: she is depicted as
demanding massive quantities of food from Puck as a suitor, frequently
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piling up candy and eating it as the camera zooms in, as well as verbalizing
high expectations for sexual performance. Like Finn, then, Zizes is por-
trayed as someone who might solve the problem of overweight by eating
less, yet she is unabashedly unwilling to do so. Zizes as pleasure-seeker
sees no shame in admitting her desire for food or sex, despite the fact that
hegemony would have it that, being overweight, she apparently deserves
neither. On the other hand, the other female glee club members’ bodies,
with the aforementioned exception of Mercedes, demonstrate a commit-
ment to leanness that symbolizes the control of at least the eating habits.
Despite complaints against her bullying and bravado, Zizes does
falter once in her confidence. She tells Puck repeatedly that she expects
to “be wooed” and is not easy to seduce just because she’s big; in a mem-
orable scene, she tells him she “spells woman Z-I-Z-E-S” (“Silly Love
Songs” 2.12). But when Puck sings Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” to her
in the “Silly Love Songs” episode, she is hurt, remarking, “That’s the first
time anyone’s ever sung me a love song. It made me feel like crap.” Lesley
Kinzel explains how out of character Zizes’ perturbation seems:
Lauren’s response was baffling to me upon first viewing, as I missed
the other characters’ reactions during the song, distracted as I was by
the audaciousness of having the stereotypical hot-guy character sing
“Fat Bottomed Girls” as a sincere compliment to the fat girl. Frankly,
it’s still baffling to me now, because while I’m not saying I would
instantly give it up to any guy who serenaded me with Queen, I
would certainly be moved to think the prospect over. It’s fucking
Queen! It’s fucking “Fat Bottomed Girls”! Give the fat girl some
taste, Ryan Murphy, won’t you?
Yet while Zizes’ sensitivity seems out of character, the episode emphasizes
Puck’s typical lapse in emotional judgment and seems to attempt to ame-
liorate Zizes the bully by revealing vulnerability.
By the end of season two, the character of Lauren Zizes was dis-
appearing from rotation, and Puck had returned to seducing or being se-
duced by the women whose pools he cleaned. Zizes, however, remains an
interesting experiment in casting a (young) fat woman who does not reme-
diate her fatness by being overly kind and self-effacing, a character with a
special uniqueness considering the show’s supposed cast of teenagers, but
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one which, unfortunately, depended on other stereotypes about fat women
as hypersexual and driven by inappropriately selfish appetites, and about
fat women and female athletes as potential bullies.
Marley Rose
Season four saw most of the original cast members of the glee
club graduating and moving on to college or careers, though some, such as
Rachel, Kurt, Finn, and Santana, re-emerged as key players in season four
events. Marley Rose was introduced in the episode “The New Rachel”
(4.1), when she auditioned for the glee club with great success. Marley’s
body image issue begins with the fact that her mother, Millie Rose (Tri-
sha Rae Stahl), is the new lunch lady at McKinley High: Millie’s obesity
makes her the butt of many cruel jokes, notably by the football team. For
instance, one football player calls her “Chumbo” and asks her why she is
“stingy” with the food, questioning if she is allowed to eat the leftovers. A
glee club member comments that Millie Rose’s “boobs” are “like two gro-
cery bags full of soup.” These comments are offered before Marley con-
fesses that the besieged cafeteria worker is her mother. When Jake (Jacob
Artist) stands up for Millie as his teammates taunt her, he becomes heroic
in Marley’s eyes and their flirtation evolves.
Even the fact that Marley must choose whether to confess her fa-
milial relationship with Millie demonstrates Marley’s own fat phobia. The
characters are frequently shown, early in season four, talking after school
about Marley’s aspirations to join the glee club and make friends, and
Millie is shown to be a loving parent, one so loving that she does not want
negativity surrounding her own person to attach to her slim and talented
child. Audiences are encouraged to see Millie as a caring person who is
working hard to ensure her child’s success, and so audiences are presented
with a sympathetic fat female adult.
Unfortunately, fat phobia is not only a plot point showing Mar-
ley’s growth as an individual and Jake’s strength against the denigration of
others, because the new captain of the Cheerios, Kitty Wilde (Becca To-
bin), also desires a relationship with Jake. When Marley wins the lead role
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of Sandy over Kitty in the planned performance of Grease (1978), Kitty
pretends to befriend her but cattily insists that Marley is genetically fated
to soon become as obese as her mother. As Kitty admits in later rehearsals,
“For the last six months, I’ve been saying behind your back and to your
face that you’re poor and fat and mousy and boring and you dress like
Zach Galifianakis” (“Girls (and Boys) on Film” 4.15). Kitty’s linking of
poor and fat and boring in this quick quip is virtually ignored by the naïve
Marley, but obviously corresponds to Finn’s body image and social class
concerns.
In addition to planting hints about Marley’s putative weight gain,
which the other glee club members and Mr. Schuester roll their eyes dis-
missively about, Kitty also sabotages Marley’s costumes for the show, tak-
ing them in for each dress rehearsal so that Marley believes she is gaining
weight despite her attempts to diet to avoid becoming as large as her moth-
er. This plot point lacks realism, as presumably Marley’s other clothes
continue to fit and presumably a real person could check her weight on
one of the scales that appear in the locker rooms at McKinley High School
in other scenes. However, Marley seems to believe she is getting bigger
and bigger, rather than that her costumes are being sabotaged. Kitty subse-
quently teaches Marley to behave in anorexic and bulimic ways. Ultimate-
ly, Marley’s eating disorder results in her fainting prior to the glee club’s
performance at the sectional competition, disqualifying them. It is only
after another glee club is kicked out of the competition for legal reasons
later that McKinley High’s is allowed to compete. Marley’s guilt over dis-
qualifying her team leads to several eating disorder jokes across several
episodes. Kitty finally admits to her manipulation of Marley through the
costumes in an episode in which the glee club is trapped in the rehearsal
room when an active shooter is presumed to be in the building (“Shooting
Star” 4.18).
As in earlier episodes dealing with Mercedes, the show seems to
present the psychological causes and physical effects of anorexia and buli-
mia with little attention to the reality of the diseases, which can cause great
physical harm and lead to death. Though it is clear throughout that Kitty is
behaving destructively and that innocent Marley is being victimized and
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must, like her character Sandy, learn to be less naïve and trusting of the
more experienced girls at school, the entire torment revolves around a ha-
tred of weight gain and fat—the very hatred that earlier episodes showing
the bias against Marley’s mother were supposed to contradict and coun-
teract. By going to extremes of starvation to avoid becoming like Millie,
Marley in fact advocates for the necessity of thinness for young women
and perhaps her mother’s being deserving of mockery. Though Marley
has told her mother in earlier episodes that her weight is nothing to be
ashamed of, clearly Marley fears obesity and the social stigma attached to
it if she will allow Kitty’s innuendoes and costume alteration to affect her
so radically as to stop eating enough to sustain her health.
Thus the show presents a mixed message on the acceptability of
fatness: neither Finn nor Marley, the two apparently thin characters who
believe they are chubby, are able to withstand the pressures, both internal
and social, to attempt to ameliorate their appearance. Like Finn’s, Millie
Rose’s weight is associated with her low socio-economic status; Marley’s
characterization routinely emphasizes the shortage of money at home, and
Millie is also presented, through her professional duties, with great quan-
tities of food, just as was Lauren Zizes in earlier seasons. The fat female
characters on Glee are more associated with quantities of food or food
with low nutritional value than others, so that despite the message that fat-
ness should be acceptable or at least not a reason for bias against a woman,
the suggestion throughout the series is that fatness is a solvable problem
that is suitable for repeated humorous use.
The latter half of the fourth season redeems Marley by empha-
sizing her strength when she seemingly instantaneously ends her disorder
following the debacle at sectionals and by making her the songwriter who,
despite rejections by Schuester and other glee club members—notably
Kitty—brings the glee club together and empowers their victory at region-
als. Yet the arc of the season demonstrates how the show continues to use
eating disorders as a shorthand for female characters’ vulnerability to ex-
ploitation by other females, and so-called exercise bulimia for the young
male characters to show their fear of appearing unmanly. In short, weak
female characters allow themselves to be led into eating disorders, howev-
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er temporary, and weak male characters attempt to reduce their psycholog-
ical and social weakness by demonstrating excessive physical strength.
It is notable that several locker room scenes in which male characters dis-
cuss their insecurities over such things as romance and academics feature
them exercising vigorously during or between conversations. Further-
more, throughout the fourth season, the show displays the relentlessly thin
and toned bodies of its stars through its musical numbers. Rachel (Lea
Michele) and her antagonistic dance instructor Miss July (Kate Hudson)
compete to see whose dance moves are superior, in part as they compete
for Brody’s attentions. When they do, the camera emphasizes their lean
bodies. Similarly, the episode entitled “Naked” (4.12) shows Sam, Jake,
and Ryder Lynn (Blake Jenner), along with several Cheerios and other glee
club members, exercising in the gym, singing a “mash-up” of “Centerfold”
by the J. Geils Band and “Hot in Here” by Nelly. The scene during which
they perform the “mash-up” features Sam looking on worriedly from his
own scale as another male cast member weighs himself, and Sam using
calipers on his stomach, then engaging in additional abdominal exercise.
Ryder, Blaine (Darren Criss), and others are shown performing pushups
while smirking Cheerios, including Kitty, put their feet on their backs,
and Marley and Unique (Alex Newell) look on and cheer. Throughout the
song, Brittany (Heather Morris) sprays oil on her male cast mates’ torsos,
so that they gleam like bodybuilders or plastic toys. The intention of the
song in endorsing or criticizing the body image insecurities it invokes is
unclear; no comment seems on offer about the use of these male bodies
as objects. Thus, season four leaves viewers with mixed messages about
body shape and size and about the means of achieving hegemonically-en-
dorsed, visible muscularity for men or hegemonically-endorsed thinness
for women.
Conclusions
Although Glee’s portrayal of characters with body image con-
cerns has at times included missteps, the producers’ and writers’ decisions
to include diverse cast members and portray the underdog have led to the
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inclusion of characters quite unusual in mainstream entertainment. The
show’s hits and misses with these characters also demonstrate how diffi-
cult it can be to develop a character whose body shape and size falls out-
side the hegemonic ideal for men or women and whose characterization
avoids stereotypes. This difficulty is compounded as stereotypes some-
times involve equal but opposite ideas, such as the hypersexual fat woman
versus the asexual fat woman, or the tough fat working class man who, by
virtue of his size, may be physically dominant, but whose size symbolizes
his low socioeconomic status.
One can only assume that as long as it airs, Glee will continue
to introduce stereotypes—and risk being berated by critics for relying on
the stereotype to make audiences laugh—then tear the stereotype apart in
later episodes. The success of the show seems to depend on its continuing
to portray underdogs as complex individuals even as others on the show,
and sometimes others within the audience of “Gleeks” and critics, initially
view them solely as stereotypes. Glee’s experimentation with body image
tropes also demonstrates the continual rarity of seeing any fat bodies on
television—at least as anything other than the “before” image in a weight
loss program or advertisement.
Sonya C. Brown
Fayetteville State University
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Sonya C. Brown is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the English
Department at Fayetteville State University (Fayetteville, NC), where she teaches
courses in writing, writing pedagogy, humanities, and literature, and directs FSU’s
Writing Across the Curriculum Program. She is the assistant editor of the GLINT
Online Literary Journal and has authored or co-authored articles on body image
in the media for Southern Communication Journal and the Journal of Popular Ro-
mance Studies. Current research projects include contributions to a forthcoming
book on Film in the Age of Obama and analysis of the Lifetime networks series
Drop Dead Diva. Her Ph.D. in English was earned at the University of Maryland.
147
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