Fat/Femme

“No fats, no femmes” is an increasingly outdated, but still ubiquitous phrase from the digital universe of gay cruising. It was most frequently found in want ads for sexual encounters, to bluntly and without equivocation narrow the field of respondents to one’s category of desirables: svelte and “straight-acting.” It seems fair to surmise then that the effort of politely responding “not interested, thanks” or even just deleting an un-enticing solicitation email is more straining than copping a thoughtful editorial sense. Perhaps this is the most reductive explanation of how oppression perpetuates itself: as psychic damage, aimed at fellow community members who visually signify social stigma.

As an effeminate (more or less depending on who I’m standing next to) queer man, this is a familiar burn – seeking refuge from omnipresent disdain, only to be denigrated by your so-called community. Now, anytime I find my self blacklisted, I immediately look for who else made the cut - my fellow inferiors. That is, quite simply, how you know your allies.

To my understanding, people of size, like feminized men, navigate a tenuous space between extreme visibility and extreme invisibility. And both poles basically suck. The woman of size, specifically, has been metaphorically cast as the monstrous logic of overworked womanhood (pregnancy or the expanding body, the endless receptacle, curvaceous, all-consuming). The feminized man is her odd-couple complement, for he is the monster who failed to achieve masculinity (but is speculated to want so badly to be near it, touched by it, fucked by it). We are the butts of jokes and grotesque imitations, we share a history of attempted explanation by geneticists, we are avidly de-sexualized (as previously noted) and mainstream cinema holds us both in utter contempt.

From this perspective, there is a particular scene in Precious that produces a peculiar result because of its superb casting that, for me, functions as an iconographic bridge between the “fats” and the “femmes.” It takes place near the end of the film when Precious’s heinous mother Mary, played to bone-chilling effect by Mo’Nique, meets with Precious and Mrs. Weiss, their stoic social worker (deftly played without fanfare by a de-glamorized Mariah Carey.) In the scene, Mary vies for Mrs. Weiss’s sympathy and in shot/reverse-shot fashion, we see Mrs. Weiss is simply not having it. As Mary is continuously foiled by the social worker’s steely resolve, her frustrated plea mutates into a guilt-ridden hysterical confessional. It is then that Mrs. Weiss’s thick skin is subverted by her own empathy, manifested as a lone tear tracing down her cheek. In this moment, Mary transforms, for the audience and Mrs. Weiss alike, from vicious monster into a vulnerable, tragically flawed woman.

(NOTE: This is partially so effective because the world-weary Mrs. Weiss is a stand-in for us, the audience. Her impatient skepticism may be symptomatic of a unique brand of disillusionment that can plague the most well-intentioned social services workers (overworked, underpaid). But, it is also an extension of the familiar brand of fatigue that periodically settles over the American citizenry. Inevitably, when we are barraged with death and despair flowing in as news and information, it can sometimes be, truly, hard to care.)