#i am familar in the sense others talking and i have a tl but i havent read or seen it no

[caustic-light]

Body Positivity and Fatphobia in Disney’s Recess

So I am a huge fan of this show and have been sort of hyperfocusing on it for the last couple months. One of the reasons I love this show is how it does body positivity, however not all is perfect when it comes to that either. There is good examples of fat representation in this show and there is less good examples.

Lets start with the obvious:

Mikey is a very mixed bag, though I believe he’s not nearly as bad as he would seem at first glance. He is the closest this show has to a token fat character. He is associated strongly with food and he is the archetype of the fat bumbling idiot. That is not where the depth of his character ends. He is also the big softie archetype, he cares a lot about poetry and he’s basically a stereotypical hippie boiled down into a nine year old boy. There are some jabs made at his size throughout the show, but they are shown to be in bad faith against him, and not encouraged or normalized. Most other remarks about his size are more neutral and non judgemental (like him being called “big guy” occasionally by friends). So overall he is what I would call very not ideal, but mostly inoffensive. It helps that while he is definitely a fat strereotype he is balanced out by a lot of characters who are not stereotypes. It doesn’t make it less.... ugh... to see his defining character trait in the shows intro to be eating a lot, but it makes me forgoving if there is one super stereotypical character in a pool of a whole lot of characters.

Another character of the not ideal variety would be Gelman.

He’s a bully and he’s very big and intimidating. That about sums up most of his character. He has some depth beyond that but it’s not anything out of the ordinary. I also don’t have a lot to say here. I am actually not mad about the fact that he’s fat and a bully, because this show has a lot of fat characters and multiple bully characters. What I however am not very happy about is how he is drawn differently from more sympathetic fat characters. Where most fat characters in the show don’t have a defined chest outside of shirtless scenes, and instead just a horizontal line that is meant to imply that they have a chubby chest (if anything at all),

Gelman is drawn with moobs. This means that different looks of fatness are presented with different sympathies associated to them and is one thing I am not very amped about. Associating moobs with being bad is just not a good look. Another example of this would be Clyde Philmore, a minor characters minor character, but another bully who is drawn with a much more defined chest than any of the more likable characters.

There is also Kurst the Worst who... let’s not talk about her.

Lets move over to the positives, because this show does have a lot going for it in terms of body positivity.

Let’s start with the obvious again.

TJ is the main character of Recess and while he is one of the slimmer fat characters in the show visually, there is no mistaking that he is a fat boy. He is described as fat in the show at one point and he has a canonical weight given that puts him right at the edge between overweight and obese. The artstyle doesn’t always reflect his size on the same level (I assume the storyboarders all knew he was supposed to be fat, but weren’t very unified in how fat he’s supposed to be exactly) and so his size varies, but even at his slimmest (apart from a few instances where he looks almost off model) he is noticably thicker than the skinny characters on the show.

As you can see a lot of his pudge comes and goes, but he is always noticably bulky. Especially compared to how skinny characters look on this show.

TJ overall is an amzing character. He is complex, well rounded and extremely likable. And he is the leader and arguably the main character of the show. He is never reduced to his weight (even when it’s explicitely mentioned it’s a part of hyping him up in the style of a sports commentator). He is not very conventionally attractive in general, but he is so incredibly charismatic that it couldn’t matter less how he looks. He radiates coolness with everything he does. He is extremely popular. Everybody loves him. He fights for justice and he is extremely loyal to his friends. And he is fat. He is the kind of fat representation kids should see so much more of. He reminds me a lot of Steven Universe in that sense. Both are amazing characters, and role models who do amazing things and happen to be fat without it ever being an issue or presented as something negative. The only negative remark TJ gets over course of the whole of the series is one made out of jealousy towards him.

One detail about TJ that I noticed that may well be a coincidence, but that never the less intrigues me is his choice of clothes. He is wearing a very warm looking jacket when most characters are dressed for much warmer weather. This is something that might be familar to a lot of people who grew up fat, as clothing like that serves to conceal ones own shape and especially comes in handy for hiding a chest that is more pronounced than one would like. It’s certainly something I used to do and seeing that maybe TJ is struggling with some body image issues himself, despite how confident he is usually portrayed, is an interesting thought to me. I should also note that I noticed that he seems to be drawn slimmer in scenes with his jacket on and the line implying his chest tends to only appear when he is without his jacket, but that might be confirmation bias on my part.

At this point I could start listing characters and going over them like I have done up to this point, but I find that would get a little old. Most fat characters in the show are never adressed as fat, or have the fat become an important thing. It never defines them and there is no jabs at their expense, or stereotyping (aside from the characters I talked about earlier). And that is what overall makes this show amazing at fat representation for me. There is a lot of characters with a lot of different shapes and sizes.

There is fat main characters:

Side characters:

Unnamed extras:

Antagonists:

Characters who are somewhat chubby, but not really fat:

It’s beautiful to see so many non skinny characters, and so many different kinds of bodies exist in a show from the 90s of all things and Recess is not given the credit it deserves for it.

So to close it off with some miscelaneous thoughts I have two things I wanna mention.

There is one character who I have not mentioned yet. Tubby.

I do not like Tubby. He is thankfully not very present in the show, but he is a lot of stereotypes that just do not sit well with me. However I think I should talk about the one episode of recess that actually adresses the topic of weight and fatphobia and it’s about him and Mikey.

In the episode “The Kindergarten Derby” all the older kids get to choose a kindergartner and they compete in a race. Mikey never finished the race when he was a kindergartner because he tripped and fell and he refuses to participate now because he sees it as humiliating and exploitative. Untill he meets Tubby who is convinced he will win and wants him to mentor him. Tubby wants to show that a fat kid can win the race and Mikey wants him to focus on just finishing. In the end Tubby does win and uses his prize (a wish for basically anything that the playground monarchy can reasonably give to him) to wish for an end to the kindergarten derbies because they are humiliating and cruel. (To all the kids participating, not just fat ones) There is kind of a lot to maybe mention in that episode, but honestly this post is long enough as it it. Maybe I’ll rewatch and dissect that episode another time.

The other thing is that I am not sure of the representation for fat girls is as good as it is for fat boys. While rewatching the show I noticed a lot of boys of all sizes being in it, but I am biased in favor of noticing them because I am a fat man and seeing male fat representation simply does more for me on an emotional level than female representation. I should rewatch the show and specifically watch out to see if female representation is as plentiful as male representation. TL;DR: This show has some issues, but it also has an enourmous cast of characters and it has plenty of fat characters in pretty much every category of characters with their fatness being (almost) never brought up, or a factor to their character. (Even with the more problematic characters) People are sleeping on it and that is unfair. For a cartoon from the 90s this is fucking amazing and people should give it credit for all it does.