https://www.indiewire.com/2022/02/fat-actresses-fat-roles-renee-zellweger-unrecognizable-1234696039
The excellent podcast Maintenance Phase has a couple of episodes about fat suits, but it looks like they’re patron-only right now. It is definitely worth being a patron of that show, though.
Basically, their take on fat suits is that, like the article says, it amounts to saying that fat people don’t exist— fat women, specifically— or at least that it’s not worth bothering to meaningfully engage with what it’s like to be a fat person, which is a weird stance for a film to take, considering they’re…about people’s experiences.
Imagine if John Goodman’s roles had been played by some guy in a fat suit. You can say well, the point of all of his roles is not to depict a fat person per se, but rather a person who happens to be fat. To which I would reply…exactly.
Imagine how many fat women there are out there who could act the shit out of any of the roles John Goodman has played, but will never have the chances he’s had to play them, because they’re fat.
Then tell me why we can tell fascinating, horrifying, thrilling stories about people’s lives, but mostly not if they’re fat men, and not at all if they’re fat women.
I also think that whenever you’re impressed by the “range” of an actor playing the role of any marginalized population they don’t belong to— fat, deformed, developmentally disabled, etc.— you should take a moment to go look at how people who are actually in those populations view the performance. They’re the ones capable of assessing that— you’re only evaluating whether the actor is depicting your own preconceptions of what it’s like to be fat, deformed, developmentally disabled, etc.