Diversity in The Dollhouse Will Take More Than a “Miracle”
By Teresa Jusino
I am a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, and I’m also a huge fan of both the actress Miracle Laurie, and of her character, November. Season One has already shown us that she was one of the more intriguing “actives”, both in what she was assigned to do, and what brought her to the Dollhouse in the first place. I follow Miracle on Twitter, and not only is she a talented actress, but she seems like a genuinely nice, fun person.
However, I saw an item on the Orlando Sentinel blog entitled “‘Dollhouse’s’ Miracle Laurie Doesn’t Conform to Hollywood Body Standards” that made me want to punch babies. While I agree with the writer’s point that “I think “fit” comes in all shapes and sizes. I think media portrayals should reflect that. It’s important so women (and girls) can set realistic, achievable fitness goals – and not always feel like they’re striving for an unattainable perfection and damaging their self esteem in the process”, I resented the qualifier that “I’m not saying fat is fit. But Miracle Laurie isn’t fat, even though she’s larger than her co-stars. For the record, she’s 5′9″ and 145 pounds, according to her resume.”
No, Miracle Laurie isn’t fat – and that’s part of the problem. Then again, I have a different perspective than this blogger.
Me giving face in one of my most recent headshots
Back when Dollhouse was barely a glimmer in the eye of the general public, I was at the tail end of my former life as an actress. I had just decided to give up acting in favor of writing and had decided to not audition anymore. Then, I came across the casting notice for Dollhouse, and noticed one character that sounded like it might be perfect for me:
November
20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy. Another Doll, a hopeful child in the house and everyone else you need her to be outside. A comforting, radiant presence, who tends to get fewer of the criminal gigs and more of the personal ones. Recurring;
I thought to myself, They NEVER ask for heavy! And any ethnicity! That means they’re specifically looking for non-Caucasians for this part! I have to try for it! So I sent in my headshot. I didn’t have an agent, and most of my acting experience is in theater, not film. So, I wasn’t expecting anything to come from this. But I was so thrilled that they were even looking for someone who looks remotely like me that just being able to send in my photo felt like vindication! I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear from them, but I was very much looking forward to seeing whom they would cast in this role.
When I did, I wanted to stab people. Not because Miracle Laurie isn’t beautiful. She is. And it’s not because she’s not wonderful in the part, because as she’s proven in Season One, she is that, too. But I was infuriated, because it was clear that they ended up not taking their own casting notice seriously. When they said “heavy”, they meant Hollywood heavy, not Actual heavy. Actually heavy women don’t get to have sex with guys like Tamoh Penikett. I don’t know what Laurie’s ethnicity is, but she has a lovely, exotic look that could be any number of things. So at least they got the “any ethnicity” part right.
The Dollhouse won’t be truly diverse until their dolls are as diverse as their clientele must be. Do people fantasize about hot people? Of course! But the assumption is that only certain things = hot, and that’s just not true. Speaking as a chubby Puerto Rican woman, I can tell you that I’ve had really hot guys genuinely love my body. None of them as hot as Tamoh Penikett….but I digress. And I’m not saying that being fat is great either. It’s not. It’s not healthy, and I’d really like to not huff and puff when I climb a flight of stairs. However, television is supposed to reflect society, and right now the mirror is cracked.
Dollhouse – and TV in general – won’t truly be diverse until they start including people who are Actual Heavy. Not as a punchline, or to make some kind of a statement about tolerance, but just people living their lives. The same goes for race, or any other physical characteristic. We shouldn’t have to wait for a Very Special Episode to encounter someone on television who looks like someone we’d actually know.
TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is a founding member and editor of The Revolving Door Commune Blog, is currently at work on a collection of short stories, and is writing a web series for Pareidolia Films called The Pack, which is set to debut in March 2010! As a geek, Teresa loves all Star Trek, Lost, Fringe, comics, and anything Joss Whedon, Brian K. Vaughan, and Neil Gaiman ever touched. She is also an aspiring fangbanger. Get Twitterpated with Teresa, or visit her in The Red Room.
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There are lots of 'actual heavy' people on TV. Most of them are men. Or Oprah.
Yeah, Hurley from Lost is more than "Hollywood heavy."
That's true – and usually those heavy men are in comedies.
One example I was thinking of as a perfect balance is Hurley on Lost. His weight is mentioned, but mostly by him. Even when Charlie would "make fun of him", it was for a serious reason, like trying to protect him. Sawyer took potshots, but he took potshots at EVERYONE. AND, Hurley got to have a thin, hot, blond girlfriend on the island.
Then again, there's the issue that it's more acceptable for a guy to be fat than a woman. The King of Queens, Kevin James, can have a hot wife on his show. Hell, going all the way back to Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners – fat husband/thin, attractive wife is a common thing. This extends beyond TV. Seeing an overweight guy with a skinny girlfriend isn't as shocking as seeing an overweight woman with a skinny boyfriend.
Somewhere along the way, men got the right to be choosy, while women are expected to look beyond looks. I don't know why that is, but it doesn't seem fair.
I'll ignore your comment about Oprah.
Something to consider though is that those guys you mention aren’t exactly catches – there’s something wrong with all of them. Hurley is mentally unstable (so was his girlfriend, I might add). Others are buffoons, they’re slobs, they’re bad dads. We wouldn’t even see a Ralph Kramden in a sit-com now, not as the hero, because he’s so mean (he did, however, have an awesome wife who gave it right back to him). The only guy I can think off off hand who was a big guy and wasn’t presented as a joke was John Goodman on Roseanne. I’ve never seen it as a message saying, “Hey guys! You can have all this, too!” Rather as a sad joke on those very guys, like a cheerleader accepting a fat guy’s invite to the dance for the sole purpose of making him feel like shit while her friends get a laugh out of it.
Meanwhile, big girls can’t be big on screen without it being the central purpose of the show or constantly brought up, i.e. Ugly Betty, Drop Dead Diva, Less Than Perfect. It’s like there needs to be a sub-clause to the Bechdel rule: (1) a show should have women who (2) are in situations about something (3) other than weight/ body image.
For the record, I would totally go for Kevin James. But, not Hurley.
Well-put.
Also – you're pretty.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Flattery will get you everywhere.
Love,
Teresa
I get exactly what Alpha-Girl is saying here. It's like what Bill Maher once said on one of his stand-up specials when he talked about how routine sitcoms have become. The wife is this gorgeous woman who has her act together and the guy is "this big dumb fuck lucky to have had her." As long as the girl looks great, that's deemed as acceptable to the networks.
They're all probably afraid to bring in a bigger woman as the lead actress because they're paranoid the audience will consider it a rip-off of "Roseanne." It's a shame they don't get that as long as the writing is good, the ratings will follow. Hopefully as time passes, they'll get their heads out of their collective asses and realize that talent comes in all shapes and sizes.
Very good job on the article, Teresa…
Thank you, by the way!
Of course, I agree with you, but it's going to be a long road. Baby steps. Personally, I'm psyched that the likes of Miracle Laurie and Christina Hendricks are even featured on television, when neither one of them would EVER have been on TV in the Kate Moss 90s. When I first sat down to watch Dollhouse, I said, "Finally! A woman on TV who's not super thin!" It's some kind of a start. Very slow but something.
But as far as fat men being more acceptable goes, I think it's two things:
1) while everyone has body image issues, women are more vocal about theirs more often, so everyone imagines that EVERY woman wants to be thin where men just don't care. It's not that man-fat is really more acceptable, it's that the myth that all women want to be a size -1 is so prominent that a woman not actively, vocally striving to get or remain a size -1, is virtually inconceivable on TV;
and 2) men are thought to be so shallow that they would never be interested in a woman who isn't blonde and skinny unless they have some sort of fetish.
The skinny guy/big girl dynamic has always been played as a joke in the movies and TV, sort of like how stupid comedies will just throw in an old mute Asian person to make people laugh, or how the thing in indie hipster comedies of the last few years is to stick in a tall African dude as a quirky visual gag. So when it's not portrayed as a joke, people still look for the joke in it.
I don't think it's that men GET to be choosy so much as women are supposed to be the only ones able to see past the superficial. THAT is where women are shown in a better light than men. Ladies can see through Kevin James' or Seth Rogen's chubby oafishness to see the really awesome guy inside… but men are incapable of extending that to women without some sort of dirty ulterior motive. That's not fair either.
@ Alpha-Girl – you're definitely right about most of them not being catches. I brought up Hurley as an example only because his size was just a fact, not presented for a) humor value, or b) for a larger message about tolerance, and I cited the other examples as guys who ARE being used for humor.
@ George – I just wish the reverse could be true, you know? We mention Roseanne, but Roseanne wasn't married to a hot dude. She was married to a similarly large dude. And while I loved that show, and thought it was a true representation of life, women don't get a fantasy life on TV the way men do. There's no female equivalent of "this chick is lucky to have him." Like having someone like Robin Thorsen from The Guild (http://www.watchtheguild.com/images/Headshots/Rob... married to someone like Tamoh Penikett.
Actually, The Guild does that really well. Robin Thorson's character, Clara, is married to a pretty buff, attractive dude. Of course, she doesn't pay much attention to him or her kids because of her gaming, but still…
great article, teresa. we should all be graced by more beautiful women like yourself on the television.
and while i definitely agree with alpha girl's sentiment (about the men on tv not being portrayed as catches, and that they're damn lucky to have gotten the girl), i still feel that at the end of the day, the message of the shows are almost always uplifting to men: men can be slobs, or lazy, or generally less attractive, or terrible husbands, or otherwise jerks, and it's okay. that's what makes them human! but so long as they have "good hearts," or occasional "good intentions," they deserve to be loved unconditionally. by their perfect wives. thus setting up the double standard that it's okay for men to be flawed in looks and personality and to get the girl who's completely out of his league, but for a woman…well, she should be perfect and look a certain way and be intelligent and motivated and attentive and maternal and sexy and etc. etc.,… thus contributing all the more to the impossible standard of perceived perfection that's already expected of women. gr.
now i feel i must get into the guild!
Just looked at the pic. She's very cute, and it's refreshing to see such an actress getting attention somewhere. Baby steps…
Teresa – I'm glad you brought Robin Thorsen up because, of course, The Guild isn't on network TV (yet). Clara is married to a great, good-looking guy, and her weight is simply not an issue. Neither is Vork's lack of hair or Tink's and Zaboo's ethnicity.
I would like to think that TV (or film) is going to grow up one day and be reflective of it's audience, but I just don't see that happening atm. They will never change without a reason because change is hard and scary and might not work.
In the end I think it will be webseries like The Guild that will force change because as they become more available and mainstream more people will want to watch them because they are about, and populated by, people like them.
Very well said, Teresa. It's extremely strange that women like Miracle Laurie (and Whedon's other "big" girl Amber Benson) are considered heavy in Hollywood when, in the real world, they're just normal. I suspect as more and more women achieve positions of power in the entertainment industry, we'll see a more dramatic shift toward fair portrayals on that front.
By the by, Miracle is from Hawaii. I don't know how much of her ethnicity is native/Polynesian, but probably some.
One thing worth noting about Dollhouse, the definition of "heavy" probably changed.
Joss Whedon said that when he originally pitched Dollhouse, he wanted Dolls of all sizes, shapes, and ages. He said that different people had different fantasies and he wanted the dolls to reflect that. So his original vision had heavy dolls and senior citizen dolls.
The network said no. They all had to be young and fit.
Indeed, Joss is probably doing the best he can.
Note, for instance that he asked Jewel Staite to fatten up for the role of Kaylee in Firefly, and she wasn't required to put it back on for Serenity, which is the reason she looks considerably thinner in the movie!
The sad thing is that it's the people with the purse-strings who want to keep TV homogeneous. It's only indie stuff like the aforementioned Guild which can dare to be different.
Similar to the Hollywood Fat phenomenon is the Hollywood Ugly phenomenon, which usually means glasses or braces on a stunningly beautiful thin girl. I love Miracle Laurie and think she's gorgeous, but fat she is not. Nor, for that matter, are you, Theresa! Joss is trying, sure, but remember that he's immersed in an industry that has largely detached itself from 'normal' human diversity. It's hard to remember that Eliza Dushku is skinny when she looks like every other actress you see.
Thank you – but you haven't seen the rest of me.
And yes, Eliza Dushku is reeeally skinny. She's awesome, and badass, and really smart, but I want to give her protein shakes or something. She looks great on camera, but remember that the camera adds 10 lbs. I saw her at a Dollhouse event in NYC, and she looked like she was standing on twigs.
I hate saying that, because making comments about "too skinny" is just as bad as making comments about "too fat" – but it just sucks that she's in an industry that values twigginess so much, when it's clear that the audience could give two craps. She'd be just as gorgeous with 10-15 more lbs on her, and I hope she knows that, despite her occupation.
To be fair, Jewel Staite has said many times that she has a fairly high metabolism, so putting on weight for the series was actually quite difficult for her. I think she looks great both ways, but am very glad that she didn't have to go through the hassle of trying to bulk up for the film.