One Unique Token

I’m a big girl. I’m not big in the I-haven’t-been-to-the-gym-in-a-few-weeks way, or the I’m-bloated-because-I’m-on-my-period way. I’m big in the my-naked-body-is-so-covered-in-stretch-marks-it-looks-like-I’m-wearing-an-old-fashioned-prison-jumpsuit way.

I have no idea why I’m not thinner. Why aren’t all fat women thin? With the effort we put into annoying the skinny populace, it seems like we’d barely have time to gain weight.

Yet we manage to stay fat even as we march through the minefield of popular culture. “Marie Claire” blogger Maura Kelly is the latest brave soul willing to speak out against the fatty-led reign of terror.

I could pick fights with Kelly over a lot of her so-called arguments against depictions of fatty love on TV, but I’ll leave that up to the experts*.

I’m here to say that if Kelly doesn’t want to see fat people kissing other fat people on TV, she doesn’t have to. She can change the channel. But beyond that, I’d like to offer her a more active solution. Kelly wrote that she’d “be grossed out if she had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other.” Well, how about I chop your problem in half?

See, I’m an equal-opportunity lech. I like men. Big ones, small ones, short ones, tall ones…I just appreciate smart, funny, non-douchey guys. There’s this problem, though; Hollywood doesn’t seem to believe that all men like girls like me.

Don't mind me. I'm just dreaming about cheeseburgers and late-night hosts.

Sure, there were “Hairspray,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and a few other movies where the “fat” girl gets the conventionally hot guy, but what about TV? When does Mercedes get to date Puck for real? Fat guys busted this barrier years ago, but where my ladies at?

Kelly should demand that the deal makers in Hollywood stop casting mixed-weight romances as flukes or sweeps stunts and start venturing into dangerous territory: The terrain in which a super-sexy dude might just like a girl not in spite of but because of her love handles and stretch marks.

I’m not suggesting next season’s slate include a bunch of shows featuring fat fetishists. But how about giving large actresses more options than being the funny friend or the star doomed to be trapped in her fatty body. How about a Grace who’s the size of one-and-a-half Debra Messings? Why not create a “Sex and the City” clone with a Carrie Bradshaw whose closet is full of plus-sized couture (if designers ever get around to mass producing it)?

I’m not naive and I swear I’m not trying to be disingenuous. I know there are a lot of shallow guys out there. But overweight women have been starring in their own love stories for eons. Why not finally depict that on TV?

Before you storm my house with cries of “unrealistic expectations,” just know that I think reality is in the eye of the remote holder. Anyone out there suggesting no one would buy McDreamy proposing to Ellenor Frutt is refusing to open their eyes. Not that I’m necessarily speaking from personal experience, but some guys actually want women of mental substance, even if they come with more physical substance.

I feel much lighter having gotten that rant out of my system. So light, in fact, that maybe Maura Kelly could bear to look at me now.

*Though, since we’re on the topic, can we stop comparing things to alcoholism? First, Colorado Senate Republican candidate Ken Buck said homosexuality shared similarities with alcoholism, and then Kelly justified her hatred of fatties by saying they’re aesthetically displeasing like drunks and “heroine” [sic] addicts. Well, I think it’s aesthetically displeasing to read words written by a woman who doesn’t know the difference between a drug and a mythical woman, so Kelly and I are even.