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George Cole had been spoilt by an overindulgent mother, who stuffed him with sweetmeats till he was sick, and then thought him too delicate to study, so that at twelve years old, he was a pale, puffy boy, dull, fretful, and lazy. Louisa May Alcott, Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys, 1871 “Listen, Mr. Buttermaker, quit buggin’ me about my food. People are always buggin’ me about it. My shrink says that’s why I’m so fat. So you’re not doin’ me any good—so just quit it!” Mike Engelberg, fat catcher in The Bad News Bears 3 Survival of the fattest Contending with the Fat Boy in Children’s Ensemble Films Jerry Mosher These quotations—one from a classic of children’s literature, the other from a widely imitated children’s ensemble film—span more than a century, but they share a common purpose: to explain the causes of a boy’s obesity. Because the fat body is such a visible display of corporeal deviance, it is subjected to intense scrutiny and regulation, which often takes the form of a narrative—the need to explain how a fat person “got that way.” The modern medical use of the case history has shaped the way popular narratives circulate about bodies and behavior, perpetuating the belief that character is evident in the materiality of the body. When these narratives are repeated over and over again, they enforce corporeal norms and naturalize any variation as symptomatic of behavioral deviance. Thus George Cole in Little Men is not just fat, he is also “dull, fretful, and lazy,” traits that have become virtually synonymous with fat in media characterizations of obesity. Similarly, Mike Engelberg in The Bad News Bears (1976) displays stereotypical qualities such as irritability and an obsession with food. Because these fat boys are supporting characters who receive limited narrative attention, their physical deviance and stereotypical behavior serve as a kind of shorthand, enabling the audience to easily recognize them as familiar stock characters. 61 jerry mosher 62 The stereotype, however, is “a complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation, as anxious as it is assertive” (Bhabha 1994, 70). The fat boy has traditionally been the object of scorn, but he has also been a reliable and occasionally charismatic character in American cinema. When an American film features an ensemble of child actors there is almost invariably a fat boy, who seldom gets a date but often gets the best lines. Fat girls rarely are seen—reflecting the widespread marginalization of fat women in American media—but the fat boy role has maintained steady popularity throughout cinema’s sound era. Whereas the fat girl has few adult role models, the fat boy’s sheer size makes him a potential Babe Ruth—or, at least, a William “Refrigerator” Perry. It is thus not surprising that the fat boy has been a comic staple of children’s sports films, as witnessed in The Bad News Bears and its many “band of misfits” imitators. In adventure films like Lord of the Flies (1963; 1990) and The Goonies (1985), he often plays a caretaking role in addition to providing comic relief. These ensemble films may suggest the presence of parents and authority figures, but more often than not they portray boys among their peers with little context of family. In the competitive world of the playground and the primitive setting of the camping trip, the boys often feel compelled to mimic adult masculinity and adopt a “survival of the fittest” mentality that punishes the fat boy or forces him into a subservient role. That the fat boy usually survives these demeaning trials with humility and a sense of humor is a testament to his resiliency. Since the nineteenth century, childhood has been privileged as a time of presexual innocence and wide-eyed curiosity, but the popular narratives created to explain the fat boy’s obesity usually suggest there is nothing innocent about him: he is greedy, corrupt, lazy, and dull. However, these narratives are complicated by the attribution of responsibility. Are fat children to blame for their obesity , or are their parents? Is childhood obesity a result of heredity, or environment? Stereotypical characterizations of fat children are too fleeting to convey the complexity of these issues, but they are nevertheless historically and culturally specific, dependent on the swift recognition of accepted wisdom and popular medical opinion. Medical experts currently estimate that at least 25 percent of American children are overweight or obese...

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