Pick Me’s, DUFFS, and The Funny Girl Phenomena
Written by Ennie Fakoya
I was freshly 14 when I first understood why my body was less of a thing that existed and more of a hindrance. I thought, “To possess beauty is to be coy and unsure of yourself. To be acceptably fat is to be funny and confident in your lack thereof, so that is who you must be.”
It was a matter of taking up space, both figuratively and literally. In doing so, your voice carries more than your weight (sometimes) and prepubescent boys find you “cool” and “funny” (all the time). Your closest friends are shorter and smaller, and you begin to believe they do it on purpose. They chose the body that they were in, as though they too were not grappling with being inchoate masses of young bones and milky teeth.
You never really learn what it means to be beautiful to someone who isn’t obligated to find you beautiful, and in your search for that someone, what you carry is heavier than what most can handle.The type of media that I watched growing up taught me that bodies like mine are born for the background. Never the centre stage. I don’t talk about being fat but the fact is there. I’ve never been smaller than overweight but I’ve never been morbidly obese. That was my comfort.
When I first watched Ari Sandel’s The D.U.F.F, I was enraged. Mae Whitman wasn’t fat. She was what I wanted to be. There’s absolutely no way anyone could think she was fat. But then again, it was 2015. Even now, barely mid-sized women are considered fat. In a Vox article, Emily St. James considered that ‘D.U.F.F’ is a state of mind. One that leaves room for more nuance than other coming-of-age- teen films do.
The titular film originated the term D.U.F.F, but conceptually, a Designated Ugly Fat Friend has been a long-standing concept, in both fiction and reality. Dramatising high school in media isn’t too far off what the teenage mind can do. Secondary school is the second form of socialisation we’re accustomed to, therefore it becomes our second world. For some, it’s an escape from the first.
However, for a fat black girl, there is no escape. Fat shaming is a regular occurrence in most African households, and the minute you enter the four walls of a school, it’s as though everyone is in on the bit.
Therefore, one must learn to adapt. Enter; The Funny Girl Phenomena. In media, this woman is often labelled ‘The Funny Fat Friend’, known for her lack of desireablity and instead her ability to find popularity—in conjunction with her, prettier, skinnier friend— through her sense of humour. This, I understand very well, but being funny was only ever one-half of the compliment.
As a fat, funny girl, you eventually get tired of just being fat and funny. To be listened to, to have a stake in the kind of man you deserve instead of feeling validation from the next one that stares at you. To be on equal footing with a woman who is more conventionally attractive. I wanted to have those things in my arsenal, but it just wasn’t possible. As a result, the kind of humour I dabbled in was extremely self-deprecating with a side of a false God complex.
Being called funny by a man used to be the precipice of my standards. I strived to use my personality to attract men and it worked. Kind of. The funny was reinforced by my race, a black woman berating herself for the plight of her predominantly white counterparts. I wanted so badly to be funny and pretty, but at that point, I was asking for too much.
When I think about those moments now, years later, it’s very embarrassing, but even then, I feel the urge to turn that embarrassment into a funny story. It’s a blessing at times, because I’m rarely in awkward conversations, but I also don’t know how to pace myself. Not all of it is funny. Most of it is entirely depressing. But I was never taught that there was space for my sadness because, on the spectrum of my emotions, anything other than silliness is anger.
Nowadays, I wonder if I’ll ever date another man again because I simply don’t have the strength to fight myself on why he wouldn’t find me attractive.
Body dysmorphia seems to have become an intrinsic part of the girlhood experience, something a lot of women are still attempting to step out of as they exit their early 20s. From Instagram and TikTok to Hinge and Bumble, every corner of the internet is filled with women who once hated their bodies, and are trying their very best to own it.
The process of loving yourself through the slog of online dating is treacherous, even for conventionally attractive women. Men are weird, men are pretending to be wolves - not furries, Alpha males - and above all else, women are being given three thousand alternating rules on how to attract men.
Don’t be funny on the first date, be mysterious. But also don’t be a bitch because it’s giving pick me. Don’t be jealous of your hotter friend because that’s toxic but also aspire for a body like hers. Exercise and eat healthy but don’t lose weight or you’re fatphobic. Love your body, but don’t be a whore.
It’s never-ending, and the gag of it all is that everything contradicts itself. Despite wanting to decentre men, the things we do to date them entirely centres on how they would feel about us.
For men, things like this are rarely a problem. In recent times we’ve seen the rise of the Medium Ugly Man; a kind, often nerdy guy who isn’t conventionally desirable but he makes you laugh and probably gives good head. We’re kinder to men that don’t tick all the boxes because historically, men have everything, even when they clearly don’t. Whereas for the woman, her humour is perhaps the only thing that makes her tolerable.
I love funny women, and I’m glad I’ve gone through the character development to realise that I don’t give a fuck if a man thinks I’m funny. I spent most of my school experiences trying desperately to appeal to men when half the time, I wasn’t appealing to myself. Living in a body that stands between you and the finer things in life is a tough pill to swallow. No matter how much you try to placate the discomfort with a false sense of confidence, it will always be there.
Humour is a cathartic way to find compromise where there might not be. Comedians take their discomfort and squeeze it into a joke, that’s how we digest painful things. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of everything else you have to offer. If you force yourself to be what every other woman isn’t, you lose out on figuring out what kind of woman you are, and the kind of people you should surround yourself with.
In conclusion, being fat isn’t a problem for some, and for others it is. There’s a tendency in recent times to force everyone to be happy with their bodies, specifically larger bodies, and that’s just not realistic. Some people will lose weight and like their skinnier selves, and some people will like the way they are for as long as they’d like. The most important part is that it’s nobody's choice to do so but theirs.
