Reasons Why Every Female Character On This TV Show Must Be Very, Very Thin

Some very serious and not at all satirical explanations.

We have a limited costuming budget and could only buy enough fabric to make clothing in size 0.

We believe in representation for everyone, and we believe that the category of “significantly over-represented” is criminally underrepresented in media.

This show is not a comedy, and therefore we cannot employ anyone we deem “fat” — (note: this descriptor will be pinged for anyone 120 pounds and up, regardless of height). It is no coincidence that “fat” and “funny” are alliterative, as are “thin” and “thoughtful.”

We are hoping Mattel will release a collector’s edition Barbie doll based on our main character, which incidentally is why we also require female leads on this show to have an 8-inch instep.

If the audience cannot see the characters’ bones, how will the audience know they HAVE bones?

We have a contract with Coca-Cola for product placement and they made it very clear that they are looking for an extremely specific body type to promote a drink that contains 40 grams of sugar in a single serving.

We have a contract with My Fitness Pal for product placement and they made it very clear that they cannot market to our audience unless we can make them feel bad about themselves for not looking like our characters at all times.

We have a contract with Abercrombie and Fitch for product placement and they made it very clear that they hate fat people with the burning passion of a thousand suns, which is definitely not our fault.

It’s a nuanced literary statement about body size correlating with scope of character development for women in popular media. You wouldn’t understand.

We need to fit as many slender beings onto one screen as possible. TVs keep getting bigger; it’s only a matter of time before they start shrinking again. Like the cell phone, but in reverse.

Our accommodations budget, like the scope of character development for women in popular media, is very small this year, and we can only afford very narrow trailers for costume changes. Next year, if proposed budget cuts are passed, our trailers will shrink even further and we will be forced to replace all our actresses with slender, slithery salamanders.

Only thin women showed up to the casting call we put out for “petite, slender, sylphlike, gamine female age 22–29, no tattoos,” which is definitely not our fault.

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This post originally appeared in The Belladonna Comedy in 2021.