The one in which she is standing next to Janelle Monáe. Or that young skinny white engineer she’s trying to keep up with.
She has a real-world 46-year-old mom’s body. It is not meant for running.
I think her heels caused her more problems than her body type. Heavyset, get outta here.
I can’t even believe that such words or this discussion is happening in a thread about NASA scientists.
Well, yeah, I can.
You’re really working to find offense where none is meant. I have no idea what she looks like in real life. Maybe she’s a bikini model. Maybe she was wearing large amounts of padding under her dress. In the *movie *- the one thing I am referring to - she is clearly meant to have a body type midway between Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer as is shown on the ubiquitous poster. She is neither skinny nor fat, but portrayed as somewhat stout or stocky, which are the meanings of the word heavyset. And the word was used solely in the context of her being required to run carrying large printouts when time was critical, so it was the opposite of gratuitous. The word said nothing about her abilities in science but is pertinent to a totally gratuitous action the director threw in to Hollywoodize the reality.
Some would even say her figure was hidden.
The equations on the chalkboards are generally correct. I’m learning them now (mechanical engineering student here).
I experienced no offense at your comment but the same “huh??” In that poster and in the movie she does not look at all “heavy-set.” No question the character of Mary Jackson as played was very thin, but I am perplexed that anyone would look at the Katherine Johnson character and call that “heavy set” or “stocky” or “stout.” What do you possibly image as a “normal” build?
Saw it today and thought it was good. Some good performances and a strong cast. (though it looks like Jim Parsons is on his way to being typecast by playing a similar type of character as Sheldon Cooper with this role and all those intel ads)
The events that occur in the first half of the film take place around the month I was born. Maybe it’s because I lived in the north/north east or perhaps because by the time I was a teen the blatant segregation shown in the film wasn’t around much anymore, but I wasn’t aware of how people were treated and that may explain how I reacted to this scene:
When Katherine begins her first day as the computer for Harrison’s crew, at one point she’s going over paper work and is completely focused in it. She’s so focused, that as she gets up, goes across the floor and pours herself a cup of coffee, her eyes never leave the paper. As she’s doing this, all the other people in the room are staring at her.
Dummy me, I’m thinking that they’re staring at her and are upset about it because she’s so devoted to her work that she’s going to make them look bad. It didn’t dawn on me that they were upset because she “dared” to take coffee from an urn that served coffee for whites.
Huh, indeed. In the modern U.S. “normal” is heavyset. This is true by observation of normal people and by statistical norms: two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, according to the CDC. Thin people are abnormal. The character in the movie had a normal build for a middle-aged mother. That build is not thin, skinny, slender, slim, or slight. It is not a runner’s build. It’s not fat either, which is why I picked a middle term, heavyset. I’m sincerely surprised that people here are conflating heavyset with fat. To me they are far apart on the scale, and there are dozens of terms for fatness I could have used if I meant fat.
This is a major digression but …
Actually in my estimation she was relatively thin for a middle-aged mother, at least currently, albeit in the early sixties maybe not.
Using the BMI definition of “healthy” weight, i.e. 18.5 up to 24.9 with “overweight” being 25 to 29.9, and noting that your statement underestimates the current overweight and obesity figure (it is actually over 70% and higher among Black women with less than 30% not in one of those groups). Also please note that those numbers defining “healthy BMI” were not ever actually the averages. In 1960 the average adult BMI was 25, at the edge of “overweight.”
I’d ask you to tell me if the character looks much heavier than these various women in that “healthy BMI” range? You can play there picking BMIs but seriously I think you have some major league distortions if you look at that character and see “stout.” She looks most like someone with a BMI of 24. “Healthy” and thinner than average in 1960. A “middle term” between thin or skinny and fat is not “heavyset” … it could be labelled “healthy” or “normal” or “historically average” … but “heavyset”? Just odd. End hijack from my POV.
To me, the poster looks more like she’s just wearing shapeless clothes (you know, like a nerd would wear because they’re comfortable) than that she’s particularly heavyset.
I’m laughing at Taraji being called “heavy set”. If she’s heavy set, what in the world is Octavia? (And no, I’m not offended. Just amused).
I saw it today and left with a quivering chin and tears in my eyes. A movie doesn’t need a glaring plotline to be great. I don’t know if the ladies were friends in real life, but Janelle, Taraji, and Octavia have wonderful chemistry together. I thought Janelle was just okay in “Moonlight”, but she was terrific in “Hidden Figures”.
I was humbled. I’d like to imagine that if I had been born in the right time and place, I could have also been one of the “colored computers”, but I dunno. My math courses were fun when they weren’t stressing me out, but I was very glad when I finished taking them. However, my field (environmental science) didn’t exist back in those days. So perhaps I would have gone into computing just because it was a viable occupation that didn’t involve broom, kitchen, or children. As Katherine was performing her “go no go” calculations in front of those senior officials, I couldn’t help but think to myself that if she (and all the others) had believed the bullshit they’d been fed their wholes lives about their supposed inferiority, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
It is also humbling to think that all of this occurred fairly recently. Katherine Johnson is still alive (so is my grandmother, who is just a couple of years younger). So we really have come a long way over a short period. Just think how far we can go if we keep up the momentum!
I got to visit Langley last year for a meeting with some of the remote sensing folks down there. I hope the next time I’m down there (if there’s a next time), I am able to check out the building named after Katherine Johnson. Maybe in her honor I’ll run to it in high heels and pearls!
Girl on the left in the ad is screaming hot, especially in those pants. But all three of them look good.
If they do calculations naked together, I am so there.
(PLEASE GOD I am not a sexist I swear…but why did they do a movie about women scientists with a poster with three gorgeous women? I AM A (heterosexual male and a) VICTIM OF THE PATRIARCHY)
Well, at least at no point in the film do any of them take off their glasses and suddenly turn ravishingly beautiful in the eyes of the male lead. In fact, it was their brains that attracted attention.
**1960s PLAYBOY cartoon ** “Look! Miss Bosomly TOOK OFF HER GLASSES! Why, she’s BEAUTIFUL!”
(Set in a nudist camp)
Yeah, see, if Taraji P. Henson takes off everything but the glasses, I can’t actually imagine objecting to the glasses. Or, y’know, noticing the glasses.
If anyone’s interested in knowing what was true and what wasn’t in the film, like, was there a real Al Harrison (Costners’ character). Rather then just discuss weights of women, I came across this History vs. Hollywood: Hidden Figures
As someone who was called “heavyset” often as a child and teenager, especially by both of my grandmothers and my grandfather, it was ALWAYS meant as “fat” but a more “polite” way of saying it. At some point the term was replaced by “overweight” and the word heavyset is now almost quaint. No matter how you meant it, anyone who’s been called heavyset hears it differently. And I’m not offended, just astonished and disappointed.
Um, did you notice that in post #16 I linked to the same webpage?
Oh, and
There’s no reason it can’t be both. Right now, there are young black girls (and black boys and white girls) in the inner city who are interested in science and math, but who are being told that they can’t do it, because they’re girls, or because they’re black, or because they’re not good enough for some other reason. And maybe some of them will see this movie, or ads for this movie, or talk about this movie, and will decide that they can do science, after all, despite those people telling them they can’t, because after all, these ladies faced even sterner opposition, and they managed it. And that, in my mind, is a Good Thing.
They could also have made a movie about black women who overcome prejudice to become successful business owners, or successful athletes, or successful politicians, and that would have been good, too. But I, specifically, am especially happy that it’s a movie about black women becoming scientists.
Actually no I didn’t. If I had I wouldn’t have posted it.
Frankly, I was just hoping to get the conversation steered back to the actual movie, discussing the story and characters rather than this unnecessary (IMO) discussion about weight.