featherlou–if you ever make such a movie, I will gladly pay to come and see it. But you’d have to include such wonderfully un-thin actresses like Caroline Rhea, Janeane Garofolo, Camryn Manheim and Kathy Bates. 
They are my heroes because they are big, tough, powerful womyn who command respect in Hollywood, despite their non-thinness.
Down with thinnies! Up with non-thinnies!
IDBB
Don’t think it’s gonna happen.
I mean, if you can envision a future where chix get together to hold Botox parties and “Skinny Nights” where they use weird-assed ultra-tech methods to eliminate body fat…
…I can envision a future where some women make a point of staying well-upholstered as a personal statement. In a world where facial tattoos, weird piercings, and suchlike are public and in your face, I could easily see such a thing.
Could a future like that happen? Sure.
Would hollywood (in its present state) make a movie like that? Very unlikely.
Hollywood shoots for what makes money, and right now, thin (dare I say, damn near anorexic), scantilly-clad women are a draw.
Oh, and not to throw any gas on flames here, but what about men? Would they be overweight in your film as well?
Ooh, good question, Matey. I would have to say yes, everybody would be livin’ large and lovin’ it. I realize that there is no way in hell Hollywood would make a movie like this, but maybe an independent/film school student/something like that might take a chance on envisioning the future as something a teensy bit different from the present. I think it would be a huge boost for all heavy people to see a movie where their body shape is coveted and strived for, instead of something to be avoided.
(Larry Mudd, that is exactly what I’m talking about.)
When I was 13 I started to write a science fiction story where humans were about 30 lbs. heavier on average than in modern times, it was an adaptation to being evicted from Earth and having to live on a very cold planet. I wish I could find my illustrations, chunky people with goggles riding giant dogs with iceskate claws, hunting ‘iceworms’ (I had recently read Dune).
You’d think that it would make sense to have more fat people in the future, when you follow current trends, but I believe that is offset by the strong probability that medical technology will soon get to the point that anyone should be able to maintain a healthy weight.
Badtz Maru:
Quite true. And you can say what you want about differing standards of beauty and “chubby chasers” and whatnot, but at the end of the day there’s no way around the fact that it’s unhealthy to be overweight, and most people would not choose to be fat if they could choose.
featherlou, Hollyweird will produce your film the instant it can be successfully marketed to adolescents like homercles. Actually, your movie would be a big hit in Samoa.
In that sort of society, fat will become exotic, and therefore sought after.
I don’t know, this preoccupation with underfed women is pretty recent, and there have been periods when downright porky women were considered the pinnacle of pulchritude. Witness The Three Graces, by Peter Paul Reubens, painted in 1640, a time when women had curves and men appreciated them. Here! Here!
“Remember, kids, annorexia is your friend!” :rolleyes:
Yes, overweight is unhealthy. But then, so is underweight. It would be remarkable enough, if the Hollywood standard of beauty shifted to “healthy”, and I just can’t imagine the standard shifting any further than that. How plump do you mean by “plump”?
And about this futuristic movie… Do you want that to be the premise of the movie somehow, or just have it be another one of the background futuristic differences in a movie of some other premise?
Not nessacerily. All you’d need is a society where fat is viewed the same way thin people are in this one.
Of course, in that universe/society, you’d have an alternate homercles saying “Thin Chicks are Nasty, end of Story!”.
Being underweight can be just as unhealthy as being overweight, all things being equel.
Though overweight does not nessacairly mean unhealthy.
I think Chronos has struck on the main reason why this is unlikely to happen: if such a movie were to be made, then the entire message/point of the movie would almost HAVE revolve around it or a related issue (e.g. society’s views on weight). I mean, why introduce such a specific point, make such a narrow statement, then ignore it entirely for the rest of the flick as a backgrond thing? What would be the point, other than to confuse the audience and detract from the “main” theme/plot? With all the possible topics for sci-fi movies, especially since they tend to be action-oriented, I doubt most writers and studios would find such a project very exciting (literally).
True. Health Insurance and Life Insurance companies no longer put you in a higher risk category if you’re just a little overweight. They will put you in a higher risk category if you fit the clinical definition of obesity, though. (The clinical definition of obesity seems to change every few years; right now, you’re clinically obese if your Body Mass Index is 25 or over.)
Correction: Clinical Obesity is currently defined as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or over.
My understanding of the thought process of hollywood is to present images of what we all wish we were. Nobody wants to be reminded of how out of shape or overweight they are by watching thirty foot images of “fat” people for ninety minutes.
That’s why most guys have washboard abs and most women are betty boop types.
To offer anecdotal evidence, I have absolutely no desire to see movies starring people with the same body flaws as I have. None whatsoever. I watch movies to escape from reality, not bask in the shortcomings of mine.
(That last sentence is both true and untrue. For some reason I love watching movies that feature the same mental issues I have. I wonder why the dichotomy…)
I challenge Chronos, HPL or anyone else to cite evidence showing that it can ever be unhealthy to be underweight, assuming adequate nutrition.
On the contrary, there’s a substantial body of evidence showing that underweight people are at less risk of developing many health problems, including cancer, assuming adequate nutrition.
Wherease, even assuming adequate nutrition, there are many known dangers in being overweight.
Does anyone remember that show Sliders? It was on Fox and there was that team of people that would go around to parallel universes. There would always be something just a little different from the “real” world. I remember one episode where guys were the more “emotional” half of relationships and women wore the pants, so to speak. Anyway, if something like this were to happen, it probably would have been on Sliders. I liked that show.
It’s something of a tradition in SF literature to use well-thought out extrapolations to add minor details to a story, that are mentioned in passing and only significant to those who see their reasoning and implications. The reason for going through the work is to add both versimilitude and to give the reader more of a sense that the story is taking place in a world different from their own.
The thing about doing something like this in a book is that the narrator would HAVE to make a point of the characters weight in the descriptions, or else the reader will just assume that the people are like themselves. It would be really cool to do this in a movie because you could just cast larger-than-average people for almost all the roles, make no mention of it, and allow the viewers to notice it and think about how the society portrayed must be different from our own.
Even though I thought it was a pretty crappy movie, ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ did something similar in casting the majority of the characters in Zion as black. There is no explanation for the population makeup of Zion given, and none is really needed - the fun is that for some people, they can try and figure out scenarios to explain it.
