Dear Mr. Gaiman: Representation For Fat Girls Matters Too!
When I want to be transported to a fantastical, dark, or ghostly realm with wonderful, unique, oddball characters and brilliant takes on human nature, I look to the brilliant writer Neil Gaiman. His wonderful work spans decades, worlds, genres, and formats. Want to see the Vikings duel in Valhalla? Check out his Norse Mythology collection, written with a Gaimanesque touch. Want to explore the true London Underground? Check out Neverwhere. Want to see what it’s like to have parents with creepy buttons for eyes and a talking cat? Read Coraline! Want to see what you get when you combine Gaiman’s love of mythology with the late, great Terri Pratchett’s whimsical and clever humor? You absolutely must imbibe the literary magic of Good Omens! Want to meet “The Endless”; beings who help keep the wheels of the human world turning as living embodiments of human behavior/life like Dream and Death, but in graphic novel form? You need to read The Sandman graphic novel series.
My point is that I am a longtime fan of Gaiman’s work. I greatly admire his writing style, the way he creates his worlds, and the sacredness he holds the act of writing with. Personally speaking; I have always been a writer at heart myself, but never a real one. I don’t have anything published, I write for the love of it. I’m not a successful writer who makes a living at it and has tremendous influence on other writers. I hold Mr. Gaiman in high regard because he represents to me exactly the kind of writer I had always wanted to be growing up; a cool rock n’roll writer who wields his pen the way Pete Townsend wields his guitar: with verve, gusto, panache, and a touch of pure methodical madness.
Having said all that, I have to get something off my chest that is not so complimentary. I know Mr. Gaiman is never going to read this, or give a rat’s fart about this random wannabe-writer’s opinion on one aspect of one of his greatest works. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that like most writers, big time or small crumbs, I think best and most clearly when I write out how I feel about something, especially something personal and upsetting. So at the risk of pissing off whatever small number of fellow Gaiman fans that find this story (or even the author himself if he does stumble across this in the Twitter stratosphere):
I have never liked the character of Despair in The Sandman series for a deeply personal reason: I am a Fat Woman.
I have been fat since I was 13 with a brief, albeit ill-advised period in college due to a crash diet. I am plain/average-looking. I am short and round. I have facial hair. I am bow-legged. I am easily invisible in a crowd or a bar. I have written about this experience before, and that’s not the main issue here. The main issue is that nearly all the other characters in the form of the Endless in The Sandman series are drawn as cool/unique looking and fairly conventionally attractive, or at least fun or unusual. But the only one who embodies Despair, which is a very sad figure indeed, is a large, ogre-like, very fat female creature. In the comics Despair is not quite as human-looking as her counterparts. She looks more like a giant or an orc; unlike her Endless siblings. So you can sort of forgive the problematic issue of making the sad, pitiful concept of Despair a large woman by making the argument that she’s not human and more like a troll-like creature, not an actual woman at all. It’s a bullshit argument, and it’s still problematic, but at least in the comics, in spite of being made to look ‘hideous’, Despair is at least powerful and confident. Her largesse doesn’t make her pitiful.
When the news came that Gaiman had deliberately cast characters that were originally cis-male or White or overtly Hetrosexual in the comics differently in the Netflix adaptation, many fans were outraged that he had seemingly messed with the formula, become too “woke” or was pandering to the progressive crowd. Gaiman cast the actress for Death as a beautiful Black woman. He made Desire Non-Binary (which was inferred in the comics, but we didn’t really have the language for being Non-Binary back when the comics first came out). Rose is a blonde, White girl in the comics, but in the show she is African-American, and it is hinted she might also be Queer. When folks whined about these (and other character) changes, Gaiman (rightfully) responded that it’s his story, and he can do whatever he wants to it. When it comes to race, sexuality, and gender, Gaiman proudly stated (again, rightfully so!): “Representation matters.”
Well if this is true, why can’t representation also matter for fat people, especially women, who are almost always perceived the way the glimpse we got of Despair in the Netflix adaptation is portrayed: sad, with bland, almost opaque clothing, powerless, desperate, without a hint of sex appeal or sexuality. Yes, she was made to look more like a human woman, rather than the troll-like creature with the fishhooks in her mouth then the comics wrought us.
In making Despair look like a human fat woman, especially when contrasting her with her sibling; the sexy, raunchy, beautiful, powerful Desire; she looks and feels exactly the way society often thinks we (fat women) are supposed to look and act: devoid of power or joy or sexual prowess. Yes, I understand that the idea behind the concept of Despair is not a happy one. But you can be a dark entity whose job does not always involve a cheerful aspect of human existence and still enjoy what you do. The Corinthian, Nightmare, and Death all connect completely to their jobs and they find things about those jobs they like. They also all look either cool, sexy, or lovely. They all have charisma. Despair does not. She is merely seen as a pathetic creature with no color, no spark, and sorrow lurking behind her eyes. This is not a slam against the actress (Donna Preston), who is definitely beautiful and lovely outside of her role. It’s the way she was made to look and feel to us as Despair that hurts. It also helps to continue to reinforce the fatphobic attitude that fat women are not supposed to be beautiful, sexy, confident, or powerful.
As a fat woman who is told every single day of her life by the world she lives in: you are invisible, ugly, sexless, undeserving of attention, attraction, or power; it is hard not to feel disappointed that someone as cool and progressive as Neil Gaiman, for all his hard work in trying to make sure the adaption of his earlier work couldn’t also include a better update of Despair.
The reason representation matters is because when you either never see anyone who looks like you in the literature, media, and film you consume, or never see anyone who looks like you portrayed in a positive light, you begin to feel like you yourself will never be seen in the way you want to be. You begin to feel like you don’t deserve to be seen that way.
I will still always love Mr. Gaiman and his array of fantastical works. But alas, I feel his Despair has now gotten the best of me, and thus it will weave through me every time I watch The Sandman. Perhaps that is exactly the kind of despair I am supposed to feel.
