It is neither fun or no matter, to Sofie Gråbøl dress up in a costume to see the thick out the role as 200 kilos heavy mother in the film ‘Resin’.
Rather write it directly into a tradition which gets made fun of thickness, believe Dina Amlund, cand.mag. in the modern culture.
She calls it ‘tykfobisk’ and compares in an op-ed in Politiken, the so-called fatsuit, as Sofie Gråbøl dress up to see the thick out, with blackface, where white paint themselves dark in the skin to look like brown people.
“Tykfobi is a mindset and a hierarchy, where the slim people are worth more than the thick,” explained Dina Amlund, when she was a guest in the B. T. Live to explain his criticism of B. T.’s followers.
And it comes not only to the expression in the film, but also on the jobfronten, where several studies have shown that many managers will not hire thick people, explained Dina Amlund.
“It also happens in health care, where thick people experience not to be properly investigated,” she said, referring to a recent case where the canadian Ellen Maud Bennett died as a 64-year-old, because the doctors discovered her cancer in a timely manner, but instead, time and again, recommended her to lose weight.
And on the street experience thick people to be shouted at, spat on, and get thrown things after him, explained Dina Amlund.
“I’ve been fat my whole life. The worst episode was once upon a time, I sat in a half filled bus in Copenhagen. There was a man and said, ‘add, where are you creepy, dank and bold. All the others in the bus could hear it, but they said nothing. So I got off the bus, because I couldn’t bear to listen to it.”
All together, one as thick is placed at the bottom of the hierarchy and outside of the norm, explained Dina Amlund and pointed at the connection to the Sofie Gråbøls fatsuit:
“When you have the tradition of slim, which is placed outside of the norm, dress themselves out as thick, write it into a tykfobisk tradition, whether it is intended or not.”
But acting is acting, think B. T.’s editor-in-chief, Jonas Kuld Rathje, pointed out in his head here.
“If you basically are not allowed to play other than themselves on film, it all becomes a sad and socialrealistisk affair.”
“Sofie Gråbøl is a fantastic actress – she will be better to play anything than almost anyone on the film. Better to play a blind person than most of the blind, the better to play mandsperson than most men and better to play a fat person than most thick,” writes Jonas Kuld Rathje.
But the conclusion is, according to Dina Amlund tykfobisk and the expression of a general idea, to slim the actors are the best.
“we can see time and time again, when it is slim actors that will be cast in the thick of the roles. There are not many thick roles in general, and yet it needs to be the slim down, get them, for there is an idea that they still are the best. This is the dynamic which lies in the fact that Sofie Gråbøl being cast,” she said, and stressed that she is not out for Sofie Gråbøl personally.
“If we had a better castingkultur, where thick people was cast to everything possible and not only ‘thick roles’, there would be more actors to choose from. That there are so many to choose from, is the expression that we as a society don’t bother looking at the thick people. We are tucked away.”
