Did Someone Say Tacos?

Sorry, I had pegged Greta Gerwig as an indie underachiever (omega female, whatever) at fatness. She said she gained seven pounds in New York. I scoffed. But it's 12-15 according to Blackbook. Tacos get the credit.

"What we did was I got to L.A. a month before we shot the film, so I had a month and we did a costume fitting when I got there at my normal weight, and then I packed on like 12 or 15 pounds and then they didn’t adjust the costumes so you just have that shirt-pulling quality that’s hard to fake."

The woman is tall, blonde and attractive by any normal person standard even when 15-pounds "overweight." Greenberg described her as "Large, not fat," which was likely meant to portray him as a dick because obviously she's not fat. But is she large?

I think I just have my own warped perspective of large. Years ago, I got into a nitpicky back-and-forth with a friend who'd described her ex-boyfriend as large. He was tall with a lean-athletic build. To me, that's not large because that implies husky. Her argument was that he wore a size L shirt. She is short so maybe her idea of large is different. I just read last week that I’m the same height as the average American male, 5'8" (I could’ve sworn it was 5'10"—will double check this). To me, that is short for a man and taller-than-average-but-not-tall for a woman.

So, not tall, but I would consider myself large. And a Greenbergian size 6 and a Garciaesque size 12 can't both be large. Also, I don’t know any genuinely large women, indie or mainstream, getting naked on screen at the drop of a hat. 

I was just going to leave it at this because I know I'm belaboring a point and I was certain that even Gerwig, herself, didn't consider this character to truly be fat, and I have no problem with her as a person because obviously I don't know her and from what I can tell she comes across as someone who's smart and would fun to hang out with.

But then I had to go and read T Magazine, which despite its non-serious gloss, always manages to rile me up over something minor anyway (shrunken mid-century modern furniture for children?). From a January 2010 interview with Greta Gerwig:

“After Greenberg, I came back to New York and I had gained 15 pounds for that part, so I was fat. I couldn’t get any new parts. And all of a sudden I was totally broke, overweight and massively depressed. The shift in my reality was quite stark. There was a lot of emotion.”

Ok, not fun to hang out with. Benefit of the doubt…I tried. There aren't any fat, hopeless, poor people in NYC so she must feel very alone. If I weighed 135 instead of 120 I would probably just kill myself and be done with it.