I’m fat. There’s no nice way of saying that – lord knows I’ve looked. My personal favourite is “Built like a sculpture (pre-chisel)”. This has its share of difficulties – I’m not particularly unfit, about on par with my skinny flatmates, but it comes bundled with all its judgements all the same. There’s definitely been a lot of discussion about this in feminist circles – women should love their bodies. Everyone knows “Real Women have curves”, regardless of how outdated and reductive it might be.
The idea of something becoming trite or overplayed in pop culture is almost novel to me, given that this generally refers to mainstream culture. I’m a fat, queer man – there are very few stories about me, and they don’t get the chance to be worn out. There have always been fat men on TV. There are a steadily rising number of sympathetic, non-butt-of-the-joke fat women on TV (even if a certain percentage are confined to Netflix). There are two fat gay men on US television. Maybe there are a couple more squirreled away in corners nobody bothers to look, but this is the story of Cameron and Eddie, the former being half of Modern Family’s gay dads, and the latter being Looking’s revolutionary “big, queer poz guy”.
In truth, it’s not about Cameron Tucker. I never identified with Cameron in the slightest, he stood more as an example of what was wrong with any queer male representation that deviated from the fit, slender norm – he stood largely as a collection of tropes, someone who hid his feelings in late-night binge eating and ‘quirky’ stereotype breaks like enjoying football (he announced, with jazz-hands). He kissed Mitchell once per season (maybe), rarely acknowledged that as a healthy couple they might possibly have sex: in short, Cameron felt like a sanitized, family-friendly version of what a gay man might be. Played by straight actor Eric Stonestreet, it seemed to me in the many seasons I stuck with Modern Family that no one’s heart was in that role.
It was a shame, really. Fat queer men deserve much better than a sexless archetype, and HBO’s Looking aimed to fix that in spades with Eddie. Make no mistake – I had my reservations at first. I’d been hurt before, and even with out gay actor Danny Franzese playing the role, it seemed suspicious that in a show where Jonathan Groff can talk in the promos about the importance of intimacy between men that the big ol’ queer would also be HIV positive.
There’s a history of preventing intimacy in on-screen portrayal of fat characters, from conservative quirks to overwhelming sexlessness (Cameron Tucker remains a stark portrayal of how a gay man in a committed relationship with a child might still take over a full season of television to even kiss his partner). Eddie being established as Looking’s only character with the ‘no sex’ disease was disheartening, to say the least. What surprised me, and what makes him such a breath of fresh air compared to the milquetoast flimsy representation of characters like Cameron, was that Eddie wasn’t immediately bound by his particular limitations – instead, he was a desirable character like any other, with no judgement on those who might desire him.
Frankie J. Alvarez’s Augustin, for whom Eddie became the target of his affections, meets Eddie, likes Eddie, wants to date Eddie. It’s one of the healthiest relationships on the show, ironically, and cruises past the two theoretical limitations placed on the big, burly bear he pines for. On TV, nothing stops a relationship in its tracks like fatness and HIV. The term ‘deathfat’ alone speaks to the health scares that are always waiting around the corner when someone brings up anyone with a BMI slightly higher than the mean. Neither Eddie’s weight nor his HIV status stop him and Augustin from having a full relationship. In episode 8, they have the kind of sex that Groff talks about in the show’s promotional interviews when he says it’s important to show that gay men can look at each other during the act. Eddie walks around his apartment, naked and unashamed. They’re safe, they’re sane, they’re into each other. It feels like nothing else of its kind. They ride off into the sunset, towards a potential third season.
Perhaps more importantly, I’m stuck thinking of words Danny Franzese himself – “No matter what your size or your age or your color or your status or anything, you too are worthy of being loved”. It’s the kind of trite motivational sputum that would typically make me roll my eyes. I’m a cisgender man, I have that privilege to cruise on past motivational stuff with light derision. Deep down, though, I know Eddie’s doing something great. Maybe it won’t be a sea change – Looking’s viewership is too small for that, I suppose – but it feels fresh. It feels like it’s so far from being old-hat that I’m genuinely excited by each new scene that Eddie’s in. He’s a supporting character stealing the show from a damn solid cast of attractive men.
It’s no secret that there’s a body obsession in the queer male community. Mainstream gay culture is heavily codified, with bear, chub and all those other varieties of non-skinny gay being side-lined and brought out primarily for fetish nights and the occasional punchline. It’s hard not to take that personally. This codification doesn’t help progress, either – the term ‘Truvada whore’ rocketed to a b-grade awareness almost overnight when Truvada, a PrEP-style preventative that can help decrease the chance of contracting HIV, hit the mainstream. Chubs and Truvada Whores (so called because anyone taking it obviously sleeps around regardless of the gay community having adopted Grindr as a pillar of itself) don’t get the airtime that twinks and the occasional muscle bear do. I used the term ‘No Sex Disease’ quite deliberately earlier – this is how HIV is presented on TV, it’s the thing that can’t be overcome, and it has to be worked around to extremes.
Looking doesn’t particularly care about these, it knows the reality of things far better than it cares about TV convention. Its fat character can have a fulfilling relationship. Its poz character can too. They can be the same character, even, because life is rarely neat. Eddie’s just Eddie. It’s hard to overstate how refreshing it is, but the closest I can come is this – when Danny Franzese posted that motivational quote that every knee-jerk reaction in my body says is dumb to his Instagram, I remembered a kid, aged 15, with curly red hair and stretch marks and fat thighs and ass for miles who wondered if there was anyone out there who could ever love him. I remember a kid who turned 21 and was jaded and cynical about the LGBTQAI+ community for the same reasons. Looking means a lot to that kid. That’s enough.
The Second Season of Looking has just finished airing in the US on HBO.
