ABSTRACT
The above quote from the TV comedy series Fat Actress condenses the basic idea of the fictional diet method called the koi effect. According to this method, people are like koi fish: just like koi grow to the size of the pond they dwell in, people grow or shrink according to the size of their environment. So in order to become smaller in body size, one must think, live and act ‘small’. Of course the idea is ridiculous: we all know our bodies will not shrink merely if we picture them shrinking. Our body image does not necessarily take the same form as our material bodies, and vice versa, although most of us would probably like to feel ‘at home’ in our skins. Still, the idea of shrinking by thinking and acting small also makes sense: the ways in which we are limited or enabled to see and use our bodies, or to see and interact with others, certainly have concrete corporeal effects. What fascinates me about the series Fat Actress is that its humour draws to
a large extent on a continuous incongruence between its main character Kirstie Alley’s (played by Kirstie Alley) body image and ‘how she really is’, which is defined through the way others see her. Kirstie is self-centred, selfindulgent and sees herself as an attractive and capable actress, although she is simultaneously desperate to lose weight.1 Other people may laugh at her and see her as fat and unattractive, but she routinely fails to recognize it. Her ‘problem’ is the opposite of what is usually deemed as the main problem for women in feminist eating disorder and body image research: that women tend to be over self-critical, feel inferior in relation to the contemporary slim and toned body ideal, and take extreme measures in pursuing it. Kirstie does participate in this pursuit but manages to produce only feeble imitations of obsessive dieting.
