An Open Letter to Diana Gabaldon

Dear Diana,

Yes, I know I've already posted some complaints about the things you've written. However, given that I've done some growing up since then, I have some more.

You style yourself as size-positive, but here's the thing: having a few characters of size isn't the same as truly giving fat people positive fictional role models - not if they're written the way you portray them. And as a woman of some size who's in a relationship with a beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful woman of considerable size, I have a problem with them.


 You're not size-positive if your largest female character who actually manages to get some is 5'6" and 128 pounds (nine stone, as written). Someone like that is not going to have a "fine round arse," and unless the rest of her is skin and bones, she's probably not going to have big breasts. At 50, after having gone through a frightfully traumatic pregnancy, she's probably not going to have a "concave" stomach. People gain weight as they age, even if they're naturally thin, and that's not a bad thing. Ignoring that? Not cool.

Incidentally, you know who DOES have a big butt and round breasts? Me. You know what my stats are? 165 pounds, 5'7". Look at the figure types of the actual people around you and think again.

Having a couple of female characters who happen to be fat is just as harmful as having none if you choose to portray them as desexualized matrons. If fat, "waddling", played-for-laughs Malvina Bug gives a clinical description of how flattened and "ugly" her breasts were after years of constant miscarriages, when in the same series three men - including the sadistic, bisexual villain who prefers her husband - describe your protagonist's breasts as "white velvet," that's problematic.

You're not size-positive if the second wife of your male beefcake (who, not-so-coincidentally, is the protagonist's main romantic competition) is described as having facial skin that "stretches plumply over her flushed cheeks" at age forty, while the protagonist gloats about having remained thin at fifty. This is heavily implied to be just one of many things that make her an unappealing person. True, Laoghaire had flaws and plenty of them, but having gained some weight after bearing two children is not one of them!

You're not size-positive if the main visual marker that a woman has turned to witchcraft and become evil consists of the fact that she's now fat and "grotesque."

Because - well, you know what? People of size, especially women, have for years been told that we're an epidemic, that we're a sickness, that we lack control, that we control everyone around us, that we take up too much space, that we don't contribute enough, that we waste resources, and that we're a symptom of everything that's wrong with [insert country here]. Even in the 1700s, it seems, we can't escape that judgment.

Second verse, same as the first: Geillis Duncan had plenty of flaws, but being fat was not one of them. 

You're not size-positive if your female protagonist, held up as the Best Mother Ever by past and present characters alike, tells her daughter "not to get fat" in what she thinks will be their last communication ever - and that daughter, raised in the age of Twiggy, has nothing to say about it.

You're not size-positive if curves are fetishized on a skinny woman who has them in the "right places," but not even admired on perfectly healthy women who just happen to be large.

You're not size-positive if the woman who had a hand in raising your male protagonist and who cared for his temporally peripatetic wife is made into a wiggling, jiggling joke, both within and outside of the narrative. (Any semblance of Mrs. Fitz's beauty, we hardly knew ye.) 

You're not size-positive, period.

And guess what, Diana? When you attempt to bullshit someone who has a photographic memory, you should expect to have a few unflattering snapshots caught on film.