Thread:Greenhatdigital/@comment-1888444-20140630035742/@comment-1888444-20140701013559

At the risk of being argumentative, I want to push back on the idea that there is a "pretty good mix" of body types.

There have been 26 female contestants in Total Drama--11 in TDI, 2 new in TDWT (Blainely and Sierra), 6 in TDRI, and 7 in TDPI.

Of those, only six--Sugar, Jo, Sadie, Beth, LeShawna, and Staci--did not have impossibly thin waists. That's only 23% of characters with body types that are at all realistic. And of those six, naerly every single one has had their body played for laughs. Sugar's audition tape is her in a cow costume singing a jingle for a stuff-your-face buffet, Jo is continually mistaken for a man, Katie tells Sadie that she is the less attractive of the two, even though Beth has a boyfriend that is not an affirming moment but a running joke throughout the season, with the subtext being "How could a girl who looks like her get a model boyfriend?," LeShawna was the target of several off-key (and even slightly racist?) jokes about her curves, and Staci was a throwaway that no contestant even pretended to care about.

Of course animated shows will have creative license and features will be exaggerated. But plenty of shows--Bob's Burgers, As Told By Ginger, King of the Hill, etc--have created great-looking characters with exaggerated features that don't project an impossibly unattainable standard of female beauty.

I'm not asking for FreshTV to redraw every character and every episode. But I'd love for Tom and Julie to acknowledge that this is problematic and course correct for the future.

Studies are showing that girls as young as eight are having body image issues, specifically wanting to be thinner. Evidence is everywhere--FreshTV can't feign ignorance. They can either take steps to be part of the solution or ignore their role in creating the problem--and continue to make it worse.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s4036499.htm