Since finishing chapter 1 of Panty Vigilante, I felt like I could have done more to vary up my characters. I absolutely can’t stand seeing the same faces and body types for different female characters in comics, with their hairstyle being their only distinguishing feature. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
Kate’s still fairly conventional. She has a pretty average body, albeit a bit busty. I like the idea of her having a bit of a gut, too. She’s poor and doesn’t own a car, and her job is working the stock room and unloading the truck at the local boutique. So she’s fairly physically active.
Also I draw her eating. A lot. Truth be told, she probably doesn’t get to eat much. She’s too broke. So she eats a lot of junk food. And when she’s offered a free meal, she rarely turns it down and likes to make it count.
Ana, I’ve always pictured being a bit on the heavier side. I also wanted her to be gorgeous. She used to be a fashion major, but a string of bad luck has her managing in retail. She and Kate went to school together and have been friends for a long time. She helped Kate get a job when Kate was going through some hard times. She usually buys Kate junk food whenever she asks for a favor. It’s just sort of their thing.
Addey (you’ll meet her in the second chapter) is a news reporter. She also used to be a model. She’s around six feet tall and really thin. She also has resting bitch face.
I mulled over the modeling bit for a while. I liked the idea of her using modeling to pay for college. She is a journalism major turning to the glamorous world of unpaid internships. Her other job is waitressing. She’s the ambitious, no-nonsense sort who is deep down a nice person. Except her work experience has conditioned her to really hate people.
I had considered the eating disorder angle for her, being a model. I immediately hated that idea.
On a side note, as much as I’m for body positivity and depicting beautiful fat women, I really, really hate the term “thin privilege”. I think it comes from my roommate, who is 5′10″ and a size two (though she can squeeze in a size zero if she were so inclined). And she’s super pretty. She could easily be a model if that were her thing. And she probably has just as many (if not more) body image issues being really thin as I do being overweight. She has caught more crap openly for her weight (or lack thereof) than my friends or I have had for being heavier.
Sure, being fat gives you the judgemental looks, you still get rude comments, and concern trolling. Then you get well-meaning asshole family members telling you you’d be so pretty if you lost weight. And it sucks. It really does.
Then you have my roommate, who despite her best efforts struggles to keep her weight above 120 lbs. (And it’s not for lack eating, believe me). Suddenly, since she’s perceived to not have problems, she gets it openly. Hostile comments from average sized and fat girls alike. “I’ll give you some of my spare fat” (she really hates that). “Eat my cooking, I’ll fatten you up”. The “real women have curves” stuff gets to her. She has to hear about being flat-chested. And worries about not looking feminine enough. There’s also the assumption that women like her have an eating disorder (and with that comes the perception of being vain, therefore deserving to be miserable).
She doesn’t have an eating disorder. I can vouch for that.
So, no. I don’t want to write about a super thin character battling anorexia. Is it a relevant topic? Of course it is. It’s something people struggle with all the time and should be taken more seriously than it is. But I’d rather write about something else pertaining to body image: the chick who is naturally thin and catches crap from everyone because of it.
So there you have Addey, the naturally thin ex-model who loves to eat. She gets to deal with something completely different, and much less talked about. And she probably got pressured to lose more weight and told her agent to screw himself, which is probably why she left modeling in the first place.
