Paper Towns was the first book by John Green that I ever read. I had recently started following his vlog, and when I realized he'd published a few YA novels I was interested. When I checked out Paper Towns from the library my hopes were neither high nor low; I didn't know what to expect.
What I got was a novel with a unique storyline, well structured themes, a compelling mystery, and fully realized characters. Not since reading about the folks of Maycomb County had I felt so emotionally connected to a cast of fictional characters. Their friendships and hopes mattered to me. It was the first book in several years that I stayed up all night to finish in one sitting. I loved it. I still love it.
In the book, enigmatic Margo Roth Spiegelman is the it girl of her high school. She is smart, interesting, adventurous, and sexy. And she's kind of fat.
The word "fat" can mean a lot of things in our society. There are gorgeous plus sized models who have that golden ratio in larger proportions, and there are those whose ratios are somewhat less than golden through their flabby mid sections, and there are people who have bodies that can't support their own weight. A pregnant woman is fat. If you can't make out someone's bones through their skin it's usually because of fat. The number on a pair of jeans rather than the belly that does or does not hang over them determines fatness. Even a thin person with more visible cellulite than muscle tone is called "skinny fat." That one word is used to encompass a myriad different ways we judge each other's appearance. We can't seem to specifically define fat but we know we don't want to be it. Usually fat means unattractive, but not in every case and certainly not in the case of Margo Roth Spiegelman.
The book describes her as having a curvaceous body type, complete with breasts and hips, thighs and butt. She's sensitive to comments about her size, even though she can run, climb, jump, talk fast, and kiss a boy, all without getting winded. Personally, I pictured Margo along the lines of a plus size model: a fit but thick hourglass body type with round cheeks and only one chin. The person they chose to play her in the movie is lovely, but she is not thick. She is not fat.
I'm not here to skinny shame. I think healthy is more attractive than not, but I don't think that one type of healthy body is more attractive than another type of healthy body. I don't think that Pink is any more or less attractive than Lauren Ash or Kate Moss, for example, despite their different body types. Tall, short, pudgy, toned, delicate, brawny, hourglass, lanky, willowy, thick, round, chubby, dark or pale, freckled skin or clear, straight or gap-toothed, big or small nosed, an oval face or highly defined cheekbones, whether or not walking causes a jiggle of flesh, there are only about a million different ways to be attractive on this Earth. Unfortunately, one type is far more represented in media than the rest, and I don't have to specify which one that is.
Her body is not the most important thing about her character, but it does factor into her character. It affected how she thought about herself and interacted with others. Margo, like all humans and fully realized characters, is a lot of things. Her body is only one part of her, but it's a part I really like. Margo having the body type she has in the book is a fresh breeze in pop culture. Hollywood has (unsurprisingly) blown a chance to represent another side of beauty, opting instead for a fashion model.
The funny thing is that Margo doesn't have a lot of screen time, if the movie follows the book. Her friend, Lacey, who is really thin, may be more present. There was no need to hack at Margo when Lacey is there to represent the type beauty we're all used to.
The other funny thing is that the point of Margo [spoiler alert] is that you don't get to decide who or what someone else is. Who you think they are usually isn't who they actually are. Who they are to you isn't who they are to themselves. In the beginning, we see Margo as Q's manic pixie dream girl, and she does have some of those qualities, but we come to find out that she is a whole person and she's not perfect and she's not a dream. She's smart but she's got some dumb ideas. She's had a lot of experiences but she isn't all that mature. She's got a pretty good life at school, but not at home. Some might say that she's completely gorgeous but she's a little fat. And most importantly, she does not exist solely to make our hero learn things about himself and become a better person. She does do that, but so do his other friends. She was misjudged and put on a pedestal for years, and she did all she could to break away from that. Movie producers choosing someone with a thinner body type seems a lot like the kids at her school romanticizing her life for her. It's wrong. I don't like it.
I'm sure Cara Delevingne will do fine as Margo. I know John Green is very excited about her, and he "knows" Margo better than any of us. It's not going to ruin the movie or anything, it's just not what I wanted. This is what Hollywood does, though. They did it to Cassidy in The Spectacular Now; Brie Larson is pretty, but she is not the, "gloriously fat," kind of pretty that Sutter describes in the book. Now they're doing it to Margo Roth Spiegelman. This makes me really nervous for the Eleanor & Park movie that's also in the works. If Margo's body type was a somewhat minor detail, Eleanor's is a major plot point. Please, please, please, give me a thick-bodied, freckle-faced Eleanor with unruly red curls.
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