










































The Unseen Fat Woman: Fatness, 
Stigma, and Invisibility in Mrs. 
Wolowitz from The Big Bang 
Theory

“Difference demands display. Display 
demands difference.” - Mitchell and 

Snyder, 55

This epigraph strikes at the 
core of the historical and 

cultural phenomenon that is the 
freak show. As an institution that 
derives its attraction from dif-
ference, the freak show displays 
individuals who are not consid-
ered “normal.” But the function of displaying difference goes beyond mere 
entertainment. Freak shows existed as a form of societal self-definition for 
the people who paid to gain entrance to the shows. Society defined itself by 
projecting upon the freak show all of the undesirable traits and the concerns 
they had about the ever-changing world. In particular, the exhibition of fat 
women in the freak show embodied spectators’ fears about losing control of 
their bodies, represented as gaining weight. By contrasting themselves with 
the fat women, they were given an opportunity to identify who they were, 
or as disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland Thomson calls it, “an 
opportunity to formulate the self in terms of what it is not” (59). As a result, 
the freak show codified the idea that fatness was abnormal, unhealthy, and 
undesirable; and in contrast, it reinforced the notions that thinness was nor-
mal, healthy, and ideal. And behind the “unhealthy” nature of the fat body 
lies a belief that the fat body is out of control as a result of excessive behav-
iors. 

  -  Bryce Longenberger, Ball State University

Abstract
In The Big Bang Theory, Mrs. Wolowitz is the 
only fat character on the show but is also the only 
character to never have her entire body shown 
to viewers. This essay analyzes the implications 
of removing the fat body from visual displays and 
how the show situates Mrs. Wolowitz within the 
contexts of the freak show, fat stigma, and correc-
tive health narratives, which ultimately demands 
that fat bodies never be displayed to viewers.

Digital Literature Review, vol. 3 (2016). © Ball State University. All Rights Reserved.
Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce critical edition to dlr@bsu.edu.

166



 In the end, the main attraction is undoubtedly the sight of the fat 
body. People did not pay to hear a description of a fat person; they came to 
see the fat person in the flesh. A counterexample of the displaying of fatness 
occurs in the modern CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. The television show 
focuses on a group of four nerds who work at CalTech: Sheldon Cooper and 
Leonard Hofstadter, two physicists; Raj Koothrappali, an astrophysicist; and 
Howard Wolowitz, an aerospace engineer. The show follows their nerdy lives 
as they interact with their neighbor, Penny, an aspiring actress, and numer-
ous other characters. Out of all of the characters in the show, there is only 
one character who is fat and one character whose body is never shown; that 
character is Howard’s mother, Mrs. Wolowitz.
 Since, in the freak show, the visual display of the fat body and the den-
igration of the fat body are indistinguishable, it may seem that intentionally 
avoiding the display of Mrs. Wolowitz’s fat body would cease the freakifica-
tion of fatness. It might seem that the absence of the fat body would provide 
fat people with more control over the construction of their own identity. 
 However, in this paper I argue that merely not showing the fat body 
does not accomplish this task. First, in applying research on social stigma 
and an analysis of the historical context shaping cultural attitudes about fat-
ness, I demonstrate that Mrs. Wolowitz’s fat body, and fatness in general, is 
still denigrated despite the absence of a visible fat body. Second, by examin-
ing narratives in general and the medical narrative within the show, I prove 
that the show moves beyond merely degrading the fat body and dictates that 
fatness must be controlled and ultimately corrected. Third, by exploring 
Jeannine Gailey’s theory of hyper(in)visibility, which is the paradox of the 
fat body being both metaphorically invisible and actually visible at the same 
time, I demonstrate that the absence of Mrs. Wolowitz’s fat body in the show 
creates a clear message that the fat body is so “unruly” and “ugly” that it does 
not even deserve to be looked at, that it should be erased from public view. I 
believe it is impossible to reclaim fat identity when the fat body is not present 
and when popular sitcoms subtly state that it should not be present. Instead, I 
believe that the only way to celebrate fat identity and critique negative atti-
tudes about fatness is to allow fat individuals to create their own identities 
and control the display of their bodies on their own conditions.

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SOCIAL ATTITUDES ABOUT FATNESS
 When a fat lady or man was exhibited in the freak show, his or her 
body consumed the identity of that person. Viewers saw a fat body and the 
negative characteristics they associated with it. In The Big Bang Theory, de-
spite the absence of Mrs. Wolowitz’s fat body, her fat identity still consumes 
her character and makes fatness her defining characteristic. This happens 
because the social stigma behind fatness is so pervasive that it extends be-
yond the visual body. 
 According to Erving Goffman, a stigma is a personal attribute that is 
“deeply discrediting” due to societal attitudes regarding it, attitudes that can 
lead to social shunning (257). He states that “an individual who might have 
been received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can 
obtrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away 
from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us” (257). He 
stresses, however, that stigma is created in social interactions, and the stig-
ma itself is created from the attitudes and perceptions of people towards the 
stigmatized individual and not from the trait itself.
 Among Goffman’s three types of stigma, the type that pertains to the 
fat body is “abominations of the body,” or “various physical deformities” 
that are visible to others and are difficult to cover up (257). In the case of a fat 
person, fatness is a physical trait that cannot be disguised; and, according to 
Goffman’s theory, fatness becomes a stigma because of the social attitudes 
of the people who interact with the fat person. The effect of this on the fat 
person is insurmountable: the body has the potential to consume the iden-
tity of the person, creating a singular identity concentrated on the fat body 
itself. Any interaction with a fat person, then, is tainted by the stigma that 
others impose upon that person, denying the fat person a chance of culti-
vating an acceptable position in society.
 One reason that fatness is so stigmatized is that social attitudes about 
fatness have long existed in American culture. Amy Erdman Farrell studies 
postcards from the nineteenth century to determine the social attitudes to-
ward fatness. Farrell notices that, in the beginning and middle of that cen-
tury, fatness was first a positive characteristic. She states that a “hefty body” 
was a marker of both wealth and health, signifying that a person had the 
money to feed themselves properly (27). However, she discovers there were 
other perceptions of fatness. Many times, growing businesses and corrupt 

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politicians would be depicted as fat; but she notes that the fat person was 
not perceived as a physical or moral threat. Instead, the fat body was a way 
to represent the corruption in the political system; the negative attitudes 
were directed at the politicians, not the fat body (31). A final depiction of a 
fat person was a spectacle in the form of an extremely fat person; however, 
the stigma here was not on the fat person himself but rather on the “unique-
ness” of the individual (32).
 However, starting in the late nineteenth century, Farrell notices a shift 
toward social attitudes that viewed fatness as a negative trait. She believes 
that there were multiple factors that contributed to this changing viewpoint. 
On one side, remnants of Protestant thinking portrayed fatness as a sign of a 
“deficient body” resulting from the failure to control one’s desires and appe-
tites (45). On the other side, as theories of evolution began to circulate, ideas 
about “stages of civilization” cast certain types of bodies as inferior based on 
multiple criteria – racial difference, gender differences, sexual differences, 
and differences in body types: thinness vs. fatness (60).  By the beginning 
of the twentieth century, people already believed that fatness was a neg-
ative characteristic; within the minds of Americans, the “connotations of 
fatness”—that the fat person was gluttonous, lazy, stupid, and sinful—were 
already planted (34).
 Today, these attitudes about fatness have become so ingrained in our 
minds that Mrs. Wolowitz’s character cannot escape them, even without 
her body being displayed. Throughout the show, the single defining feature 
of Mrs. Wolowitz is her fatness. There is emphasis on her eating habits: in 
one episode we learn that Mrs. Wolowitz has to eat Oreos during her bath 
(“The Staircase Implementation”), and in another episode we hear that Mrs. 
Wolowitz’s hand is stuck in the garbage disposal because she won’t let go of 
a “perfectly good chicken leg” (“The Habitation Configuration”). 
 Besides eating, her extreme physical size is stressed so much that it 
freakifies her. In one episode, after Mrs. Wolowtiz has been injured, Howard 
jokes about getting a forklift to help his mother get up the stairs (“The Goril-
la Dissolution”). In another episode, Mrs. Wolowtiz has what is presumably 
a heart attack while in the bathroom. When Howard tells his friends that he 
lifted her to the car, Penny is astounded: “You picked up your mother? Her 
own legs are barely able to do that.” Howard, trying to find a plausible ex-
planation, says, “I was filled with adrenaline. It happens to be how women 

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lift cars off babies.” Penny, looking at him incredulously, says that it would 
be easier to lift a car than lift Mrs. Wolowitz (“The Engagement Reaction”). 
There are countless other episodes in which she is described as being big 
enough to hide behind her shadow (“The Bakersfield Expedition”) as well 
as being so big that she appears in every single picture in Howard and Ber-
nadette’s wedding album (“The Parking Spot Escalation”). This not only 
presents fatness as a comedic element, but it also freakifies Mrs. Wolowitz 
by reducing her identity into a single issue—her fatness—that marks her as 
other. When we focus our attention on her, we focus solely on her “abnor-
mal” body size; her humanity has been replaced by the size of her body and 
food intake.
 The othering of Mrs. Wolowitz is so severe that she herself has inter-
nalized the idea that fatness is a state of being out-of-control and physically 
undesirable. In “The Hawking Excitation,” Sheldon is helping Mrs. Wolowitz 
try on a dress for Howard’s wedding. As he is trying to push her body into 
the dress and zip her up, Sheldon says, “If I squeeze you any tighter, you 
may turn into a diamond.” Mrs. Wolowitz responds—one of the only times 
she actually addresses her large size head on: “You’re right, who am I kid-
ding? You should have seen me when I was young, Sheldon. The fellas used 
to line up and bring me boxes of candy. Why did I eat it all?” (“The Hawking 
Excitation”). First, this quote from Mrs. Wolowitz directly links excessive-
ness and overeating with fatness, drawing a connection between the two 
and reinforcing the notion that to be fat is to be out of control. Second, this 
quote implies that, once Mrs. Wolowitz became fat, she no longer had “fel-
las” lining up with boxes of chocolate. This suggests that fatness marred her 
character and made her “ugly”; she essentially believes that fatness makes 
her undesirable. But, most importantly, these ideas are no longer simply 
social attitudes; they are now intrinsic and reciprocal attitudes that Mrs. 
Wolowitz holds about herself. Instead of being merely the recipient of social 
stigma regarding her body, Mrs. Wolowitz is both the sender and receiver. 
And so, the absence of her body from the show does nothing to prevent her 
from being stigmatized and othered. 

NARRATIVES OF CORRECTION
 In The Big Bang Theory, there are many narratives introduced in the 
beginning of the show that get resolved throughout the course of the show. 

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For example, in the beginning, Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj are all 
single; currently, in its ninth season, all four of them are in relationships. 
But, when we consider Mrs. Wolowitz, her only narrative arc concerns her 
body size. Therefore, the show’s very narrative structure contains a health 
narrative that dictates that Mrs. Wolowitz’s fatness must be corrected.
 Narrative hinges upon introducing a form of imbalance – a wrong that 
needs to be righted, a challenge that needs to be overcome - and then sub-
sequently attempting to correct that imbalance and bring it back to equilib-
rium. However, this imbalance can appear in the form of bodily difference 
as well. David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder focus on this exact issue in 
their book, Narrative Prosthesis. Mitchell and Snyder define narrative pros-
thesis as “the dependency of literary narratives upon disability” (53). They 
state that narrative is predicated ideologically on the introduction of some 
conflict or deviance and the subsequent attempt to resolve that deviance. 
However, they also claim that when narrative specifically focuses on charac-
ters with disabilities, “the effort to narrate disability’s myriad deviations is an 
attempt to bring the body’s unruliness under control” (6). As they later state, 
rarely is the narrative able to return a character to “normal” status, and thus 
the character with disabilities is either “left behind or punished for its lack of 
conformity” (55).
 While Narrative Prosthesis focuses on narrative’s reliance on disability 
in literature, there are also national health narratives that make the same 
demands on the fat body. In Pat Lyons’s article in the Fat Studies Reader, she 
states that the National Institutes of Health labels “over 60% of Americans 
as ‘overweight or obese’”; this is perceived by NIH as a sign of the “obesity 
epidemic” sweeping the country (75). Lyon’s description of this moral panic 
certainly seems accurate: according to a CBS article written by Gina Pace, in 
2006, the U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said that “obesity is the 
terror within. Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilem-
ma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.” 
 As the public has come to accept the war on obesity, Lyons states that 
the “diet and weight loss industry has moved from the sidelines to the cen-
ter of American life” (75). These two industries have remained crucial to 
shaping attitudes regarding fatness, advertising that the only way to achieve 
happiness and a healthy lifestyle is by losing weight. This “war on obesity” 
demands that people labeled as “overweight” and “obese” lose weight so they 

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can become healthy, even though sustained long-term weight loss has been 
proven to be ineffective; according to Lyons, the “failure rate for sustained 
weight loss has remained constant at 90-95%” (75). Nevertheless, millions of 
Americans continue to believe in the health narrative that dictates weight 
loss.
 This practice of introducing disability into narrative and then at-
tempting to “bring the body’s unruliness under control” is highly prevalent 
in The Big Bang Theory. Raj has a psychological inability to talk to women. 
However, when he wants to talk to women, he drinks alcohol to return him-
self to “normalcy.” After a significant breakup with a girlfriend, Raj eventu-
ally finds that he has been cured of his psychological problem and can then 
talk to women without alcohol. While Sheldon never overcomes his OCD-
like tendencies, the show is filled with countless instances when his friends 
attempt to change his behavior. For example, when they eat dinner in their 
apartment, Sheldon always has to sit in ‘his’ spot on the couch. During one 
episode, Leonard buys a dining room table and attempts to force Sheldon 
to alter his routine. But Sheldon refuses to eat at it, and the gang eventually 
returns to their usual dinner schedule.
 However, most importantly to my argument, The Big Bang Theory also 
attempts to correct Mrs. Wolowitz’s body and bring her deviance back to 
normal. The show states clearly that her weight negatively affects her health; 
in one episode, Mrs. Wolowitz takes thirty minutes to walk up two flights of 
stairs (“The Weekend Vortex”). In multiple other episodes, she needs How-
ard’s help to put on or take off clothing, to take baths, and to rub lotion on 
herself. 
 After establishing that Mrs. Wolowitz’s body is deviant and her weight 
is having “negative” effects on her health, the show then dictates that she 
must correct the problem through exercise. In one episode, it is revealed 
that Mrs. Wolowitz once attended a Weight Watchers cruise (“The Higgs 
Boson Observation”). In another episode, Howard says that she goes to a 
water aerobics class (“The Spaghetti Catalyst”). And finally, in one episode, 
Howard gets Mrs. Wolowitz a treadmill because “the doctor says you need to 
get exercise” even though Mrs. Wolowitz claims that she already gets enough 
exercise (“The Gorilla Dissolution”). This depicts Mrs. Wolowitz as a person 
who is out of shape and is experiencing negative consequences from her 
fatness. Thus, as Mitchell and Snyder suggest, the show attempts to “correct” 

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Mrs. Wolowitz by demanding that she exercise in order to lose weight. In 
the end, this mandate takes Mrs. Wolowtiz’s life. While the show never states 
the cause of her death, she is the only main character to die on the show and 
the only character whose cause of death is not old age. The show is essential-
ly sending the message that fatness must be corrected or it will be removed 
from the show altogether.

THE EFFECTS OF INVISIBILITY
 While Mrs. Wolowitz’s body from The Big Bang Theory might not be at 
the forefront of viewers’ minds, the absence of her body from the show is an 
intentional decision made by its producer. And, when fatness is alluded to 
or described, it is relegated to stories, fat suits, or words – the actual fat body 
is never shown. In this manner, the show is effectually erasing and replacing 
the fat body with the thin body, stating that fatness is so “repellant” that it 
must not be shown on television. 
 The decision not to show Mrs. Wolowitz’s body is, at its core, a stylistic 
choice made by the director of the show. In 2012, Mark Dawidziak from The 
Plain Dealer interviewed Carol Ann Susi, who is the voice of Mrs. Wolowitz. 
According to Susi, when Chuck Lorre, the director of The Big Bang Theory, 
discussed Mrs. Wolowitz’s role with her, he said, “‘Carlton the Doorman. 
That’s the kind of thing we’re going for here.’” Dawidziak points out that 
Mrs. Wolowitz actually fits into a larger string of characters that are heard 
but never seen, saying that Mrs. Wolowitz is a “part of that long TV tradi-
tion of equally [invisible] enigmatic characters.” Among those other charac-
ters, Dawidziak mentions Carlton the Doorman from “Rhoda,” Orson from 
“Mork and Mindy,” the PA announcer from “M*A*S*H,” and Robin Masters 
from “Magnum, P.I.” It is undeniable that Mrs. Wolowitz’s absence from the 
screen is because the director wanted to achieve a certain kind of cinematic 
effect, a character that is mysterious and enigmatic. 
 From Dawidziak’s interview, however, it is also clear the actress was 
not concerned about the effect that not showing Mrs. Wolowitz’s body 
would have. When Dawidziak asked her how she responded when Lore 
told her that Mrs. Wolowitz would be an off-stage character, Susi replied: 
“It didn’t bother me that they’d never show Howard’s mother. I absolutely 
didn’t care. A job’s a job.” It’s clear that Lore and Susi were not concerned 
about what kind of message it would send if the only fat woman on the show 

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was relegated beyond the eyes of the viewer while the (thin) characters on-
stage constantly made jokes about her weight. 
 An integral concept linked with Mrs. Wolowitz’s visibility/invisibility is   
“hyper(in)visibility.” Jeannine Gailey has coined the term “hyper(in)visibil-
ity,” which is a paradoxical state of visibility/invisibility that occurs in rela-
tion to the fat individual. She notes that the fat body is hypervisible because 
it is “highly public, visually inspected, and made into a spectacle” (7). This 
materializes in the fact that fatness cannot be hidden; fat people cannot go 
out in public without having their bodies looked at and visually dissected by 
strangers. However, she also notes that the fat body is hyperinvisible in that 
it is “marginalized and erased” to the point where it is dismissed altogether 
(7). This is demonstrated by the fact that desks and seating on public trans-
portation, for example, are made for the “average-sized” person. Society 
treats the fat person as if they do not exist, sending the message to fat peo-
ple that it is they who have to fit into society, not vice versa. This paradoxical 
state of hyper(in)visibility – of being simultaneously scrutinized in public 
and ignored and erased – is a state that fat individuals have to live with. 
 This state of hyper(in)visibility occurs in The Big Bang Theory just as 
Gailey describes. Mrs. Wolowitz’s identity as a fat person is hypervisible 
because her body type and life are constantly discussed on the show by the 
characters. An episode hardly goes by without the characters mentioning 
her weight, her eating habits, her bathroom habits, or her relationship with 
Howard. Without even seeing her in person, her life is publicly dissect-
ed and turned into a spectacle for us to laugh at. On the other hand, Mrs. 
Wolowitz’s hyperinvisibility has been taken to the extreme: her identity as 
a fat person has been so erased that her body is not even shown to viewers. 
She is literally as “invisible” as any character can be without disappearing 
from the show altogether.
 The Big Bang Theory does not hide her body entirely, though; instead, it 
provides us with three brief glimpses of Mrs. Wolowitz. But these moments 
merely emphasize her absence and the thin body that fills that absence. The 
first glimpse we get of her is at Howard’s wedding in “The Countdown Re-
flection;” but we get an aerial view of the rooftop where the ceremony is tak-
ing place, so all we can identify about Mrs. Wolowitz is that she is larger than 
the other characters. In the next season, we get a brief glimpse of her as she 
is walking past an open door; but again, the moment is brief and all we can 

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make out is a large woman (“The Spoiler Alert Segmentation”). The third 
and final time we see her body, it is not a real body at all; instead, in “The 
Cooper Extraction,” we see a fake scenario where Mrs. Wolowitz is dead, and 
so all we see is a skeleton in a large dress. These brief moments where we 
catch a glimpse of Mrs. Wolowitz’s body are simply reminders of why the fat 
body is not visible. This systematic hiding of Mrs. Wolowtiz’s fat body and 
the refusal to show her body just reiterates that it is being hidden because, 
according to the stigma surrounding fatness, it should not be shown, that 
the only body that should be shown is the thin body. 
 The show continues the erasure of the fat body by highlighting the 
thin body and celebrating the loss of fatness in other characters. In “The 
Grasshopper Experiment,” Raj is on a date with an Indian woman named 
Lalita Gupta. Because the two were childhood acquaintances, Raj decides 
to bring up the subject of her weight loss since he knew her before it hap-
pened: “You have lost so much weight! That must have been difficult for you 
because you were so, so fat! Do you remember?” Lalita confirms that she 
does remember. Raj, too drunk to understand that Lalita is uncomfortable 
with this subject, continues by saying, “Of course you do. Who could forget 
being that fat?” Lalita blushes and says, “Well, I’ve been trying.” Later, when 
Raj introduces Lalita to all of his friends, he ends with saying, “Isn’t it great, 
she isn’t fat anymore!” (“The Grasshopper Experiment”). By focusing on the 
thin body of Lalita and contrasting it with the hidden fat body that she used 
to possess, this scene clearly hides and erases the fat body and the experi-
ences of fat people. And, since Lalita’s fat body only exists in the past and 
the show refuses to show it in the present, this scene reinforces the demands 
that fatness must be eradicated, that it is a state so “deplorable” that it should 
not only be forgotten, but its loss should be celebrated. 
 Not only is the fat body erased, but when fat suits are used in the show, 
the thin characters are even given the control over the display and represen-
tation of fatness. In “The Cooper Extraction,” Sheldon visits Texas over the 
holidays because his sister is having a baby. While he is absent, the rest of 
the cast throw a Christmas tree decorating party and envision how their lives 
would be different if they had never met Sheldon. When asked why Leonard 
and Raj never lived together, Raj narrates what would have happened if they 
had. In the imagined scene, Raj prepares dinner for the two of them while 
Leonard is sitting, wearing a fat suit and reading a newspaper. At this point, 

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Leonard interrupts in the present time and asks why he is fat and Raj is not. 
In the next instant, we are transported back to the fake scene, but this time 
Raj is also fat. An instant later, another character from the show also walks 
in wearing a fat suit, apparently inserting himself into the story and don-
ning an imaginary fat suit because he wanted to be included in someone’s 
story. The use of fat suits in this episode is extremely problematic because it 
once again emphasizes the thin body while hiding the fat body. The episode 
suggests that fat bodies can only be shown if they are not real fat bodies. 
And even though fake fat bodies are being shown, the emphasis is always on 
the thin actors who have the power to shed their fat suits and revert to their 
original (thin) bodies.
 Finally, some of the language in the show even erases the fatness and 
euphemizes the fat identity. In the “Hawking Excitation,” Mrs. Wolowitz 
refers to stuffing her body into a dress as “folding a sleeping bag.” In another 
episode, she refers to her body as spilling out of a girdle “like the Pillsbury 
Doughboy” (“The Hot Troll Deviation”). And finally, as I have already men-
tioned, there are several instances where her body is described as being like 
a car or needing to be lifted by a forklift. Even though it is not entirely per-
vasive throughout the entire show, the repetitive use of euphemisms, used 
both by the characters and Mrs. Wolowitz, to describe and replace the fat 
body serves to further erase the identity of fat individuals. The show’s mes-
sage remains clear: the fat body is so “abhorrent” that not only should it be 
hidden from view, but the very word “fat” should never even be uttered.

RECLAIMING FAT IDENTITY
 So far, the absence of Mrs. Wolowitz’s body in The Big Bang Theory 
has only managed to label her body as deviant and reinforce the societal 
demand that it be corrected and erased. Therefore, I would like to highlight 
some movements that are rooted in celebrating the fat body and challeng-
ing the negative societal attitudes against fat people.
 Within the health industry, there is a movement called Health at Every 
Size, or HAES™, that celebrates the fat body instead of describing it as un-
healthy. As Deb Burgard defines the movement in her article in the Fat Stud-
ies Reader, HAES™ does not define health “by a certain type of weight for all 
(such as thinness), but rather it defines the correct weight for a person when 
they are living a healthy lifestyle” (44). Instead of arguing that health will be 

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achieved when a person reaches a particular weight (thinness), HAES™ is 
built upon the premise that a healthy lifestyle will lead to a healthy weight 
for that individual. Two of the core beliefs of HAES™ are that every body 
type should be celebrated and that weight stigma and prejudice are very 
harmful to the fat individual (Burgard 50).
 There are also two modern examples of attractions that challenge the 
superiority of thinness. Sharon Mazer writes about Katy Dierlam, who per-
formed as a fat woman at Coney Island’s Sideshow in 1992. Her stage name 
was “Helen Melon.” In her show, Dierlam/Melon would display her body 
for viewers and talk with them about her body. But instead of allowing the 
sideshow to exploit her, she used her performance to challenge the norms 
that surrounded her body image. During her performance, Dierlam/Melon 
states openly what her audience is thinking about her body. According to 
Mazer, she identifies those thoughts as “cultural stereotypes” and thus “re-
verses the lens of her performance” onto the audience (260). Dierlam/Mel-
on is hoping that her audience will confront their own prejudices about the 
fat body and, in the end, change them.
 Another example of challenging the narrative surrounding fatness is 
the series of art installations created by Rachel Herrick, titled The Museum 
for Obeast Conservation Studies. In her travelling museum, Herrick displays 
mannequins that she calls “obeasts;” these mannequins are actually mod-
eled after her own body. By presenting the “obeast” as a wild animal, Herrick 
is directly stating what many people subconsciously believe: that fatness is 
degrading and somehow animalistic. As people visit her museums, they see 
these exaggerated social norms and hopefully reexamine their own notions 
about fatness.
 If the freak show is any indication, the human tendency is to display 
difference, not celebrate it. The HAES™ movement, Dierlam/Melon, and 
Herrick have all chosen to counteract the effects of the freak show. They are 
attempting to foster an environment where difference is celebrated, where 
fatness is seen as beautiful and normal. They are trying to raise awareness 
about the consequences of our actions and words on fat people today. Per-
haps, if their message was more widespread, Chuck Lorre and Carol Ann 
Susi would have been troubled by the thought of making Mrs. Wolowitz a 
hidden fat character and relegating fat identity to the unseen shadows. Un-
fortunately, their decision can no longer be reversed. During the eighth sea-

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son of The Big Bang Theory, Carol Ann Susi died, and, with her, the character 
of Mrs. Wolowitz disappeared forever from the show. Since it is too late to 
change The Big Bang Theory, our only hope lies in this: celebrating fat identi-
ty and eradicating the stigma surrounding it so that the next Mrs. Wolowitz 
can stand proudly on that stage for the entire world to see.

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WORKS CITED

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“The Grasshopper Experiment.” The Big Bang Theory. CBS. Warner Brother 
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“The Habitation Configuration.” The Big Bang Theory. CBS. Warner Brother 
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“The Higgs Boson Observation.” The Big Bang Theory. CBS. Warner Brother 
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