As a public figure, Magda Szubanski lives in acute awareness of her appearance. Even before becoming a famous actor, Magda faced social prejudices around her weight. Plus-sized since a young age, Magda’s parents criticize her weight and subject her to weight-loss programs. What is more, her plus-sized status estranges Magda, making her unable to do things—such as tennis—that her peers can. Then, when Magda enters the public eye as a comic actor, her weight is sometimes an advantage to her career: it allows her to play a wide variety of misfit characters with a great degree of reality. However, Magda’s rise to fame does not dissolve society’s prejudices against plus-sized bodies; instead, it reverses and imposes those prejudices with equal harshness. When Magda loses weight for a role, the public qualify their congratulations with the warning that she shouldn’t lose too much weight, lest she cease to be funny. In response, Magda succumbs to self-doubt and worries that she will not be able to play Sharon, a character in the comedy Kath and Kim who is beloved for being stout, tomboyish, and unlucky in love. Magda’s struggle to accept herself and her body image sheds light on the role that other people’s opinions play in a person’s sense of self-worth.
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Body Image and Publicity Quotes in Reckoning
I had never seen a photograph of a real dead body. A murdered body. Lying face down was something that looked like an old bundle of torn clothing. But there seemed to be a hand attached to it. And another hand, unconnected, a few inches away. What appeared to be a head was lying face down and had a hole the size of a fifty-cent piece in the back of it. But it was the body I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t there.
While it was me, it didn’t feel like it was me. I felt as though I were possessed by some evil spirit. No one knew very much about weight loss back then. The consensus was: eat less. But I didn’t seem to be able to do that. I was plagued with questions that I could not answer, except as condemnations. I called myself cruel names: weak, greedy, lazy.
I decided I must be some kind of sexual traitor, who had colluded in order to enjoy the benefits of a straight life. […] I didn’t understand that I was acting out a psychodrama. My role was written. I was predetermined and I didn’t even know it.
The pasteurization of my personality did not help with my comedy writing. Comedy is all about finding your voice. […] Your voice is best when it is formed where it is found. But what if you are trying to be what you are not? What if you don’t know who you are?
In the following months, as it gathered pace, I started to feel like I was strapped to a rocket. Magazine covers, interviews, endorsements. Suddenly I really was a household name, dogged by the horrible hollow feeling that the wrong ‘me’ had shot to fame. At night I dreamed that I was hanging on to the outside rail of a runaway train.
Fame never saved anyone. More than anything Hollywood sat directly on the fault line of all my insecurities. I suspect it would not have been a good idea for someone like me, with so many cracks and fissures, to live in an earthquake zone. […] Some small, quiet, healthy part of me knew that if I stayed in Hollywood things would not go well for me. The gulf between my real self and my false self would grow ever wider.
Would my altered external experience change my inner reality so much that my soul would have a different vibration?
[…]
Aside from the catcalls, the messages from fans were mixed. ‘Congratulations on your weight loss, Magda!’ they cried. ‘But don’t lose too much weight!’ they hastily cautioned. ‘You’ll still be funny, won’t you?’
I felt like some kind of public utility. People had a stake in me. Clearly the link between fat and jolly is still alive and well in the public imagination. The question was, did I still believe it?
