Fat people exist, not that TV – besides awful ‘look how fat this person is!’ documentaries - would necessarily tell you that. But they do exist and, guess what? They do the same things we do. As well as eating! They go to sleep, they wake up, they put on clothes, get on the train to go to work and they also sometimes after those long days (or before, or during!) they go home to have sex with someone.
And in the TV series Empire, this sort of relationship of a larger woman and a guy having sex was shown. It’s hardly that weird, if you consider there’s been a long-running storyline featuring a couple, the show has featured sex scenes before, and, well, loads of people are overweight and it’s not as if their being fat shuts off all feeling in their genitals…
But the response was abysmal, with people posting cruel memes about the actress Gabourey Sidibe’s weight.
Gabourey responded to all the hate in a blog post for Entertainment Weekly, explaining: ‘I, a plus sized, dark-skinned woman, had a love scene on primetime television,'
‘I had the most fun ever filming that scene, even though I was nervous. But I felt sexy and beautiful and I felt like I was doing a good job.’
‘I’m very proud of the work we all did to make that scene a great opening for the episode. I keep hearing that people are “hating” on it. I’m not sure how anyone could hate on love but that’s ok. You may have your memes.'
This isn’t the first time Gabourey – who starred as the title character in the Oscar-winning film Precious – has had hate from people who don’t get that she’s large and she’s ok with being large. After people were mean about what she wore to the Golden Globes in 2014, she responded by tweeting this:
More power to Gabourey – and what’s the bet more than one of her haters is just as plus sized as she is?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.