'Good Girls' Actress Rails Against Weight Jokes

By Daniel S. Levine

Emmy-nominated Fargo star Allison Tolman took to Twitter on Tuesday to demand writers and showrunners stop including jokes about weight in their scripts. "I promise, they aren't funny," the Good Girls star wrote, adding that the jokes never hold up well and they can be insulting to members of the cast, crew, and audiences at home. Tolman's comments came after Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey told Rolling Stone she was body-shamed by a member of the show's crew during production.

"Writers and showrunners- take the jokes about weight out of your scripts," Tolman began. "I promise they aren't funny. And even if they were, they won't hold up well. And even if they did, they're unkind-either to your characters and actors or someone in your audience or crew. It's not worth it."

Tolman noted that jokes about weight are not exclusively jokes about a character's body. They can also include mentions of numbers on a scale, diet, clothing size, and exercise, Tolman, 40, wrote. She also suggested that body descriptors should be removed from scripts, including "character descriptions and the names of minor roles," she wrote.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't use adjectives. But please don't say 'Linda- the main character's cousin, thin and witty' unless there's an actual reason Linda needs to be thin," she wrote. "And please don't say 'Fat Lady In Theater' when you mean 'Annoying Lady In Theater.'" Next, she pointed out that descriptors about characters with small bodies can be insulting too.

"The audience only knows the values you assign to different body types if you have characters saying lines about them," she concluded. "But the rest of your script? That's your crew, writers room, everyone in the office, executives, creative partners- all the people helping you make your show."

Last week, Lynskey told Rolling Stone a member of the Yellowjackets crew asked her about her body. "They were asking me, 'What do you plan to do? I'm sure the producers will get you a trainer. They'd love to help you with this,'" she recalled. In response, Lynskey's co-stars Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Tawny Cypress stood up for her. Lewis also wrote a letter to producers to show support.

Lynskey felt it was important for her Yellowjackets character Shauna to not have scenes where she is worried about her body. "I did find it important that this character is just comfortable and sexual and not thinking or talking about it, because I want women to be able to watch it and be like, 'Wow, she looks like me and nobody's saying she's the fat one,'" the former Two and a Half Men star said. "That representation is important." The entire season of Yellowjackets is available to stream on the Showtime app.

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