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An opinion piece published in Forbes has sparked fury among Bridgerton fans after a writer weighed in on the “mixed-weight” relationship between this season’s lead characters.
Virgie Tovar, who calls herself a “leading expert on weight bias,” suggested in the article that the world is “still not ready” to see two people with different body types in a romantic storyline.
Season 3 of the Netflix series centres on Penelope Featherington and Colin Bridgerton, played by Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton, respectively.
Tovar writes that the on-screen couple of “Polin” — fans’ nickname for the pair — “defies romance plotline convention,” alluding to plus-size Coughlan and conventionally “normal” size Newton.
But while the writer defends the pair against others who have criticized the latest on-screen duo, Tovar’s “mixed-weight” descriptor set off fans of the series and actors.
“‘Mixed-weight relationships,’ I hate it here,” one person wrote on social media.
A second user commented, “‘Fat women really are just hated by society on a molecular level because what the f*** is a mixed-weight relationship??”
Another added: “’I find it interesting how there are countless fictional couples in film and television where the man weighs more than the woman but people didn’t start writing articles about whatever the f*** a “mixed-weight romance” is until it was the other way around.”
Tovar calls out other articles, namely one piece in The Spectator titled “Bridgerton’s Big Fantasy,” in which writer Zoe Strimpel calls Coughlan “not hot” and “proceeds to fat-shame her.”
Strimpel penned: “Coughlan is an actress of great value, and might be adored, but she is simply not plausible as the friend who would catch the handsome rich aristocrat Colin Bridgerton’s eye in that way.”
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Tovar came out in Coughlan’s defence but users noted their issue wasn’t with the Forbes article but, rather, the headline.
The writer concludes her op-ed: “If this romance upsets you, it says more about how deeply you’ve internalized fatphobia than it says about the bodies of the actors playing Penelope and Colin.”