For Me, Watching Bridgerton’s Penelope Be Adored and Desired Is Monumental

I’m fat. My husband is not. He’s conventionally attractive and extremely athletic (he recently undertook a 42-mile run, just for fun). That’s not to say that fat people can’t also be athletic, of course, but I myself am decidedly not; he and I are polar opposites. Like many fat women (like many women, full stop), I’ve had a complicated and not always healthy relationship with my body over the years, but these days I’m in a pretty good place. I’ve worked hard to overcome the anti-fat bias I learned growing up in the aughts, and am able to love and appreciate my body for all the amazing things it helps me do: growing my daughter, moving, eating, laughing, breathing , typing these words. My husband does not have a complicated relationship with my body; he just thinks it’s awesome, and has never made any secret of his desire for me. Despite that, though, I sometimes feel self-conscious when we meet new people as a couple, and even more so when I’m introduced to friends he knows through his various outdoor pursuits. While I’m proud of and confident in who I am, I still convince myself I’m not what they’re expecting, that they’re assuming I’ll be some lithe girl in lycra, and when they discover what I actually look like, they’ll be shocked. Basically, I worry they’ll consider us unevenly matched.

I know intellectually that this isn’t the case, but it can be difficult to believe that when I so rarely see other couples who look like us represented in media. That’s why it’s been such a thrill to watch the unfolding romance between Pen (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin (Luke Newton) play out in the latest season of Bridgerton. Pen is an awkward writer who likes books, gossip, and staying indoors, so I was probably always going to find her deeply relatable, but the fact that she, like me, inhabits a body which is ever-so-slightly larger than those ordinarily allowed to appear onscreen feels particularly significant. Yes, I appreciate that in every other respect she is extremely conventionally beautiful, and, yes, I also appreciate that her deviation from the expected body type is really only very slight, in the grand scheme of things. But for this international juggernaut of a show to have her as its romantic heroine opposite Newton’s tall, dark and oh-so-handsome Colin feels honestly groundbreaking.

Another recent example is BBC One’s The Tourist, in which Danielle Macdonald’s Helen is engaged to an entirely odious man who habitually insults her, forces her to diet, and belittles her career ambitions. Watching her wake up to the toxicity of this relationship and instead lean into her burgeoning chemistry with Elliot—played by Jamie Dornan—who never once questions his attraction to her, and treats her with the respect and adoration she deserves, was intoxicating. When Helen told him, as if it should be obvious, that she’s dieting because she “needs to be slimmer,” he responded with a politely doubtful “If you say so.” To some, it might sound like a throwaway line, but for me it was perfect, encouraging Helen’s right to bodily autonomy while also gently yet firmly determined to endorse the notion that her body is anything less than sensational just as it is, right now. The next morning they woke up in bed together, which made me lose my tiny mind.