Friends addressed many topics that were considered “taboo” in the 1990s and thus weren’t included in television, but it also had many jokes and situations that haven’t aged well and have become problematic, such as the portrayal of fat Monica. Friends followed the lives of a group of six young adults (Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Ross) living in New York City and doing their best to keep balance between their personal, social, and professional lives – because no one said adulthood was easy.
Over the course of ten seasons, viewers got to know the main characters quite well, as the series offered looks at their earlier years quite often. Each character was marked by different events in different points of their lives that made them who they were by the time the series began, and while many of them have stood the test of time, Monica’s past as “fat Monica” has become one of the most problematic elements in Friends.
Monica was overweight for years, and even though she wasn’t anymore when the series began, the characters constantly mocked her weight problems. It probably wasn’t a big deal back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the (truly bad) jokes surely went unnoticed, but not anymore.
The Problems With Fat Monica In Friends
As mentioned above, Monica’s “fat past” was constantly mentioned by her friends (including her brother), and all the times she was on screen it was merely for the laughs. Fat Monica was an exaggerated version of Monica, and perpetuated the film and TV stereotype of overweight individuals as punchlines and unlovable characters. In the two part episode “The One That Could Have Been”, Monica never lost weight and thus had never had sex, until Chandler decided to do it for the benefit of both (as he had only had sex nine times in his life). In addition to that, the value of Fat Monica was lesser than that of “skinny Monica”, portraying her as a loner and a “loser”, and even had a childlike personality.
Friends addressed many topics that were considered controversial back then, such as gay marriage, safe sex, infertility, adoption, disparity in relationships, being a single parent, and more, and succeeded in portraying these in a respectful and accurate manner for the most part – so, in a way, it’s easy to see why the problematic parts, like Monica’s fat-shaming, went unnoticed back then. Also, in the 1990s and early 2000s there wasn’t the same awareness about topics like fatphobia/fat-shaming that there is now, especially in the media. Times change and viewers now identify different issues in many pop culture products, both old and new. Friends had its strengths, yes, and it’s still considered one of the greatest TV shows of all time, but it also had its flaws, and Fat Monica is one of the main ones.