How Barbie Ferreira is fighting for bad in Hollywood
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-09-11/barbie-ferreira-unpregnant-euphoria
When Barbie Ferreira was a plus-size model, most of her friends looked like her. Soft, fleshy, bountiful. She was part of a group text chain, “The Fat Agenda,” whose members labeled themselves as the “fats in fashion.” As a teenager, she’d hated that word — “fat.” It was weaponized by schoolmates and anonymous commenters who trolled her Tumblr. But when she and the other curvy models began using it as a self-descriptor, it no longer felt as offensive.
“Reclaiming that word felt empowering,” she says. “‘Fat’ used to be the worst thing I could ever be called. But ‘fat’ is not a bad word. I really had to train myself to think: Being fat is the least of my problems. Am I a good person? Am I responsible? Am I talented? I’m still training myself, I think.”
Ferreira’s relationship to her body has continued to evolve since leaving the fashion industry to pursue an acting career. In Hollywood, the 23-year-old says it has been difficult to find a community of like-sized peers. She does not personally know other performers who “can relate to the body shaming issue.”
“It’s the beginning of all this,” she says, meaning more inclusive onscreen representation. “People are starting to figure out that maybe they don’t always cast actors who are super thin. But I know there will be more. I just have to keep going.”
On “Euphoria,” the HBO series that introduced Ferreira to a wider audience last year, Ferreira’s weight is central to her character’s backstory. She plays Kat, a high school student haunted by the fallout from a boyfriend who dumped her after she gained 20 pounds. But Kat regains confidence after secretly deciding to become a cam girl, locating an online trove of men who find her and her kinky leather get-ups immensely attractive.
Yum for bad health-style choices and deluding herself to the ocean of depraved men online that fetishize over her. Also, they need to update her profile pic here to reflect her plus-sized new look.