Rainbows Everywhere... but Not for Fat Queers

It’s June, which means it is Pride month. This year is particularly important as the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots that kicked off the fight for equal rights. Which means that this year more than others, there are rainbows EVERYWHERE. Companies come out of the woodwork to cater to the LGBTQ+ community this month. And sure, that’s nice. I always want to deck myself out in rainbows this time of year. Except that the majority of the apparel being offered (surprise, surprise) aren’t offered in my size.

Witness these awesome t-shirts from CBS:

As I’ve said, I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was a young kid. I knew I was queer by the time I was 18. I would gladly spend the money for any one of these, if not all of them. And the largest size is a 2XL. *sad trombone*

Seriously, do these people not like money? We have money. Some of us do, anyway. And we like to spend it on things like t-shirts that represent us and our fandoms. What do we have to do to get them to consider us as actual customers? I’m fat and queer and a Star Trek fan. I want these shirts SO BADLY, and it is angering that I can’t have ones that will fit me.

No Place For Me in Starfleet

After 7 different television series, amounting to 769 episodes and 32 seasons—after over 50 years of Star Trek—I have yet to see someone who looks like me in Starfleet. Deep down, I didn’t really expect to have Discovery change things, but with all of the other focus on diversity for the series, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I might see a fat body in uniform. Especially when the uniforms are individually replicated to each person’s exact specifications. With all of the alien species serving on board, really, not one of them would be fat?

Credit where credit is due, though, one thing that the series has been good at is showing disabilities. From the very start, there has been a vision for what wheelchairs (or support chairs) look like in the future. The Original Series (TOS) showed Captain Pike confined to a wheelchair tuned to his brain waves after an accident. Discovery (right) shows us a vision of Pike’s future that includes the same accident.

We’ve seen other kinds of support chairs, one similar to Pike’s (in Next Generation) and one that looks like it belongs in our century (Discovery, right.) Even better, the actor on Discovery (George Alevizos) is a wheelchair user himself.

Discovery also shows us a future where disabilities and injuries can be treated with cybernetic augmentation if so desired. Take the characters of Detmer (left) and Ariam (right). Detmer has a craniofacial implant and an augmented eye whereas Ariam has a full-body augmentation after an accident. These augmentations are almost never remarked on, treated as simply a fact.

Discovery has also made strides in representation for people of color and women as well as LGBTQ characters all serving aboard ship. But still, the closest thing we get to a crew member in a fat body is Tilly.

She does have a larger body than might be expected, and in an internet search for fat Star Trek characters, Tilly is one of the top results.

Any other fat character that has been on any of the series, at least that I can think of, has been either an alien or evil (or some combination thereof, like Harry Mudd or the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi). In fact, one of the other top results for a fat Star Trek character is L’Rell, the Klingon Chancellor from Discovery.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan almost my entire life. I think I was 8 years old when I watched my first episode, and I’m now almost 40. In all that time, I have yet to see someone who looks like me on the show. I’ve always wanted to be in Starfleet, but all evidence points to me not being welcome there.