i keep seeing people being so blatantly misogynistic about nicola coughlan and it drives me fucking batty. she is a human being. she does not exist to be your punching bag OR your gold star shining on a pedestal. She does not exist to make you feel better about yourself, to stroke your ego as her fan, to live her life to YOUR parameters, or to be the representation you want her to be. she exists to be happy and fulfilled personally, to live her life as she so pleases, and, as long as she sees fit, to share her art and passion with an audience on her terms.
she sits in several intersecting crosshairs of identity to people, and regardless of whether they love or dislike her, they dehumanize her. what she looks like or how she can relate to THEM. they take the personhood out of it all, and then go on rants and tangents about how she's 'alienating her audience' or 'is now just someone's girlfriend' when she does not perform her life for them the way they want her to
women do not have to hide their relationships to be considered feminists. it is not on nicola coughlan to hide the fact that she is dating someone. it is on YOU to recognize she is a whole human being outside of the art she makes for you to enjoy. it is on YOU to recognize that a woman bringing up her partner is not making herself out to 'just be someone's girlfriend' and is instead being a person and talking about an aspect of her life the same someone would their family, or a pet, or their hobbies. it is misogyny that makes you kneejerk to her bringing up her partner, and it is misogyny that makes you angry because most of you would be elated if her partner were someone else
you do not respect this women, her choices, her opinions, her perspective, or her art. that's what it really boils down to.
there's a larger conversation to be had here, truthfully. there's a conversation about people's desperation for desirability in the face of heightened fatphobia, and how clinging to nicola as a life raft unfairly in light of such is a byproduct of the trauma we are facing collectively in the resurgence of thin is in mentality. there's a conversation about how carrying the weight of 'representation' is really fucking heavy, especially when someone feels they do not fulfill it. there's a conversation about the dehumanization of representation in the first place, how being filtered solely through one aspect of your identity can be very, very lonely and harmful
i have for ages been saying that pinning the 'plus size rep' button on nicola or penelope as a character would be detrimental, and it has been. it has been for her, it has been for fat fans in polin spaces, and it has been something of a canary in a coalmine for how the body positivity movement has been stepped on, crushed, corrupted, used for gain, and discarded the second it no longer became profitable. it has fallen prey to capitalism the way too many movements have, and has become defanged as a result. the core of it is that body neutrality and positivity looks different to different people, and what serves one can be detrimental to the other. fat positivity and celebration is what my body neutrality looks like, but that is not the case for everyone. and nicola coughlan has no responsibility to anyone to be the body positivity YOU want her to be, because she can't be. she only has the ability to be the body positivity or neutrality SHE needs and benefits from. build that bridge and cross it
outlets focusing on her weight, lukola fans hyperfocusing on her body in convoluted and disrespectful pregnancy conspiracy theories, polin fans pinning their hopes and dreams on penelope's body in love scenes are ALL doing her a disservice. why should nicola coughlan have to shoulder any of that? in what world is it fair? it's all so fucking sexist.
she signed on to play a character and act out her story with as much passion and care she could pour in, and she did that. she does not owe you a damn thing
the root of the problem has always been and will always be that fans are entitled. we are the most contentious and difficult relationship an artist will ever have- the one between them and their audience. this feels especially true for women, as we are often turned into commodities in ways men are not, but i think all artists feel it. in bo burnham's words: Truth is that my biggest problem is you. I wanna please you but I wanna stay true to myself. I wanna give you the night out that you deserve, but I want to say what I think, and not care what you think about it. A part of me loves you, a part of me hates you, a part of me needs you, a part of me fears you. And I cannot presume what she herself thinks of her fans, but I imagine it falls in line with this thinking.
Some people just feel so overwhelming entitled to this woman. They want her to perform to their whims and desires. They want her to be their living, breathing avatar. They want her success to be their success. They want to dictate her relationship, her perspective on her body, her activism, her interviews, her jobs, her choices. They want to use her as a stick to beat others with. They want to pat themselves on the back for her being excellent because it reflects as good taste on their part. They want her existence and the body she lives in to be proof that they can be loved or desired. They want to live through her. And when she says or does something they do not agree with, they lash out tenfold, because that pedestal is high in the sky, and worship, temporary or otherwise, is dehumanizing, too.
Why can't some of y'all just recognize she's a person and you have no claim to her whatsoever?
