An opinion article questioned a Bridgerton character’s desirability due to her character not being thin. Fans hit back. When an opinion article published in the British weekly The Spectator last week questioned the desirability of Penelope Featherington, a character in the Netflix series Bridgerton played by the Irish actress Nicola Coughlan, it touched off a firestorm of objection.
People rushed to criticise the claim that her pairing with Colin Bridgerton, the chiselled and handsome leading man played by Luke Newton, would never happen in real life because her character isn’t thin. After the show’s third season debuted on Netflix this month, fans were offended by what they saw as body shaming in the piece, which bluntly stated that Coughlan is “not hot, and there’s no escaping it”. The article concluded by arguing that efforts to prioritise equality and diversity aren’t enough to “make a fat girl who wins the prince remotely plausible”.
Many pointed out that Coughlan wouldn’t even be considered fat by many - descriptors like “plump” and “curvy” came up often - but others online still echoed the same point made in the article. One Threads user wrote that she was “not used to seeing a woman like Penelope get the guy like Colin” and that it “wouldn’t have happened in real life”, which was met with a flurry of responses by plus-size women sharing images of themselves, happily coupled. Danielle Wallace, a plus-size woman from Houston, said i.
