Here's a trope that isn't talked about enough: the Fat Modern Mammy. She's a modern twist on the obese, middle-aged Black women of slavery-nostalgia movies. She's a subset of the Black Best Friend who exists to make white actresses look thinner & prettier by comparison. A :

Unlike her historic predecessors, the Fat Modern Mammy isn't in a servile position. She's a student, a friend, a therapist, or sometimes even a leader! But make no mistake, she's still twice as big as the white women in her life.

The Fat Modern Mammy is usually the only monoracial Black woman in the cast. If the show includes biracial women, like High Fidelity, we'll get a lot of optics of fat dark-skinned black women next to Zoe Kravitz types:

The Fat Modern Mammy is often paired with thin, attractive white actresses who are much younger than her. Make no mistake, the casting directors do this on purpose. Their intent is to elevate white womanhood at all costs.

Before you all accuse me of being fatphobic, I believe that fat Black women deserve media representation. But not next to thin white/non-Black women. It's too reminiscent of Gone With the Wind:

Obesity is killing Black women. That's a fact. My mother is obese and pre-diabetic and I worry about her every single day. This trope glorifies our community's epidemic for the sake of white supremacy.

Even "woke" shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a show I enjoy, fall into the trope of casting a thin biracial woman as a real person and a mono-racial fat Black woman as a mammy.

Sex Education does this too, despite being generally pretty "woke":

Actresses like Sherri Shepard and Octavia Spencer basically make a living off of this trope. They're usually cast as fat, sassy, angry Black women opposite white women who are thin, kind, and "just trying their best".

Of course, some shows actually understand that it's racist to cast a Fat Modern Mammy, like 13 Reasons Why and Riverdale. But note that the thin, beautiful "Black" women these shows DO cast are actually biracial, not Black.