I hate how much joy the MRA/reactionary hatedom steals from us. Cute picture post of Spinerella and Netossa from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power going around, and I RTed it, but what I was thinking about was how before the show even came out, the way they trashed Spinerella.

And it was three things that stayed with me, all of which come down to the character being moderately but undeniably fat:

1. Can't tell if she's a girl (because she's not shaped like an 80s action figure from a mold).

2. They made her fat but her face is pretty?

3. Fart jokes.

Somebody circulated a hate post write-up centering on her that dropped heavy suggestive hints on the fact that she has wind powers to arrive at the conclusion that the character, in-show, is a walking fart joke and the meme spread, "Her power is literally farts."

And it's... I mean, it's ridiculous and I'm not even sure what point the people who repeated it thought they were making since they 1000% approved of making fun of fat women, but they repeated it as a fact and would drop a link or screenshot to that one post or one citing it.

"Her power is literally farts."

You know that's not true, right?

"Then how do you explain this [link]?"

That's a dude who hates the show making stuff up he thinks is funny.

"But he got it right from the show."

Just around in circles.

And speaking of circles, her name is Spinnerella because she creates and controls little micro whirlwinds. To pretend to believe the mean-spirited joke you have to imagine her name is completely meaningless while being an obvious play on words.

And, again... who cares if her power was farting? Masters of the Universe already had Stinkor who *was* essentially a walking fart joke. And "fat person has gross 'powers'" would certainly have suited their worldview.

But, it wasn't true. It wasn't even plausible.

And it was believed.

I think part of the reason it was believed ties into one of the other "criticisms", which was that her face was too pretty. They put a pretty face on a fat body! That was dishonest and confusing!

The haters tried to critique this from a design standpoint ("It's a bad design, it's inconsistent, her head doesn't match her body!") and from a phony co-opted social justice one ("See, they don't actually believe in body positivity/diversity, they gave her a pretty girl face.")

And all of it was very obviously them being disappointed/distracted/confused by the fact that there was a fat character who *wasn't* coded as gross or having her body used as a punchline, maybe with some side confusion that they found her attractive.

And the gender thing... was really consistent with She-Ra haters, go figure. Like, they labeled most of the characters "genderfluid", meaning... well, not really meaning anything. But just, like, on sight. New character art drops? "Another genderfluid SJW, yawn."

For Spinnerella, I think it has to do with the fact that she's a fat character without huge, well-defined boobs. Her thinner, more muscular wife has a more defined chest.

This kind of hate brigade strongly believes that bodies should and must follow ironclad rules.

And to give them a fat woman who didn't at least justify the space she took up by devoting a considerable portion of that to a great big pair of mommy milkers? Why, that was cheating. That was robbery. That was violating natural law and the artist/audience contract.

I do know fat viewers who wish that Dreamworks had gone further with Spinnerella and given her a chubbier face, but the idea that there is one kind of head that goes with each body... or one kind of chest, or whatever... is not something I saw anyone insist outside the hatedom.

And I know that I am contributing to the problem by dwelling on this, years later, after the show has not just debuted but told a story over a period of years and then wrapped. I *shouldn't* let the haters steal my joy when pictures of animated lesbian kisses cross my timeline.

But they did get under my skin and into my head, and put me in a mindset where I could never just enjoy this show but from the beginning had to defend it, justify it, protect it.

I had watched largely the same brigade succcessfully tank Ghostbusters two years before SPOP bowed, and when they started flooding review sites for the cartoon before it was out, it was hard not to fear for its future.

I don't think they're likely to ever really match the success they had against Ghostbusters, which I think worked out for them as well as it did for multiple reasons, but that one example makes it hard for me to ignore any of this as "just internet stuff".

I mean, that and the waves of violent harassment that always accompanies it. But even "just" the part about poisoning the well against female-oriented media programming also has actual consequences.