Phat Girlz is a 2006 Romantic Comedy starring Mo'Nique.
Jazmin (Mo'Nique) has always been a big girl. She's tired of having trouble finding clothes, being dumped on by skinny women, and ignored by men. As her frustration grows towards a breakdown, she wins a trip for three to a resort. She decides to unwind with her two best friends: uptight Stacey; and her ditzy, skinny cousin Mia. While there they meet several doctors from Nigeria, where beauty is judged by how big a woman is. Jazmin suddenly finds herself in a situation where she is the definition of beauty and her outlook on life begins to change.
This film provides examples of:
- Beautiful All Along: Stacey enters this trope when she starts revealing her body shape, shows more skin, wears less frumpy clothes, and gets a makeover that includes shedding her glasses.
- Beauty Is Bad: All the skinny women in the film are mean, vindictive bitches with one exception - Jazmin's ditzy cousin Mia, who falls under Dumb Is Good.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Once she accepts herself, Jasmine and Stacy embrace this identity and start taking great care of their appearance, and Jasmine's clothing line, catering to this type of woman, takes off.
- Chubby Chaser: Tunde and a few other men.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The guys talking about how unhealthy and thin Mia looks while drooling over plus-sized Jazmin and Stacy echoes the opposite situation that has played out countless times.
- Dumb Is Good: The only skinny woman portrayed in a positive light is Jazmin's cousin Mia, who is a complete twit.
- Fat and Proud: Jazmin grows to accept her weight.
- Freak Out: At the end of her Heroic BSoD, Jazmin flips out and tears her room apart, throwing all her "diet motivation" material (including a mannequin) out the window.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Stacey during her makeover.
- Gold Digger: A rather harmless version. Mia knows her assets and when they get to the resort announces that she's going down to the pool "to find a rich guy to spend the week with."
- Heroic BSoD: After things go wrong with Tunde, Jazmin spends the rest of her vacation time locked in her room pigging out and watching TV until it devolves into her Freak Out.
- Hollywood Thin: After meeting the girls, Tunde asks Jazmin if Mia is ill. Aside from the fact that that's none of his business, Mia looks perfectly normal and not unhealthily slim.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Gender flipped. Dr. Tunde and Dr. Akibo are two Nigerian men that teach the plus-sized leads to embrace their bodies and sensuality. Even to start loving themselves and changing their outlook.
- Mistaken for Romance: When she arrives at Tunde's home, Jasmine is greeted by a woman holding a baby. She assumes that she's his wife, but she's actually the housekeeper and the kid isn't his.
- Modesty Bedsheet: In the final scene, Jazmine and Tunde are finally in bed together. She remarks that she wants to leave the lights on so she can see every inch of him. However, they are holding the sheets tightly against them.
- Real Women Have Curves: The film does nothing but extol the virtue and beauty of plus sized women. It shows the thin women being mean to drive this home.
- Sexy Surfacing Shot: A glistening, speedo-clad Tunde (Jimmy Jean-Louis) emerges from the pool in Slow Motion (while Etta James' "At Last" plays).
- Shrinking Violet: Stacey hides behind covering clothes and glasses.
- True Beauty Is on the Inside: One of the messages of the film. Everyone keeps telling Jazmin this through the film.
- Weight Woe: Jazmin spends the first half of the film trying to lose weight to no avail.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz
- Your Television Hates You: Jazmin is having a bad case of depression due to her love life and her Weight Woe. She turns on the TV where she sees several weight-related programs: a cartoon with a depressed fat man being enticed into pigging out, an ad for a weight-loss clinic, an ad for an exercise program, and a talk show with a woman crying over her weight and her hopelessness in dieting. This leads to Jazmin from having a Heroic BSoD to a Freak Out.
