Why aren’t there any fat vampires?

I’m an art junkie, quite obviously, and from watching the spoilers slowly trickle out of the mothership, I was ruminating on the art during the four-hour trip back from Madison:

“Emily, why aren’t vampires fat?”

“What?”

“You know, how come they aren’t ever thick?”

“Well, idealism aside, maybe blood doesn’t have a lot of fat?”

“Huh. Got it.”

“Got what?”

“The idea for my article. [pause] Also, what I want from Culver’s. Mashed potatoes.”

I was in just the right mind-set, as Wisconsin is not the slimmest of states, and I might have been shocked after seeing the Taste of Madison festival. A love of cheese and beer, a.k.a. “liquid bread,” will do that to a state.

Some truisms:

• Vampires are often highly attractive humans. They have idealized physiques.
• Werewolves are rarely fat. Also, they’re often dreamy.
• Zombies can be all body shapes.

Are the monsters in Innistrad following the trope, or is something else amiss? Why aren’t there fat vampires?

A History Lesson

Prior to the twentieth century, the largely European view was that the larger and whiter a person was, the more affluent he or she was.

If you were wealthy, you didn’t work in the fields, and you had enough food to eat; therefore, you were gigantic and pasty-white. The ideal Renaissance woman was considered to be plump by today’s standards. The ideal beauty of that era was more voluptuous than perhaps any other time in history. Altering one’s form was against God’s will. It also reinforced one’s socioeconomic status. “If you’re born into wealth as a fat white guy, you’ll die as a fat white guy.” One deserved to be healthy and sturdy, if you will.

That is the common view of history . . . 

 . . . and that view isn’t wholly true.

It’s about as true as writers in magazines using the Marilyn Monroe crutch that a size 10 was the sex symbol of a generation. She was in a vintage size. Today, we have vanity sizing, making numbers largely meaningless. Google “wedding dress sizes” and “vanity sizing” if you don’t believe me.

After 1500 C.E., painters celebrated sensuality and the soft, natural, graceful curves of the feminine physique, which granted artists considerable freedom with their paintings. Though having curves is easier to draw, the added shadows and colorations are what separated the masters from imitators and novices.

Peter Paul Rubens painted a gamut of sizes, but his standby was a deviation larger than his wives even. Venus at the Mirror, below, represents the embodiment of beauty in Venus/Aphrodite.

The styles didn’t change as rapidly as our contemporary art circles today. Victorian women in the 1800s added bustles to their dresses to represent the highly idealized representations of female sexual identity. This harkening back was not quite feather hair or rompers of the 1970s, but the general idea is similar.

Venus at the Mirror, 1615, Peter Paul Rubens

Bustles have been lampooned to death.

The ideals aren’t wholly lost, though, dear reader. Far from it! Having curves is never a negative thing. I watch Mad Men. I see what they’re doing correctly there:

Contemporary History

If things never changed, Mike, why did they?

Styles never die out; they just go into dormancy constantly. It’s the reason fashion comes back into popularity at random times. Yes, this means Ugg boots will be popular sometime in the future.

Beauty, and the depiction of such, changed when one woman, CoCo Chanel, deemed being thin and tan popular in the 1920s.

One woman.

Changed everything.

Overnight.

Seriously.

When returning from the south of France on a random leisure trip, she accidently returned with a tan. No one would dare question her, as her fashionista status was legendary already. She stated to friends, family, and the press that sitting on yachts in the winter allowed her to be tan all year long, and she had the leisure time to work out and stay in shape constantly. As you have obviously noticed, organic produce is much more expensive than deep-fat-fried food. Also, finding a healthy meal anywhere in a convention center during a Grand Prix approaches the impossible.

Surface-of-the-sun hot back in her day.

Her status allowed her to change things. She didn’t live in a hypersaturated media culture of today. She was lucky. Kim Kardashian is changing some perceptions, but the ship has already sailed, sister. We, as a culture, are attracted to status. It’s hardwired into us. During the Renaissance, status was being thick and pasty. Today, it’s being crazy-thin and tan.

The environmental factors may change, but a corner brick in the foundation in what we find attractive is status. What does that mean to Magic? Tons.

Current Magic Examples

Let’s compare two cards: Deathless Angel and Linvala, Keeper of Silence.

These are both angels in the same set. They technically have similar statuses, they aren't major characters in the plot. Mana costs are similar, relatively speaking, as they’re both white. Normally, angels are depicted as attractive, fit, and thin individuals in Magic worlds. They’re also usually female.

These two artworks stand out because one was flamed by many forum posters, marginalized even, for being too thick—even mocked as being pregnant. Neither art is right or wrong, and neither is good or bad. They’re simply different perceptions and we, as status-reinforcers, don’t believe that an angel could be anything other than Kate Moss–looking.

Yes, we’ve had some odd examples in the past, like Hasran Ogress, but Akroma, Angel of Fury isn’t exactly hungry like nearly every elf since ever. Just search “elf” as a creature type on Gatherer. It’s a trope: Elves are thin.

Marketing

Why are there no fat vampires? Because that doesn’t fit the trope.

They could summon the, our vampires are different trope, but the faster one grasps the knowledge, the more resonant the creature is. The game doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel every set. It can be confusing to new players and alienate others. Imagine my face when I learned that this was to become a reality:

But he’s outside . . . Lestat is going to be pissed.

The Zendikar vampires introduced the tribe back into competitive play, and they were a resounding success. Players might have grumbled that an entire tribe was used that wasn’t Homarids, but overall, the competitiveness of the deck won them over, and even Vorthos was rather quiet about the reintroduction of such an iconic monster type at such a major level with little fanfare.

I didn’t even remember Nirkana Revenant until writing this article. She’s a bit 300 oracle looking to me, but she fits into the trope; people shrug at the art, saying, “Yup, looks like a vampire.”

Innistrad doesn’t seem to be a tropical zone, making going naked with bits of purple paint/magic (sixth color!) all around you probably not enough for the climate. Probably.

Conclusion

Will the conceptual basis of thin, waiflike vampires continue? Probably. It’s simply easier to lean on a resonant trope when you want to create an entire world based on horror. I wish I could link to the Extra Credits piece on Survival Horror, but the show is missing in action for a little while. If you haven’t seen any of the videos, it’s time to. They’re great conversation pieces between matches at FNM due to the short length—under ten minutes—and approachable and relevant topics.

In short, if you need a fully built world and brand to help explain a new monster, the brand isn’t working for its intended purpose. Vampires will be thin; zombies will be anything (they’re easy to change). And werewolves? Well, werewolves we’re still trying to pin down as a singular thing, as lycanthropy affects more than just humans. Let’s watch and see what the creative team comes up with in a few weeks.

And if you’re curious why I chose 1500 as a starting date, it’s because 500 C.E. to 1499 C.E. is something wholly different. It’s . . . complicated, and left for a future article. It’s marinating right now. There are still two more sets in this block, and I worked on the middle set . . . 

See y’all next week.