Debating female fatness online: A netnographic study of the Greek television romcom You Are My Soulmate

In the early 2000s, a Greek television romantic comedy marked a notable departure from mainstream media norms by centering two fat women, an unheard-of choice in the country’s televisual landscape. You Are My Soulmate (YAMS), created by Lefteris Papapetrou, quickly became a cultural touchstone and, two decades later, continues to spark online debates about fatness, femininity, and desirability. This article uses a netnographic approach to examine how audiences engage with YAMS’s fat politics. Drawing on user-generated content, primarily YouTube comments, and analyzing them through feminist, media, and humor studies frameworks, it traces responses ranging from affirmative identification to ambivalence and critical reevaluation, especially regarding the show’s reliance on humor and tropes that reinforce fatphobia and normative gender scripts. These digital expressions, often articulated in academic vernacular, illuminate evolving cultural understandings of fatness and gender within the Greek context. Rather than positioning YAMS as definitively progressive or problematic, the article explores its complex afterlife as a catalyst for public reflection on fatness in media. By foregrounding user responses, it contributes to Fat Studies by showing how certain corners of Greek YouTube function as dynamic sites of affective investment and meaning-making. These spaces ultimately form contingent public archives that offer a rare glimpse into fat discourse in the Greek context, an area that remains largely underexplored in a field predominantly shaped by Anglo-American media and scholarship.