It’s hard to deny Degrassi walked so HBO’s Euphoria could ride a bike through a drug-riddled haze to the top of critics’ and fans' must-see lists. Both shows push the high school experience to the brink of WTF. So much so that audiences have to wonder, “Did I go to the most boring school - ever?” Everything from the drama to the characters mirror one another, but one thing that should’ve changed between the 20 years that separated them is the way they treated their plus size characters. Teen shows such as these fail to highlight the big girls as well-rounded, complex characters, and in turn, dilute their representation while masking an issue many teens face.

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Image Via HBO

Being a 30-something, Sam Levinson (Euphoria) has more than likely seen an episode or two of Degrassi. Not to say he completely constructed his characters around the Canadian darling, but there are a lot of similarities. Troubled boy who dabbles in illegal activity, Latina who embodies HBIC energy, and the hot guy who’d pay way too much to get all his baggage on a flight. In reality though, Degrassi’s Craig (Jake Epstein) was tame compared to the psychopath that is Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi). Then there are also the big girls who actually were and are pretty average but by Hollywood standards are far from. For Degrassi it was Terri MacGregor (Christina Schmidt), the plus-size catalog model turned domestic abuse victim never to be seen again. Her present-day counterpart is a fanfiction writing camgirl with arguably the laziest backstory of the entire Euphoria series, Kat Hernandez (Barbie Ferreira). While Degrassi didn’t dig too deep into the lives of their characters before fans saw them, the HBO series has done a great job of this for 99% of their characters. Again, Kat is not one of them.

The basis of Kat’s whole persona on the show is that one time her family went on vacation, and she simply fell in love with virgin piña coladas. Yes, not every tale needs a tragic start but when stacked up against Rue’s (Zendaya) dead dad, Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) addict dad, and Nate’s whole situation with Cal (Eric Dane) - Kat’s backstory felt uninspired. As if Levinson looked at a collection of tropes and thought, well, she’s bigger than the other girls so let’s be basic.

Basic is the best word to describe the lack of interest taken in either of these characters. Rewatching Degrassi, Terri comes through as an intriguing and caring person who would’ve done wonders as a legitimate part of the cast as they got older like Paige (Lauren Collins), Marco (Adamo Ruggiero), and Spinner (Shane Kippel) were able to do. Alas, she was poorly written off. As for Kat, the virgin drinks were just the start as she started to fade a bit into the shadows of the second season of the hit HBO series despite being just as integral to the show as her onscreen peers. No one can confirm or deny these characters were created to check off a box to pass an inclusion test, but at the end of the day - that’s what it feels like.

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Image via HBO

Yes, it’s always wonderful to see oneself in some form in the pop culture landscape but when it’s the same narrative on repeat? Things stall instead of evolve. Terri was created on the cusp of the supermodels of the ‘90s when the internet was still fresh and low rise jeans owned the land. So it’s not shocking her character wasn’t given the respect she deserved. Kat, however, came to be in the midst of the self-love, body-posi era. Yet, her plot was the antithesis of those.

Creating this lack of appreciation for the whole representation matters phrase that gets tossed around. It is a phrase that’s been heavily utilized in recent years pertaining to not only race and sexuality, but also body types. So while it’s a nice gesture to include characters like Kat and Terri in the story, it does little to showcase them in such a limited light. While Rue gets to explore love, loss, and her addiction fans only see Kat struggle with her body and how that impacts her love life. A semi-good lesson to teach viewers that self-love is important, but Kat is the only character on the show left to dish out this lesson. The big girl. This could have easily been something a number of other characters could have had as a part of their euphoric journey, but Levinson tacked it onto Kat because that’s what Hollywood has proven to be the go-to.

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Image via FOX

Degrassi did it with Terri, and audiences are no stranger to seeing this done on other teen shows as well as shows that feature adult women. Glee’s Amber Riley had her character’s weight mentioned on the first season because how can one win Nationals being plus size? It doesn’t stop there as Mike & Molly set its foundation on weight with the main characters meeting at Overeaters Anonymous meeting, and NBC’s This Is Us laid the weight-plot thick with Kate Pearson (Chrissy Metz). She and her eventual husband on the show also meet at a weight support group of sorts. It’s almost as creative as the writing going on in teen shows.

That’s not to say all hope is lost on the small screen when it comes to incorporating characters that reflect plus size women, especially in the teen show realm. Netflix gets two gold stars for both Sex Education and On My Block. Sex Education gave way to the incredibly smart, Vivienne Odusanya (Chinenye Ezeudu) while On My Block counterbalanced that with the over the top Jasmine Flores (Jessica Marie Garcia). Their weight was never a huge part of their story, if at all, and because of that they were given the chance to showcase that big girls aren’t defined by their size. They could have other things going on in their life aside from constantly worrying about being told to “try Sears” come prom.

Those anxieties of fitting the mold have always spawned from images seen in the media. In the early 00s, all one had was screens both big and small but as the internet came to be the juggernaut it is today, it’s given just as much as it’s taken. The body-posi movement from recent years has been a blessing with models like Ashley Graham and Tess Holiday being able to be given their flowers for being their beautiful selves, but there’s always a dark side to the World Wide Web of toxicity. Especially when the one posting doesn't fit into a particular beauty box that has been deemed “worthy” by society in mainstream culture.

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So people have the internet sending mixed signals with the idea of self-love having to battle it out with internet trolls, and it’s not just big girls waging this war. Every type of teen is going to feel down about themselves at some point during those developing years because hormones are the worst and that’s the bottom line issue with teen shows. As great as they are when they fall into tired clichés it doesn’t allow every teen to feel seen and let’s face it. So why only focus on the big girls to carry this torch, or once in a great while have an eating disorder given to one of the smaller girls for no more than two episodes? On My Block and Sex Education have put in some effort to combat this with diverse casts that stray away from the typical tropes but what they’ve done should be the standard for teen shows to come.

Teen shows have depended on standard plot lines for particular types since the days of John Hughes (The Breakfast Club). Big girls, when given the chance, have been utilized as mere sidekicks with some sort of body issue. Now, only time will tell if future of teen shows actually put an effort into doing more with their plus size characters. They could make these characters male or non-binary, cast actors who are more than average-sized, make plus size characters’ plots where the foundation is more than a weight issue.

Degrassi is heading back to TV sometime in 2023. HBO to be exact. So it’ll be interesting to see if they write their wrongs in having Terri around just for the weight plot lines and then casting her aside after being in a coma, never to be seen again and, if they’ll be able to “go there” as they say and take their level of drama to new heights like their soon-to-be network sister from another mister, Euphoria.