As you may recall, I recently took issue with the ending to the 1950 comic book romance story “Too Fat for Love” because of its implied message that unless an overweight girl got thin, she didn’t really deserve to find true love. While wandering the excellent resource Comic Book Plus, I just found another story on the same theme in the June 1949 issue of First Love Illustrated.

Note that I didn’t discover this because I was actively looking for another similar story; it just appeared. For all I know, this was a frequent subject for romance comics to tackle at that time.

In “Was I Too Fat to Be Loved?,” drawn by Bob Powell and written by someone whose identity is apparently no longer known, 16-year-old Roz is miserable because “the world may love a fat man but the world’s boys sure detest the fat girl.”

Let’s see how things turn out for the her, shall we?

Poor Roz! Even her mother tells her that she’s not going to get a man unless she gets thin first.

But one day, her Mom takes in a boarder named Mark Mason …

… and Roz has a wonderful dinner with him that first night, laughing and joking. And he even helps with the dishes! Looks like Roz has finally found someone she can love and who can love her back.

But then her sister Lydia arrives home and steals Mark away.

As the story proceeds, Lydia proves herself to be the most horrible of sisters, singing insulting songs about Roz …

… and even playing nasty pranks, such as turning on a hose just at the right moment so Roz will get soaked.

Eventually, Mark Mason has had enough of Lydia’s meanness, and tells Roz that it’s her he’s really loved all along …

… which leads to a happily ever after ending that doesn’t demand Roz slim down to be seen as worthy.

Bravo, nameless writer! I’m glad someone back then wasn’t buying into the message that it’s only those with societally approved body types who can find happiness.

It turns out that Jacque Nodell of Sequential Crush has written on this topic, too, and the story she found also required the protagonist to slim down to find true love. My prediction is that if I read more romance comics from that period, most stories will end that way, and “Was I Too Fat to Be Loved?” will turn out to be a rarity. What do you think?