The main story only focuses on Tracy wanting to dance on her favorite show and protest for Integration, and hook up with Link! The plot and has absolutely NOTHING to do with her being overweight and insecure.
In fact, the LAST thing Tracy was is insecute, she seemed confident and happy! I don't see why the audience is reminded of her being overweight.
That’s the whole point of the story. Tracy accepts herself as she is no matter what others think. Same with the racism. People are people in her mind. It is that attitude gets her to where she wants to go.
shareKeep in mind, other than the main theme of the story, Tracy sadly lived in a time when obesity was rare in the US, so it was common to make fun of fat people back then. If you think obese people have it bad now, (despite more acceptance these days) it was much worse in the 60s.
shareHer weight wouldn't have been a big deal, if she hadn't gone on local TV. But she did! And yeah, for decades it would have been considered absolutely unthinkable for a fat kid to get on a program designed to showcase all that was cool in teenagerdom, it'd have been as likely as a fat girl modeling for Teen Vogue in those days.
There was a real teenage dance program on local Baltimore TV in the early 1960s when John Waters was young, he was obsessed with the show as a kid, and he wrote a long and interesting article about it after "Hairspray" was made. They had no fat girls dancing with the cool kids in real life, and FYI the real show was taken off the air when attempts were made to integrate the cast.