Hey everyone, so you’ve probably already heard about this, since I’m covering this
news like a week late -- but Netflix has a new original show coming out in August called
Insatiable, and they just released the trailer, and it looks… awful, for so many reasons.
Let me just recap for you what we saw from the trailer.
Basically, there’s a girl in high school who’s fat, so everyone bullies her and is
super mean to her and life is terrible.
Then she gets punched in the face, has her jaw wired shut for the summer, and because
she can’t eat, she loses a ton of weight and comes back to school the next year super hot.
But instead of using her new hotness and popularity to blend in, she wants revenge on the people
who made fun of her when she was fat.
Apparently it’s even being marketed as like “body positive”, as if the revenge angle
is somehow supposed to justify all the shitty attitudes towards fat people that this show embraces?
So let’s talk about a few aspects of this.
First, the fat suit.
The trailer starts off with a thin actress wearing a fat suit -- that’s just insulting right off the bat.
I’ve seen tons of fat people on Twitter talking about how fat suits just make them
really uncomfortable, and I think that’s totally fair.
Fat suits make a mockery of actual fat people’s bodies and I can’t believe a show thinks
it’s actually okay to use one as a central plot point in 2018.
Plus, the whole premise of her getting her jaw wired shut is fucked on so many levels.
Do you realize what message this is sending to teenagers?
It says “not eating for months is a good thing, it will make you hotter and more popular
and make people like you”.
I cannot express how damaging that will be for young kids to hear.
They already have to deal with so much bullshit in other forms of media, imagine them seeing this.
Imagine the effect it will have on impressionable teenage girls who think that if they starve
themselves they can be hot and popular too.
It just breaks my heart.
These young folks need to know that that’s not how it works. None of this.
Starving yourself is never the answer.
This show is unrealistic in like 15 different ways, but it tries to pass itself off as realistic.
Like at least when we have superhero shows we know those aren’t realistic, but this
is a show that’s trying to pass itself off as grounded in reality when it’s not.
Because look, with jaw wiring thing, this shit has actually been studied.
Like, scientists have actually studied people who used jaw wiring to lose weight.
Because our society would rather wire people’s jaws shut than respect fat people.
Jesus fucking christ.
But anyway, a review of these studies from 2015 found that while jaw wiring often resulted
in rapid weight loss, that weight was consistently regained among patients.
So like, is this character just going to regain all the weight she lost?
Because that would be the realistic thing.
But somehow, I can’t see the show doing that, since it would fuck with their whole
“now she’s hot because she’s skinny” bullshit.
Also, one other thing I noticed while looking at the the scientific review from 2015 was
that the average weight lost among patients was 25kg, or about 55lbs, over 6 months.
This show says she lost weight over summer break, so like, 2, maybe 3 months?
If her story was based in reality, she would’ve lost like 20 or 30 pounds, but the show clearly
shows her losing wayyyyy more than that, like at least a hundred pounds.
But young people are gonna see this show and think “Wow, I could look like that too if
I just didn’t eat for a summer” and that’s just not true that’s not how bodies work!
Plus, when you have rapid weight loss, you definitely have stretch marks and loose/extra skin.
That’s just how bodies work.
But she comes back to school rocking a crop top with no visible stretch marks or loose skin.
Because that would fuck with the show’s whole “now she’s conventionally attractive”
thing, even though people can be hot and have stretch marks, and have loose skin.
Like these things aren’t mutually exclusive!
In fact, people can be fat, and hot.
Like there are so many hot fat people.
I just cannot understand the mindset of genuinely believe that fat is the opposite of beautiful.
You can be fat *and* beautiful.
Like there are so many gorgeous fat people in this world.
Where’s the storyline of a fat girl having a glow up, still being fat as hell, and then getting revenge?
I’d watch the the shit out of that.
You don’t have to throw in weight loss to make her hot.
Cast a fat actress, throw out the fat suit, portray a fat person as desirable and hot for once.
That would not be hard, and it would be a much better show with a much more positive message.
But okay I kinda got off track, there’s another thing I want to talk about with this
storyline and that’s: did she learn to do her hair and makeup better over the summer??
Like the show is so focused on the weight loss aspect of her that it ignores that she’s
just like suddenly learned to do this amazing makeup over the summer as well.
Like now she’s got this bright lipstick and glowing contour, as if she couldn’t
have done that while she was fat?
I know so many fat people who are literal makeup artists.
Fat people can be amazing at makeup.
You don’t have to lose weight to do really cool makeup.
This show was just really pushing the “here’s the before, and here’s the after” thing,
as if fat people only exist as a before -- but fat people exist as an after, all the time.
In fact, right now, there are fat people existing and thriving, and they’re not a before.
In fact, I’ve seen fat people posting on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #NotYourBefore
and I just think that’s fucking great and I support these folks 2000%.
Fat people deserve to be an After in the story as well, not just as the “tragic backstory”.
There were a couple other things in the trailer as well.
Like she says that the other girls were off getting laid while she was at home “stuffing
another hole” -- and I don’t even know where to start with that.
Like apparently you can only be getting laid *or* be eating a lot of food?
Shit, I know a lot of people who do both.
Fat people get laid all the fucking time.
And your weight isn’t solely determined by if you just sit on the couch and eat food
all day -- weight is so much more complicated than that, and everyone’s body just has
a different equilibrium where it’s comfortable.
Blaming it all on someone sitting at home and eating food is reductive and ignores all
the complicated facets of weight.
Just everything about this trailer is wrong and harmful and just so far out there that
it seems like a parody -- but it’s real.
And I just keep seeing the show’s creators and actors defending it as some sort of “feminist
body positive” thing and I just cannot see that at all.
I think thin people are making a show that mocks fat people while simultaneously believing
that it’s empowering because it makes them feel good. That’s bullshit.
We should listen to fat people about this stuff.
Like, if you’ve only ever heard about this from me, please go seek out fat people talking
about this show because their opinions are infinitely more valuable than mine -- I just
wanted to voice my support for them.
One video I’d highly recommend is Meghan Tonjes’s video on this subject because I
think she talks about it very eloquently, and she offers a perspective that I cannot give you.
So I’ll link to that down in the description, and yeah, I think that’s all I had for you today.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.