Designated. Ugly. Fat. Friend. Now what could possibly go wrong with this?
The Duff. One of those films that kind of fly under the radar. There s not much talk about
it. If you ve seen it, you ve seen it. And if you haven t, you just haven t. It is your
typical run-of-the-mill teen Romadramadey. And yes, that is a word. Now. This film comes with
it s share of criticism, understandably so and praises. But there was one thing about the film,
besides the obvious, that I found to be quite puzzling. But before I get into that. Let me
set the scene. We have three best friends. Jess, the hot and nice one. Casey, the hot
and tough one. And Bianca the one that s just there. Then enter the mean girl of the school.
She doesn t invite Bianca to her party, but she invites the friends. And so the story goes you
know how this goes. This is how we are starting the film. Again, typical teen romadramedy. Then
they give us the plot. The title of the film and what it supposedly means. Wesley, Bianca s
annoying next door neighbor is inquiring about her hot friends. You know the typical hot guy
inappropriate inquiry in a romadramadey. Bianca s like I am not their keeper why are you asking me
this? And he s like well you re the duff. You are supposed to know these things. She s like
I m sorry the what? So he goes on to explain that she is the designated ugly fat friend.
People go through you to get to them. That is your role in the group. And naturally she gets
offended. She s like how dare you call me fat and ugly? Unwarranted at that! He s all Oh no it s
just a figure of speech. It doesn t mean you re fat or ugly. You re just the one that doesn t look
as good as the others in the group so everybody filters through you. Now let me just put things
into perspective here. The Duff is based off of a novel of the same name that was published
in 2010. It s author was 17 at the time she wrote it. So it is from a young persons perspective.
And I m sure it was based on either her life or someone she knew because I mean, that s what
writers do. I m not sure how much of the novel is included in the film you know what I m rambling.
I don t even know where I was going with the whole novel thing.
Lets just address the obvious problem with this film shall we. Now some people may be thinking.
Being called ugly and fat is the problem. I can t believe he said that. No that s not the problem,
first of all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We all know this. Is calling someone ugly to
their face messed up? Yea it is. And that is a problem in itself, but that s not what I
am focused on right now. Plus I think she s cute. She just doesn t fit the classic beauty
standards. It s just a difference in opinions. You may think somebody is the finest thing to walk
the planet and I may look at them and be like girl bye. The problem at hand here is the fact
that the word fat is used as an insult that is not a literal insult that is indeed insulting.
Ok, the word itself has a negative connotation right? For example. Society tries to force that
having any body type outside of thin is not the way to go. It s just not ok. But realistically
we all have different heights, hand sizes, feet sizes, hair type, skin tones, you get the point.
Why would our bodies be exempt? And why would this one body type be unacceptable? That s a
deep dive for a channel with more depth than mine but It s pretty ridiculous when you think about
it. We re starting to understand that, but like so many other things we have a long way to go.
But anyways. Back to the movie. So after Wesley explains this to her, she s pissed.
She starts noticing people treating her one way and treating her friends another. She goes off
on her friends. Asking them why they never told her she was the duff. They are just like girl,
what in tarnation are you talking about? And she s all, you know! You know! So she unfriends them
and goes on by her way feeling sorry for herself. That is until a huge opportunity presents itself.
In exchange of helping Wesley undumb himself, he will turn her into a duff-less babe. That
way she can talk to this boy, Toby she s been crushing on since forever, and gain self esteem.
But mainly to get with Toby. Now here s what I find puzzling about the film.
Going into it, I was under the impression that it would be a movie based around the friends. Not
her next door neighbor. Like the whole set up was about where she ranks amongst her friends.
Sure we get a couple of scenes with them to get the jest of how she ended up paired with Wes.
But I guess I would have personally liked to have seen what her arc would have looked like amongst
the friends. Designated ugly fat friend? What would it be for her to go from a Duff to a Baddie
and how would that make her feel in the group. On the other hand, I can understand if the filmmakers
didn t want to chance it for this to turn into a bad mean girls knock off. We can only imagine
how that would turn out. Still they could ve worked it in but whatever.
So Wes takes Bianca on a shopping spree, trying on all these clothes that don t even match.
Has her talking to random guys in the food-court who seem to have absolutely zero interest in her,
I don t know maybe because they were minding their business eating their food. All of this to get
her out of her shell. One guy actually approaches her and guess what she was doing. Being herself.
It was no extra-ness, trying to too hard with the pickup lines. But of course this doesn t
fully register til much later. That would be too much like right. Unfortunately for her,
her whole let down her hair moment was caught on tap and plastered everywhere by Wes ex. aka the
token mean girl of the movie. Her friends who she voluntarily stopped being friends with due to her
own insecurities, take the video offline but the damage is already done. Everybody has seen the
video. Even her lil boo thang Toby. So Bianca gets all in Wes face about it and he s like going
along with the humiliation. And here s something else that puzzles me. They ve been friends since
they were babies, and I m sure in that at times they were close and other times they weren t,
just in waves. I get that. But it didn t make sense to have him not say anything in that
moment. They ve been out publically together. Other people know that they cool, including his
crazy ex. So even if there was a delay for a few seconds in him telling his friends to chill
because he was deciding what side of the fence he wanted to be on he should ve said something. He
later confronted somebody but it s like dude you should ve done this when everybody was around.
But anyways, they make up and Toby is all of a sudden interested in hanging out with Bianca.
Ok I probably shouldn t have said it like that because it honestly wasn t all that
fishy but at the same time it was like why you wanna get to know me now? Hmmm.
So Wes comes up with this elaborate plan for her and Toby to go on this Dave and Busters date.
Gives her all his playa moves. Runs down the game. But before she gets to the date,
there s an interception. Hey are you guys picking up on the word play here because
I think its pretty great. I mean I m not even trying, it s just effortless. Ok let me stop.
But in comes the feelings. You know, Wes has been spending all this time with B as he calls her,
and he s realizing how amazing of a person she is. Who would ve seen this coming? But
that s gotta be put on hold because Toby is the still the goal. Sidenote: I forgot to mention,
her mom is like this small town self help author who has little to nothing to do with her daughter
and her whereabouts. Anytime Bianca tries to have a conversation with her, her mom is like Mhmm,
so my book.. And Bianca is like girl if you don t gone somewhere with that. Well,
she didn t say that exactly but she wants to. Instead she just sits there and listens.
But anyways. It s date night. The moment she s been waiting for. Wes see s her and he s like.
You look great but you don t look like yourself. And it s like dude she s literally just wearing a
dress. Let s not be dramatic here. But she makes it s over to Toby and date night does
not go as she thought it would. For one, it s an intimate sit-down dinner at his house.
Not Dave and Buster s. So bye -bye to the playa game plan. But more importantly, it s not even a
date because he isn t even interested in her. She was duffed. Used as a buffer to get to her ex-best
friends. And to make matters worse, she went to Wes to vent her heartbreak and he was locking
lips with the mean girl maddy. So she reaches out to her friends to explain and of course
they take her back. Her mom steps off her high horse and they all convince her to go to the
dance. While at the dance she finally breaks the ice and tells Wes that she s into him. He clearly
wasn t going to make the first move because he was too busy settling for less. Its so annoying
when people do that. Get into relationships out of convenience instead of just waiting for the
right person. But I digress. O f course in the end they wound up together. And she writes her article
about embracing who you are and everybody s like yea I m a duff. I m a duff too. We re all duffs.
I think this film is funny, we ve got some pretty funny characters in it. It s not a film to take
too seriously, though like I said the term duff is a bit problematic but it s a fun film.
Honestly I saw this movie like once when it first came out. And I couldn t really remember. I knew
I liked the film but I couldn t remember if it was like a problematic film or what have you. So
I kind of went into this video with the notion that I was gonna like And this happened,
and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong. But like I said, it s not
a serious movie. It s nothing that you can really take to heart like that. So that s why this video
is like I m giving commentary a little bit but mostly synopsis. I will say that nothing really
happened to make me feel like they liked each other. Everything was very subtle. A subtle
inkling of jealousy when she went on her date with Toby. She was thinking about Wes when she was on
a date with Toby. He kissed her when she was there for him while he was dealing with family issues.
I mean all of these things count but none were big moments. I guess it doesn t always have to be
dramatic though right? In real life sometimes it s a gradual lowkey thing then boom. You re in love.
One thing that really works well here is the I m not like other girls trope. Because its
not overdone. She s not super smart, or a super tomboy or anything to the extreme. She s just
her. And that s refreshing. Anyways, I m rambling. The Duff. Have you seen it? What did
you think? Do you identify as a duff? Or has anyone ever told you that you were? Or
is there a friend in your group that you d think to yourself like yea you re a duff?
I m curious. Let me know down below. For myself, I don t think of myself as a duff.
For some reason people don t find me to be approachable either. Hmm, Maybe we can unpack
that later. But it s odd because I m not super girly or super tomboy. I m smart but it s not
an obnoxious in your face thing. I m Bianca. That s the best way I could put it. Maybe that
s why I found her refreshing because I get it. And I always think its funny in these
high school romadramedys where its like there are different groups of people and there s no mixing
of the sort. But its like well, I was a Bianca, my boyfriend was a popular football player, I had
diverse friends one of which no one talk to but me and like two other people. How do you explain
that? But I guess for the sake of movies we gotta stick in the parameters. Oh well. Blush Bunny
merch is linked below. As well as the podcast. Please follow the podcast guys and turn on the
notifications. With all of that being said. If you haven t done so already be sure to click
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you my videos. As always. I m all ears. Until next time. Byeeeee.