Moving, funny, wise, and urgently important
“Just say fat. Not “curvy” or “chubby” or “chunky” or “fluffy” or “more to love” or “big guy” or “full-figured” or “big-boned” or “queen size” or “husky” or “obese” or “overweight.”
Just say fat.”
These are the words of writer and activist Aubrey Gordon. And before you think she is being mean to fat people, know that she is one herself.
For years, Gordon blogged anonymously under the moniker YourFatFriend, discussing issues around fatphobia, fat-shaming, the diet/wellness industry, and related issues. This blog lead to a book deal, and to her hugely popular podcast with Michael Hobbes, The Maintenance Phase.
Over a period of six years, award-winning documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay followed Gordon on her journey out of anonymity into relative fame. Along the way we hear from people around Gordon, particularly her parents, as well as from the woman herself. Gordon is a gift to a director: witty, smart, passionate, wise, and vulnerable, she gives good interview, and offers a ready-made narrative arc of breaking through anxiety, and finding her identity, literally, through her step out from under the cover of anonymity. Mind you, anonymity did not protect her from haters telling her to kill herself, or threatening to do it for her. The depths of depravity that some people will descend to whilst hiding behind a screen still boggles the mind.
Your Fat Friend is certainly Gordon’s story, but it is also an excoriation of the so-called “wellness” industry, and of the medical profession’s almost medieval approach to fatness and fat people. These are the sorts of issues so eloquently parsed by Gordon and Hobbes in their Webby-Award winning podcast. It delves into the still-touted simplistic ideas that all fat people need to do is eat less, or move more. And this is despite research showing that fatness, and our bodies, are far more complex than that.
The personal very much becomes the political in this film, as we also witness Gordon talking to her mother about being taken to Weight Watchers when she was 12, and hear about the anxieties of being fat and getting on a plane. She sees fat people as very much being the scapegoat for everyone else’s discomfort and anxiety.
This is a superb piece of filmmaking. It is biography, commentary, poetry, and humour, all in the one delicious package. It has so much to say that is vital and important, whether you identify as skinny, or fat, or even fluffy. Because we are all, as a society, being taken for a ride by “wellness” and anti-fat aesthetic standards, and sloppy medical care.
And most importantly, Your Fat Friend, is a total entertaining delight, embracing moments of tear-inducing pathos, and many many moments of utter hilarity.
Your Fat Friend is screening on October 25th at Gawler Cinema.
Click here to book tickets.
Click here for further information, or to support another screening through FanForce.
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