About that Netflix trainwreck âInsatiableâ
You may have seen the post about Netflixâs upcoming show âInsatiable,â where a fatsuited actress playing an unmakeupped, normal looking fat girl gets abused, then behind-the-curtain loses weight and (apparently) hires a professional hair and makeup artist to meet up with her at 5am before school every morning.
Disclaimer: Iâve only seen the previews, of course, so all judgment is based on that. But what I have to say goes deeper than the previews for this particular iteration of the how-to-lose-a-fatsuit-and-gain-the-respect-of-your-shallow-peers-in-90-days narrative.
I want to address our power, or rather the perceived source of our power.
As fat people, we are told again and again that our power lies in conformity. In change. In transformation. In submitting our will to the will of others. To the desires of others. To their commands, hung as yokes around our necks. If we donât submit, we shall be judged, abused, and shunned. We arenât allowed to stand up to this abuse, judgment, prejudice. If we are unwilling to shoulder the burden of other peopleâs fat discrimination and hatred, society drags us out into the field like willful animals, where we are then, unceremoniously, shot.
Conformity, for fat people, is often achieved by simply losing some arbitrarily defined âextraâ weight, but it may also mean conforming to traditional beauty standards. Only when fat people sufficiently conform are they granted agency, allowed to be something more than sad sacks, cautionary tales, punching bags, pity fucks. Only when they conform are they allowed to go after their abusers, the judgmental hens and cocks of the Animal Farm that is public school, the budding concern-trolls, the milquetoast cowardly adult authority figures whoâd rather win their own popularity contests with young teens than do their jobs to protect vulnerable people under their care.
This is thin privilege. This is what we mean by it. This is the power that fat people unlock, to stand up for themselves (but only their newly thin selves), to earn the chance to be loved (but only as newly thin), to be heard and respected (since they are, now, thin), to have lives untethered from a couch and snack-bucket (included in the welcome package granted to the newly-thin). Letâs not forget the agency-draining adjective that is the title itselfââinsatiable,â as noted by others, is a term emergent from rape culture used to describe the sexual inclinations of fat women.
âInsatiable,â a series by an obviously stretched-thin writing and production department at @Netflix, pounds this narrative home like the final nail into the coffin of any freedom fat people are expected to obtain sans thin transformation. âInsatiableâ is all about thin privilege, from its dehumanizing use of fatsuits (which give thin people all the same strange, stiff-double-chinned-and-lined alien look, as they are truly someone else in a suit of flesh) to its reiteration of the narrative that a fat personâs power is her thinness, unlocked when she sufficiently transforms, as if her very fat body is a chrysalis to be discarded after enough character development.
Imagine this: What if, instead of losing weight, the character comes back to school in the fall with a new style and new sense of agency? Perhaps sheâd gone to camp in the summer and met some wonderful people who didnât judge her, a mentor who encouraged her, starting finally writing that novel and unlocking her social and creative powers.
All the scenes which follow are her exercising her new power, while fat. She faces up to fat discrimination, either personally, or by demanding authority figures pay the fuck attention. She goes after her abusers. She has a few little romantic moments. And even though she will still be discriminated against and hated by her thin peers, because fat discrimination and hatred are real and not just illusions fat people create for themselves to avoid living, she will have begun to access her true sources of power, those which will only grow more vibrant as she gets older; she will begin to construct tools which will help her combat the vileness of others.
Instead of robbing fat people of their agency as fat people by putting the locus of their power in thin privilege, as in âInsatiable,â a show that actively hates fat people and especially fat teenage girls, a truly ground-breaking show could place the locus of a fat personâs power in herself, at the same time acknowledging the powerful, often-deadly reality that is fat discrimination and hatred.
One would have hoped in 2018, after âPitch Perfectâ and âHugeâ and âMy Mad Fat Diary,â that @Netflix could have pushed the envelope further in the direction of humanizing fat people. Instead, it produces the utterest bottom-feeding trash from a script that watches like it was written in the âCluelessâ era, thoughâŠmuch more clueless.
In fact, âInsatiableâ is arguably dangerous. This mod expects an uptick in violence against fat teens in the wake of this show, as well as an uptick in eating disordered behavior. Of any group they could have gone after, Netflix picked the most fragile, the most prone to see conformity as their only source of power, the least empowered by their peers and the adults in their lives. For shame, @Netflix. For shame.
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