“While my classmates were out losing their virginity, I was at home stuffing another hole.”
Next month, Netflix is dropping its new teen comedy, Insatiable.
Starring Debby Ryan, the series follows an overweight high school student nicknamed “Fatty Patty” by her peers, until she suffers a punch to the face, has her jaw wired shut, and can’t eat much of anything for an entire summer.
Patty then become thin and hot and everyone in school is really shocked by her transformation… until Patty starts using her revenge body to get back at everyone who ever made her feel like shit in the past, and then they’re really shocked by the fact that Patty is now wild and crazy and stuff.
You can probably see why people are pissed off.
There’s a line in the show’s trailer where somebody says: “This is like every shitty high school movie ever made” which makes you think, yeah, OK, maybe this won’t be a straight forward ‘fat = bad’ and ‘skinny = good’ story where the only characters who have any depth at all are slim and nobody gets anything done unless they wear size 8 jeans.
The show’s writer, Lauren Gussis, has even taken to social media to defend Insatiable saying that the projects draws on her own insecurities during high school and how she also wanted revenge on the people who bullied her.
On Twitter, she wrote:
“When I was 13 I was suicidal. My best friends dumped me, I was bullied, and I wanted revenge.
“I thought if I looked pretty on the outside, I’d feel like I was enough. Instead, I developed an eating disorder… and the kind of rage that makes you want to do dark things.”
Gussis went on to say that she’s still not comfortable in her own skin, “… but I’m trying to share my insides – to share my pain and my vulnerability through humour. That’s just my way.”
So, Insatiable is – in some ways then – based on true events.
The show’s writer has said that she struggled with insecurities around her weight, and battled an eating disorder, and that she wanted revenge.
Gussis’s way or dealing with all of this is through laughter. As good a way as any to move on, to feel secure with who you are, and to show the world that despite your trauma you can still be successful.
But not everybody who watches Insatiable will know this about Gussis – and even if they did, not everybody is going to take this show as satire. Especially not when it features the main character wearing a fat suit and, everybody else measuring her self worth on the size of her waist.
It’s hard to make an informed judgement having not actually seen the series, but if the trailer is anything to go by (and it probably is something to go by), this is a show that takes a young girl who’s overweight, makes her skinny because she literally can’t eat, and turns her into a “crazy” person.
Oh, and everyone now thinks she’s hot after the summer holidays because she’s skinny now. Of course.
To some, Insatiable might be a humorous representation of the stupid connotations we attach to body image, but to others (a lot of people actually – there’s a petition with 100,000 signatures calling on Netlifx to cancel its release), it’s just fat-shaming.
Accurately portraying eating disorders on screen is extremely difficult.
Last year, Netflix’s To The Bone was praised by some for its raw discussion of things like binge eating and body dysmorphia, while others found the film to glamorise eating disorders, presenting some of the pain without any of the trauma and depth.
Not every eating disorder is the same and not everybody who has one will experience the same things, but the chances are that if you have suffered from one, or from body image issues, or with your weight in general, watching Debby Ryan be laughed at in a fat suit probably won’t be high on your list of priorities this summer.
‘Insatiable’ means impossible to satisfy, which makes this show’s name a rather clever play on words.
Unfortunately for everyone who’s going to be watching it though, Insatiable has already been done before, over and over – and there doesn’t seem to be much appetite for another similar series.
