In this op-ed, entertainment news editor Claire Dodson explains why Netflix's controversial new show Insatiable isn't really about its fat characters, and how, because of that, it's a wasted opportunity to show three-dimensional fat (and formerly fat) characters on screen.
When I was in high school, I was a 6-foot-tall, fat teen who was uncomfortable in her large body. I wore large t-shirts to cover up the folds of my stomach. I hunched over to make myself seem smaller. Every morning before school, I slipped a tight swimsuit on under my clothes to act as a corset. I did that for three years.
Every book I read, every movie or TV show I watched, reinforced the idea in my head that if I wanted someone to love me or if I wanted to be successful, I would have to lose weight. And I remember that feeling inconsistent with my actual life — I had great friends, I played basketball for my high school (a fat athlete, oh my!), I went out on weekends, I found things I was good at that have led me to my job today as an editor at Teen Vogue.
I wanted to see that on screen, instead of feeling ashamed and self-conscious everytime a fat character appeared in something I was watching with my thin friends. I wanted to be inspired by strong fat women so that I could overcome the urge to cover my body up and the internalized belief that even though my life seemed pretty OK, I was deficient in some way because I’m not thin.
It was disappointing like I knew it probably would be. But it wasn’t just the blatant fatphobia that bothered me. While watching, I realized one of the biggest problems with Insatiable is that even though it wants to be about fat people, it’s not really about fat people, at all.
The trailer, which came out on July 19, frames the story like this: fat teenager Patty Bladell (played by Debby Ryan) is bullied at school — and basically everywhere else — but after an incident where she punches a homeless man for attempting to steal her candy bar and he punches her back (causing her to have her jaw wired shut for 3 months), she emerges 70 pounds lighter, skinny and ready to set out for revenge against everyone who ever mocked her (oh, and become a pageant queen).
But the trailer is a trap. It’s the television equivalent of clickbait. Because the show itself isn’t about being fat, and it’s not even really about being formerly fat, like Patty. Sure, Patty gets all the big action: she often goes into inexplicable rage spirals; she murders two people and almost kills a third; she pushes a classmate out of a wheelchair; she outs two closeted queer men. She joins a long list of fat villains (looking at you Crabbe and Goyle from Harry Potter, or Ursula from The Little Mermaid) whose evil is compounded by their fatness, even when Patty’s fat is all in her head.
Even though Patty is painted as the heroine in the trailer, she isn’t really. Over the course of 12 episodes, she gets almost no character development. She learns nothing from her (increasingly bad) mistakes. The audience is given nothing from her to win us over. But you know who does get that development? Every thin character.
Alyssa Milano’s Coralee, a struggling housewife-turned-entrepreneur, wins you over with her earnestness and vulnerability. Nonnie (Kimmy Shields), Patty’s best friend, is awkwardly charming as she works through her crush on Patty and starts embracing her queerness — I found myself thinking I would actually watch a show about her journey. Patty’s pageant coach Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts) and the district attorney Bob Barnard (Christopher Gorham) both become better people by the end of the series, as they each become honest about their sexuality and more thoughtful and caring towards their children. Even minor characters, like fellow pageant queen Roxy (Chloe Bridges), are three-dimensional, such as when she reckons with her estrangement from her father and her resentment at being sent into foster care.
Patty’s weight loss, however, acts as a stand-in for her character development. Beyond the head-scratching proclivity for murder, there’s nothing else to say about her that we don’t know at the outset.
