Your Fat Friend review – fat activist Aubrey Gordon takes on the cruelty of Big Diet | Film

Film-maker Jeanie Finlay paints a warm and generous portrait of a sympathetic subject: the American fat activist, podcaster and bestselling author Aubrey Gordon who became a viral sensation for her blog Your Fat Friend, in which she railed against the cruelty – sometimes unintentional and sometimes not – of people who can’t help deriding people like her. Her sprightly, witty, unrepentant arias of complaint earned her a fanbase that included Roxane Gay, James Corden and Adele. But it also got her trolling and vicious abuse.

Gordon tells us of a lifetime enduring cringe-making euphemisms and condescension, as well as taking on the insidious diet industry, which has now rebranded itself the “wellness” industry; she makes a fierce and persuasive case that the diet/wellness racket is a corporate machine that promotes anxieties and self-hate among women and then converts that into money. She compares big diet to big tobacco – a boldly dissentient analysis, in fact, given that the cigarette comparison is what many reach for in talking about the processed food industry.

The film also talks to Gordon’s parents and, with delicacy and tact, indicates that her mother’s decision to take Gordon to a junior diet class when she was in her early teens did no good at all and may simply have created an unhappiness that contributed to an eating disorder. It also might have been a factor in her parents’ divorce, and again Finlay subtly lets the audience see what might have happened here. Gordon’s dad is a retired pilot – ironic, considering how awful fat people are made to feel on planes – and he remarried a flight attendant (or “stewardess” as they were known in those days) who was very much part of the male-pleasing body-shape template. Interestingly, perhaps even slyly, Finlay edits her film so that we hear Gordon complain how the phrase “you have great skin” is a classic avoidant euphemism – and then we hear her stepmother sweetly say that exact thing. As for issues around relationships, they are not discussed at all. Perhaps a flaw.

Fundamentally, Gordon’s position appears to be that there are some people whose physiology and metabolism are such that they will always be fat, like it or not, and that any struggle on their part to contain it would mean a zombie-like obsession which would obliterate every other aspect of their waking lives. In brief: it isn’t worth it and, as Keynes might have said in this context, in the long run we are all dead, so deal with it. Let fat people be fat and stop victimising them.

In a way, this is a libertarian argument that runs against arguments from left and right, saying in the effect that this whole issue is an American first world symptom of prosperity. But the issue of the alleged insensitivity of doctors who raise concerns about heart disease and diabetes could have been addressed more rigorously. Well, the humour and generosity of Gordon shine through.

Film-maker Jeanie Finlay paints a warm and generous portrait of a sympathetic subject: the American fat activist, podcaster and bestselling author Aubrey Gordon who became a viral sensation for her blog Your Fat Friend, in which she railed against the cruelty – sometimes unintentional and sometimes not – of people who can’t help deriding people like her. Her sprightly, witty, unrepentant arias of complaint earned her a fanbase that included Roxane Gay, James Corden and Adele. But it also got her trolling and vicious abuse.

Gordon tells us of a lifetime enduring cringe-making euphemisms and condescension, as well as taking on the insidious diet industry, which has now rebranded itself the “wellness” industry; she makes a fierce and persuasive case that the diet/wellness racket is a corporate machine that promotes anxieties and self-hate among women and then converts that into money. She compares big diet to big tobacco – a boldly dissentient analysis, in fact, given that the cigarette comparison is what many reach for in talking about the processed food industry.

The film also talks to Gordon’s parents and, with delicacy and tact, indicates that her mother’s decision to take Gordon to a junior diet class when she was in her early teens did no good at all and may simply have created an unhappiness that contributed to an eating disorder. It also might have been a factor in her parents’ divorce, and again Finlay subtly lets the audience see what might have happened here. Gordon’s dad is a retired pilot – ironic, considering how awful fat people are made to feel on planes – and he remarried a flight attendant (or “stewardess” as they were known in those days) who was very much part of the male-pleasing body-shape template. Interestingly, perhaps even slyly, Finlay edits her film so that we hear Gordon complain how the phrase “you have great skin” is a classic avoidant euphemism – and then we hear her stepmother sweetly say that exact thing. As for issues around relationships, they are not discussed at all. Perhaps a flaw.

Fundamentally, Gordon’s position appears to be that there are some people whose physiology and metabolism are such that they will always be fat, like it or not, and that any struggle on their part to contain it would mean a zombie-like obsession which would obliterate every other aspect of their waking lives. In brief: it isn’t worth it and, as Keynes might have said in this context, in the long run we are all dead, so deal with it. Let fat people be fat and stop victimising them.

In a way, this is a libertarian argument that runs against arguments from left and right, saying in the effect that this whole issue is an American first world symptom of prosperity. But the issue of the alleged insensitivity of doctors who raise concerns about heart disease and diabetes could have been addressed more rigorously. Well, the humour and generosity of Gordon shine through.