In Defense of Insatiable

For the last twenty days, my twitter feed and Facebook timeline has been graced with the anger of teens after the release of the trailer for new Netflix show "Insatiable". The show is about Patty (formerly known as "Fatty Patty"), a highschooler who went from supersized to skinny after a Summer with her jaw wired shut.

Tweeter @mflow_ wrote:

"ACTORS!

If you’re not fat; don’t accept the role

If you’re not a POC; don’t accept the role

If you’re not disabled; don’t accept the role

If you’re not transgender; don’t accept the role

Stop accepting roles that u can’t possibly understand or accurately portray

#Insatiable"

She was backed by @MerQueenJude who said:

"all this does is further marginalized already marginalized bodies. it makes us feel small and gross. it makes us feel “othered”. how dare you do this after the fiasco of 13rw??"

Buzzfeed writer Jenna Guillaume argued that:

"However unintentional, the message is that thin people’s stories are worth telling, while fat people are relegated to nightmarish flashbacks and cheap jokes." 

I feel that these three statements were written without a full understanding of Insatiable, or with much introspection. The right intentions were there, but instead highlight a much bigger issue in society and how freedom of speech and press are being affected by "snowflake" culture.

To address actors, asking them not to accept roles if they are not "fat", "POC", "disabled", or "transgender", is asking them not to act. This standard is impossible to reach. As an actor, one's job is to represent a character of a story, to become that person on camera, to attempt to understand the characters insecurities, weaknesses, downfalls. In terms of race, I can understand @mflow_'s argument against selecting a white man for a pre-civil-war slave role, as this would be simply unbelievable, inaccurate, and totally offensive. However in a case such as this, it would be the casting director's prerogative to select an inappropriate actor for a role, as opposed to the actor's insensitivity to a particular group.

Insatiable also received a lot of its backlash for putting Debby Ryan in a fat suit for her pre-skinny scenes. What did you expect the poor girl to do? Endanger her own health to play a role by gaining and losing a considerable amount of weight? Furthermore, I can predict that if a larger actor had been selected to play the role of "Fatty Patty", the public would have been up in arms when this actor was either asked to lose weight for the post-weight-loss phase, or not to play this phase of Patty's life! The public was always going to have an issue with the casting of Insatiable, in which case, the message of the show is clear: weight and body image is a very real problem, a sensitive topic which is worth talking about. It did what it set out to do: it got people talking.

To @MerQueenJude's tweet, an argument should be made about television, media and the consumer in general. To say that Insatiable was the first or worst, evil show to marginalize a certain type of person is ridiculous. Turn on your favourite television show: The Bachelor, House of Cards, Glow, Riverdale. Most types of entertainment will, in some form or other, create a caricature of a type of person, using stereotyping to paint characters in a light which suits them and their audience. Not all politicians are evil, sleazy arseholes; not all teenagers are sex-crazed drug users. If you had a problem with the message that Insatiable sent, I dare you to look into yourself, really dig deep, and ask why it bothered you so much - because I can assure you that your favourite television show creates an image of a group in our society who won't like their representation either.

Finally, to say that Insatiable's message is to put more worth on the stories of thin people is ridiculous. How offended would you like to be today? Tell your story if you're so upset by this. This is one person's story, and to discount it as important just because the chick lost a few stone insults the freedom of speech which every individual of this world should have the right to. Many tweeters asked "Why can't the girl remain fat, and still become popular and take revenge and be a badass?" I beg these tweeters to go and spend a couple hundred grand on cinema school, learn how to write a script for a Netflix show, and then insult writers. This is the story. Don't like it? Go watch something else.

I watched Insatiable Season 1 all the way through to see what all the fuss was about, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it really wasn't a fat-shaming tool. It was merely based on a storyline of that girl we all knew in high school who got (conventionally) "hot" in college, and ended up being a colossal bitch, stealing our men, and getting a little ahead of herself. Insatiable isn't my kind of TV - a little over coiffed and colourful for my taste - but did not deserve the amount of backlash that it got from the teenagers whose mindset bred its creation.