Lifetime Movie: Queen Size

An acquaintance once suggested that the tagline for Lifetime network be “Lifetime: Television for women who hate themselves.” While I’ve enjoyed plenty of fluffy-cute predictable drek that probably got bounced down from big screen consideration for lack of workshopping, I have to say that Queen Size, despite its “positive message” ranked pretty high on the self-hate-ometer.

I know the movie came out months ago, but it appeared on my Tivo, and I had to give it a look because I had heard the buzz in the fatosphere. I wanted to avoid other reviews so I could form my own opinion.

The salient messages of the film, not all of which are true:

You’re fat. OMG you’re gonna die!!!! (As people who read JunkFood Science know, this is not exactly true.)
Fat automatically equates with out of shape/doesn’t exercise. We know this is not always true.
Fat is always the result of disordered eating. (Absolutely not true – there’s a broad spectrum of things that cause it. I was the size of Maggie in junior high, and I wasn’t hiding food. I actually do have a binge disorder, and I wasn’t – and don’t – hide food. There are also multiple health, metabolic conditions, undetected allergies…the list goes on. Ultimately science doesn’t understand the human body and its metabolism nearly as well as it pretends to.)
Lane Bryant is the only place a plus sized girl can shop. (If you read Fat Chic please tell me you know that that’s not true. Otherwise, I have failed.)
Unpopular kids are less prejudiced than popular kids. (Hooboy is that not true.)
Parents’ constant badgering can make binge behaviors worse. (There’s some evidence that this actually is true; I can support this anecdotally.)

I was intrigued to see a token “other fat girl” character (who said “You need to quit thinking of me as the other fat girl”) who I suspect was called from the Internet voices of plus sized women who run blogs like mine – and blogs far sassier are deeper into fat politics than Fat Chic is. She was goth, kind of negative and had a “bad attitude” but showed up at the climax to be supportive. Interesting filter we’re seen through, isn’t it?

There were plenty of talks about prejudice, etc. that probably set people’s teeth on edge for reasons I’d rather not bring up here. In essence, it was a long, very self-confused sermon about what it is to be fat that didn’t really say anything at all.

This wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but I think there are better voices out there writing blogs that could write a movie that handles the topic of being fat in the United States – or even the UK, where they’re even meaner about it – much better.

All the same, I’m happy to see Nikki Blonsky is still working and I’d like to see her keep working, just as she is, however that is at the moment. Maybe just cast her where she’s still fat, but not a single explanation or apology for her size made? That would be fabulous, to see her treated like a normal talented actress.