Your Fat Friend review – heart­felt, clear-eyed filmmaking

Aubrey Gor­don nev­er want­ed to be famous. In 2016, after an argu­ment with a friend, she chan­nelled her frus­tra­tion regard­ing the way soci­ety treats fat bod­ies into a let­ter, address­ing the issue. The let­ter, pub­lished online under the title ​“Just Say Fat”, went viral and led Gor­don to start an anony­mous online blog called Your Fat Friend. Over the next few years, she would gain a sig­nif­i­cant audi­ence and press atten­tion for her writ­ing regard­ing the expe­ri­ence of fat peo­ple, address­ing the stig­ma sur­round­ing weight and the mis­treat­ment that many face in areas includ­ing med­ical treatment.

Prov­ing Gordon’s point, she was often sub­ject to abuse for the crime of exist­ing as a fat per­son on the inter­net. Online mes­sage boards ded­i­cat­ed their time to spec­u­lat­ing on her iden­ti­ty and life until even­tu­al­ly per­son­al details were leaked. With her pro­file grow­ing in pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ways, Gor­don decid­ed to pub­licly reveal her iden­ti­ty, just before the pub­li­ca­tion of her book ​‘What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat’. In Jeanie Finlay’s new doc­u­men­tary, she fol­lows Gordon’s life dur­ing a peri­od of remark­able change, as she reck­ons with her new­found fame and traces her own jour­ney as a fat woman, dis­pelling myths and prej­u­dices about diet cul­ture and weight.

While we might like to imag­ine the worst of fat­pho­bia exist­ed dur­ing the 1950s, when heavy-duty amphet­a­mines tout­ed as mir­a­cle-work­ing ​‘diet pills’, or even dur­ing the ​‘hero­in chic’ era of the 90s when Kate Moss decreed ​“noth­ing tastes as good as skin­ny feels”, Finlay’s film high­lights that exist­ing as a fat per­son hasn’t become any eas­i­er in the age of the inter­net. Med­ical mis­in­for­ma­tion around weight (espe­cial­ly its inter­sec­tion with race and gen­der, the whole con­cept of the BMI, and genet­ic influ­ence on weight and weight gain) is still rife, lead­ing the media – and in turn the pub­lic – to equate fat­ness with lazi­ness and poor health. Embold­ened by the dis­tance of a screen, some peo­ple feel com­plete­ly com­fort­able say­ing vile things about oth­ers’ appear­ance. As Gor­don points out in Your Fat Friend, these things take a phys­i­cal and men­tal toll.

Gor­don speaks can­did­ly about the abuse she has faced from strangers just for exist­ing unapolo­get­i­cal­ly as a fat woman in pop­u­lar cul­ture. She also notes that it’s not always about online trolls – some­times friends and fam­i­ly can be just as igno­rant of the fat expe­ri­ence. More than any­thing, Your Fat Friend is about the search for per­son­al peace, and an invi­ta­tion for the audi­ence to reflect on their inter­nal bias towards fat­ness and oth­er stig­ma­tised characteristics.

Finlay’s sig­na­ture inti­mate style utilis­es fly-on-the-wall record­ing across a six year peri­od, as well as home pho­tos and some sit-down inter­views between Aubrey and her fam­i­ly. Rather than attempt­ing to address fat­ness as a whole (a sub­ject far too com­plex for a 90-minute doc­u­men­tary), this focused approach works well, pro­vid­ing a per­son­al, clear-eyed look at nav­i­gat­ing the world as a fat per­son that count­less shock-and-awe doc­u­men­taries have nev­er attempt­ed to. Gor­don might not be entire­ly used to the lime­light yet but she’s a charm­ing screen pres­ence who feels refresh­ing­ly real and honest.

Your Fat Friend might be the sto­ry of one woman’s remark­able jour­ney, but it reflects the expe­ri­ence of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world who are made to feel less wor­thy as a human because they weigh more. It’s a real­is­tic, sen­si­tive but nev­er cloy­ing call for kind­ness and empa­thy – some­thing that shouldn’t feel nov­el in this day and age, but sad­ly does – and encour­ages view­ers to recon­sid­er how they view fat­ness, and in turn, fat bodies.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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