Your Fat Friend
The defiant blogger and activist Aubrey Gordon provides a spirited platform for the obese.
Late on in Jeanie Finlay's documentary we see Aubrey Gordon speaking at an author’s event for the first time following publication of her book What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. Much earlier Gordon, who lives in Portland, Oregon, had started an anonymous blog dedicated to making it acceptable to be fat. There she had identified only as being ‘YrFatFriend’. However, taking that step had attracted so many followers that it led to her being invited to write the book and thus to her name becoming known to the public for the first time. As we see here, although Aubrey was nervous about speaking in public, she was amazed at the large number of people who turned out to hear her. That same response will surely be repeated when it comes to audiences eager to embrace this film on the subject of Aubrey and her work and it is that fact rather than any carping criticisms that matters.
Your Fat Friend was filmed in 2020 and 2021 and is first and foremost an opportunity for Aubrey Gordon to express her well-established views in a new format. By the time that the documentary was in hand the success of her book also led on to her entering another sphere. That was when the reporter Michael Hobbes contacted her to suggest that they should act as co-hosts in a health podcast entitled Maintenance Phase and now to top all that we have the arrival on our screens of Jeanie Finley’s film to provide her with yet another platform. It is her most personal one yet since not only is the once anonymous blogger now the central on-screen presence but, in addition to being a chronicle of these events, the film also introduces us to her parents, Rusty and Pam. Consequently, this is also a family tale. We learn of how her parents had split causing Aubrey to be brought up by her mother but now witness how Rusty and his new partner, Zack, have in recent times formed a bond with Audrey leading to a sense of old wounds being healed all round.
On the issue of being fat, Aubrey not only wants to embrace that word in preference to euphemisms but has developed the view that to become worried about being obese and obsessed with dieting can add to stress and be positively harmful. She brings a spirited, jaundiced eye to the many books and treatments on offer that are guaranteed to enable people to lose weight. It's a view that has made her popular but also one that has led to her receiving abusive messages and she defends herself here by challenging the notion that she is glorifying obesity. But, while she can readily be applauded for regretting society’s distain for those who are fat and also for criticising how being obese can influence insurance rates offered, there will be those who would prefer a film on this subject to be less one-sided. At times her critique of promotions to lose weight does indeed become a diatribe. Far more important than that, however, is the fact that there will be many who, having tried to slim again and again and having failed, will positively welcome the way in which Aubrey Gordon stands in their shoes and urges them not to feel shame.
Where the film is open to some minor criticism lies in the way in which Your Fat Friend handles those parts of it that count as something of a family biopic. The decision to bring in footage of Rusty and Pam is by no means unrewarding and that’s so even if a few scenes seem to be present in order to fill out the running time to 96 minutes. However, having introduced the parents and Aubrey's dog too, it seems rather odd to omit so much information about Aubrey herself. One certainly admires her honesty in talking here about her own eating disorders albeit that more might have been said about them. But, having added the personal elements to the views expressed about being fat, it is strange that we get only a passing hint about Aubrey being a lesbian. I say that because it appears that she chooses to be known as queer and has in her time been a LGBTQ community organiser. She may have felt that these aspects of her life were irrelevant to the subject-matter of the film but, with so much other family history being included, it leaves a blank space in a film which is among other things a portrait of a strong-willed and engaging woman. But, as I have indicated, even if for some the film is not without limitations there should be an audience out there for whom this film and the approach which it embraces is exactly what they want.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Aubrey Gordon, Rusty Gordon, Pam Gordon, Michael Hobbes, Zack.
Dir Jeanie Finlay, Pro Jeanie Finlay and Suzanne Alizart, Screenplay Jeanie Finlay, Ph Stewart Skylar Copeland, Aubrey Gordon, Jeanie Finlay and others, Ed Alice Powell, Music Tara Creme.
Glimmer Films-Tull Stories.
96 mins. UK/USA. 2023. US Rel: 8 December 2023. UK Rel: 9 February 2024. Cert. 15.
