Your Fat Friend is a film about fatness, family and the deep, messy feelings we hold about our bodies
The documentary charts the rise of Aubrey Gordon, host of Maintenance Phase and a bestselling author
In 2016, Aubrey Gordon published a blog post under the pseudonym Your Fat Friend. It starts, "I need you to listen closely. I need you to believe me when I tell you what happens. I need you to say the word 'fat.' About me. Because I am."
Gordon is the author of What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat and co-host of the popular podcast Maintenance Phase. In the documentary Your Fat Friend, directed by Jeanie Finlay, Gordon shares her experiences as a fat person in a world that's hostile to people of her size. And through interviews with family members and excerpts of her writing, the film charts how an anonymous blogger became a bestselling author and podcaster and shaped how we talk about fat people along the way.
Before her career as a writer took off, Gordon ran a non-profit, which helped people register to vote. She also advocated for the rights of immigrants, voters and the 2SLGBTQ+ community.
"I used to work to make change in government by talking to voters and elected officials," she says in the film. "And now I make that change through my writing."
A request from Your Fat Friend
The original post that started her journey as a writer and fat activist — "A Request From Your Fat Friend: What I Need When We Talk About Bodies" — was an actual letter she wrote to a thin friend.
"I wanted her to understand the ways in which her experience as a thin woman differed from my experiences as a fat woman," Gordon says.
In the piece, she lists overt examples beyond body image and self-esteem — how even some plus-size retailers don't carry her size, how she fears being kicked off a flight or having to pay double for her seat, how some doctors refuse to see her because of her weight.
Within about a week, the post went viral, amassing tens of thousands of views. Encouraged by its popularity, Gordon decided to publish more. Her essays and articles largely tackle the stigma of being fat, from society's framing of fat people (using terms like "big-boned," "full-figure," "overweight," "queen-size" or "more to love") to the diet and wellness industry making billions of dollars off anti-fat bias.
Gordon's writing resonated. Readers responded with gratitude and solidarity, and her Instagram followers grew into the hundreds of thousands. Celebrities including James Corden, Minnie Driver and Jameela Jamil messaged her or shared her work, singing her praises.
But not everyone was a fan. Gordon received hateful and threatening comments, and internet trolls attacked her, saying she is gross and glorifying obesity — even telling her to kill herself.
In an essay for Self magazine, Gordon says her anonymity started out as a preference, but became a matter of safety after she received threats of physical assault, sexual assault and murder. She only revealed her identity in 2020, just before publishing her first book.
"You don't get to anonymously write a book," she says. "So it's both a lot of excitement over the possibility of writing a book — the thing I really, really, really, really want to do — combined with the thing I'm most afraid of."
And when it came time to make an appearance at her first author event for the book, she felt fear and anxiety. Gordon said it made her a bigger target than she already was and it was "like giving people a roadmap for how to hurt me."
Reflecting with family
The film also delves into Gordon's relationship with her parents. She sits down with them separately to talk about how body-shaming and anti-fatness affected her growing up. When her mother, Pam, is asked about her thoughts on Gordon's experiences as a child, Pam says it makes her sad.
She tells her daughter, "When you write about something that happened when you were living at home … makes me wish I had been more fully aware."
In a revealing scene with Pam, Gordon recalls hearing Pam make statements like "Look at my thighs" or "I don't want to be in the picture." Gordon wondered how she was supposed to feel about her body, especially as she got fatter than her mother.
"I think that's how it gets passed along," Pam says.
Systemic anti-fat bias
Your Fat Friend is a film about Gordon, but it also explores systemic anti-fat bias. Gordon points out the many ways the world, and health care in particular, is not designed with fat people in mind — from MRI machines that are too small to medications that are released without testing their safety and efficacy on people of Gordon's size. A study published last year revealed that people with a BMI greater than 29 faced a stigma that resulted in poorer health care.
"The biggest threat to fat people's health is often health-care providers' profound biases," Gordon says.
A paradigm shift
Gordon's goal is a paradigm shift in the way we see fat people — and the fat on our own bodies.
"Fat activism is a way of disrupting ideas that we've held onto for so long," she says. "It's about turning them on their head.
"My aim is to provoke people to question the things that they always thought were true. I want them to change the way that they treat the fat people in their lives. And that starts with recognizing that all of their judgments are based on faulty and cruel ideas."
How to watch Your Fat Friend
Your Fat Friend was directed by Jeanie Finlay and it premiered in June 2023 at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Watch it now on CBC Gem and the CBC Docs YouTube channel.