Having grown up studyingSeventeendiet tips and Slimfast ads as though they might contain the secret to everlasting life (or eternal admiration, which was all I really wanted as an anxious, body-insecure tween), I genuinely didnt think diet culture could get more toxic than it was when I was in middle school in the aughts.
Unfortunately, however, a recent trend on TikTok has proven me wrong: Just recently, an AI-generatedchubby filterthat allowed users to see what they would look like if they weregaspfat was removed from the video-sharing app after causing an uproar.
While I wholeheartedly believe that everyones body is their own businessfrom users of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs likeOzempicand Wegovy to influencers likeRemi Baderas someone who is fat 100% of the time, Im sickened at the idea of other, younger fat people seeing something like the chubby filter trend and internalizing the message that their bodies are good for nothing but cheap laughs.
Michelle Buteau as Mavis in Season 2 ofSurvival of the Thickest
Perhaps thats why the latest season of Michelle ButeausSurvival of the Thickest,which landed on Netflix this week, hit home so hard for me.
As much as Id like to resist responding to a fat persons art through the lens of compulsory thinness, theres something deeply liberating about just how little interestSurvival of the Thickestand its protagonist, Mavis Beaumonthas in self-hatred.
Season 2 of the series is no more focused on weight (or weight loss) than the shows first season was: It begins with Mavis showing up at the doorstep of the wildly hot Roman do-gooder Luca (Marouane Zotti) that she quickly fell for and majorly screwed over last season by secretly accepting her cheating exs proposal.
Hot as their initial passion is, it soon becomes clear that Luca has trouble trusting her, and Mavis returns home to New York.
Where some shows might use a fat protagonists breakup as an excuse for a diet montage,Survival of the Thickestinstead sees Mavis revel in her singledom, throwing herself into the affirming work of building out her styling business.
Eventually, at the opening of a pop-up storefront, Mavis tells the crowd that the spaces existence is a dream come true for me and for anyone else who has cried in a dressing room because we have felt like the fashion industry has forgotten us.
Ive literally and figuratively been there, and the part of me that worries SkinnyTok will put fat people right back in the dressing room of our nightmares was greatly soothed by watching a whole season of Mavis chasing her dream, loving her friends, making mistakes, and generally living her lifewithout wondering what said life might look like if she were thinner.
It would be great if the success ofSurvival of the Thickestinspired the industry powers that be to greenlight, produce, and actually promote more shows starring fat and non-straight-size people who arent defined by their quest to shrink their bodies.
But for now, at least we have one Netflix show that actually focuses around the survivaland, whats more, theexuberanceof an unapologetically fat character whose body is far from the most interesting thing about her.
