Fellow fat people, let's not kid ourselves – there's nothing wrong with Insatiable

How exactly can you object to a fat suit being worn? Would the naysayers have preferred Ryan pile on the pounds and then lose them again? Or perhaps they would have preferred an already fat actor get the job and then go on an epic weight-loss regime?

While hiding in a toilet cubicle at my high school summer ball, I heard a group of other girls talking about me. They were saying how hideous I looked in my dress and that sleeveless was “not a great look” for someone as fat as me.

Although this is over 20 years ago, I can remember vowing that I would lose weight and then exact revenge on every single one of them. In my head this mainly involved strutting past them wearing hotpants – but Patty, the main character of the new Netflix show Insatiable, seems to go a little further than this in her vengeance.

Insatiable – which is already facing a backlash and accusations of fat-shaming even before it is released – reawakened these delicious teenage fantasies for me and as someone who is fat (again, sigh) I really don’t understand the problem with it. Fat chick becomes skinny and transforms her life is not an original storyline, of course, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition calling for Insatiable’s cancellation – purely on the strength of a two-minute trailer – for apparently having a negative impact on the world’s body image.

Trying to work out exactly what people are objecting to in regards to Insatiable, with just shy of two minutes of promotional footage, is quite tricky, so here are some of the words from the woman who set up the petition: “For so long, the narrative has told women and young impressionable girls that in order to be popular, have friends, to be desirable for the male gaze, and to some extent be a worthy human...that we must be thin….That is exactly what this series does. It perpetuates not only the toxicity of diet culture, but the objectification of women’s bodies.” But isn’t this exactly what all TV shows do – so why single out this one?

In common with the show’s critics, I haven’t seen Insatiable yet either, and maybe it is a complete shower of awfulness – but if they are going to complain about the entertainment industry’s depiction of female bodies, why stop there? You’ll be hard pushed to find a fat character coming out of Hollywood that isn’t either a virtue-signalling token or purely there for the comedy potential. And what about shows closer to home like Love Island? The recent series wasn’t exactly bursting with chub, was it?

The jaw-wiring angle of the show (Patty is punched in the face and the subsequent operation is the catalyst for her body transformation) could conceivably encourage impressionable youngsters to stop eating completely. Because presumably this wouldn’t have occurred to them as a way to lose weight anyway? It is uninspired as far as the story goes, though, of course. Couldn’t she just have developed a passion for long-distance running?

The fat suit worn by Insatiable’s star, Debby Ryan, seems to be another major problem for many of the naysayers. A dehumanising thing, apparently, that implies fat is something external and not part of who we are. If only. Would they have preferred Ryan pile on the pounds and then lose them again, in the style of Charlize Theron or Renee Zellwegger? Would that have the made the story more palatable? Or perhaps they would have preferred an already fat actor get the job and then go on an epic weight-loss regime?

Well no, they would have preferred the show have a completely different narrative, with the main character remaining fat and being happy anyway. This would have been an entirely different show, maybe a better one, maybe one that will be made some day. But for me, fatness and #livingmybestlife just can’t go together; the reality for me is different.

I’m not saying TV dramas have to be true to life, but in my experience no former fatty has ever slimmed down and felt worse about themselves. It might not solve all your problems to be a healthy weight, but it certainly means you have one fewer.

I’m not in any way condoning fat-shaming – or any other type of shaming, for that matter – but the fact is that being overweight is unhealthy and shouldn’t really be encouraged. Obesity increases your risk of things like heart disease and numerous other life-limiting conditions. And if Hollywood’s obsession with size zero had that much of an impact on us, surely the obesity rate wouldn’t be continuing to soar?

Netflix has responded to the show’s critics, with Ryan herself saying Insatiable is about the damage fat-shaming causes, rather than fat-shaming in itself. According to the show’s creator, the message of the show is to “be comfortable with yourself”. I assume this means: as long as you’re young and slim. As far as Hollywood goes, it was ever thus.

I had far more of a problem with Shallow Hal, the Gwyneth Paltrow “comedy” that showed us inner beauty isn’t about your wonderful kind nature; it’s about the thin person inside you struggling to get out. That movie would have been a million times better if Gwynnie’s character had slimmed down and then told Jack Black to jog on, which I still hope I’ll be able to do one day. And in the meantime, I’ll enjoy watching Insatiable.