Tribeca Film Festival
Aubrey Gordon became a viral sensation when she anonymously published her first essay in 2016 under the title, “A request from your fat friend: what I need when we talk about bodies.” Gordon’s piece, originally written to a personal acquaintance and published under the screen name “Your Fat Friend,” broke down the discomfort that fat people experience when their loved ones skirt the realities of fat bodies in casual conversation. The essay touched on the anxieties of fatness—planning traveling, seeking healthcare, eating with groups of people—and how apprehensions are only exacerbated by friends refusing to address the facts of another person’s body.
All of these subjects and more were discussed in-depth in later posts on Gordon’s blog, as well as in her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, and her podcast, Maintenance Phase. Gordon became a maven, praised by cultural pundits, celebrities, and readers around the world for her candid, courageous, and often comical musings on fatness. Her work sought to relieve shame, and make anyone who could relate to it just a little less preoccupied with assuaging other people’s discomfort.
Anyone who might’ve thought that someone who writes as confidently as Gordon must have it all figured out will be surprised by Your Fat Friend, a new documentary premiering out of Tribeca Film Festival. Director Jeanie Finlay follows Gordon through the process of writing her book, as the blogger prepares to give up her online anonymity and confront her fear of becoming a public figure in an unkind world. Your Fat Friend finds moving pertinence in Gordon’s story. It lets its subject—with her natural wit and almost unending empathy—try to fathom why it’s so difficult to allow ourselves to take up space in the world, and how important it is that we don’t degrade our spirits while trying.