Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Tribeca Film Festival
The night before we met, Aubrey Gordon watched as a group of friends, family, and strangers looked at her naked body on-screen. The image appears in one of many affecting, authentic moments in Your Fat Friend, Jeanie Finlay’s documentary about Gordon’s journey from anonymous essayist to prominent voice in fat activism, which premiered last week at Tribeca Film Festival.
For many people, the mere thought of experiencing this—any part of it—is mortifying. But, Gordon might argue, the people freaked out by this likely aren’t fat.
“Being a fat person, there’s not a thing that I can do or a way that I can look that will make people happy or comfortable,” Gordon told me, matter-of-factly, when I asked how she reacted to seeing her unclothed self in a theater. “Other people are telling you all the time that you should be ashamed of how you look, and you shouldn’t show up looking X, Y, Z way. And it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing makeup or not. They’re just like, ‘You’re fat, and you’re here, and you’re not welcome.’”