This September, Netflix released their new original romantic comedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser, which starred Shannon Purser and new heartthrob Noah Centineo. This movie promised to be the answer to many a fat woman’s prayers; finally, a movie that focused on a fat woman finding love. What’s more this was a movie clearly aimed at teens, so maybe a large corporation, such as Netflix, was finally learning that the way it portrays women has a deep effect on their teenage viewers. It was supposed to be a movie that taught teen girls that it is okay to live in the body that you are given. It claimed to be body positive and to show a woman falling in love with a man who loved her back not despite her body, but with respect for her body. Sadly, Netflix greatly missed the mark. Instead of providing the beautiful and long awaited story that was promised, the streaming service gave viewers the same narrative always presented around fat women: You are ugly and the only way a man will love you is if he accepts that you will never be beautiful. Sierra Burgess is a Loser portrays fat women as unlovable by using scopophilia as a means to portray thin bodies as the only bodies of desire.
Sierra Burgess, the problematic protagonist (some might argue the anti-hero) of the film, is a teenage girl entering her senior year of high school. She is a fat girl who is also incredibly smart, and this leaves her labeled as a loser by her fellow classmate Veronica, the beautiful captain of the cheer leading squad, who constantly berates Sierra for her size and intellect. A boy from another school, Jamey, develops a crush on Veronica and starts to text her, but he accidentally texts Sierra. Sierra then decides to pretend to be Veronica through text, and begins a relationship with Jamey where he believes he is in fact dating Veronica.
Jamey, when he first starts to text “Veronica”, knows nothing about the girl he has a crush on. He has only seen her, and has never spoken to her before. He develops his feelings for her purely based on her physical appearance. Laura Mulvey discusses scopophilia as the sexual pleasure that is derived from looking. In film, she argues that women exist solely to be the bearers of the male gaze of desire (Mulvey, 30-31). This is Veronica sole role in the film. She serves to prove what is desirable to men. Sierra exists as the antithesis to Veronica. When Jamey first meets Sierra, not knowing that she is actually the girl he is virtually dating, he has no attraction to her. While he asked for Veronica’s number within moments of first seeing her, he simply greets Sierra and pays her no further attention. In later interactions with Sierra, it becomes obvious that she has been friend-zoned by him, and he has absolutely no sexual or romantic interest in her. By using Jamey’s gaze, the film shows that certain bodies are inherently desirable, while other bodies are to be ignored.
In a way, Sierra’s body is portrayed in the same manner that bell hooks discusses black female bodies. Because these bodies differ from the normal female body of pleasure portrayed in film (white, young, and thin women), they are pushed to the background and given no attention for the men in the film. These bodies are portrayed as less than (hooks, 230).
Other than these visual cues throughout the movie, Jamey’s monologue which concludes the film serves as verbal confirmation that this film regards fat women as ugly and undesirable in comparison to thin women. Upon discovering that he has actually been engaging in a relationship in the virtual world with Sierra, Jamey goes to her house to declare his love for her in a very John Hughes-ian cliched manner. Although, his boombox is replaced by a sunflower. He delivers the following speech: “Honestly had we not met the way that we had, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed you. I mean you’re not exactly everybody’s type. But you’re my type — you are exactly my type.”
Jamey admits, point blank, that based on her physical appearance, he never would have paid any attention to her. And then, on top of that, by saying that she isn’t everyone’s type, he is saying that no one else besides him could love her because they are unable to see past her gross physical form. He loves her despite her body, not with her body. Jamey wins Sierra’s love through admitting his fatphobia, and somehow, this works! They go to homecoming together and dance the night away in each other’s arms. Sierra is magically able to forget that her dance partner thinks she is less than other women.
Fat viewers, however, have been able to watch this film and recognize the problematic representations of themselves. They have taken to twitter, movie review websites, and even OpEd columns to fight against the message of the film. They are taking the film to task for implying that fat women are not beautiful and attractive and lovable in their own right. There is significant push back on the idea that star quarterbacks, like Jamey, could never fall for clarinet-playing fat girls without being tricked into doing so. By calling the movie out for what it is, a sad attempt at body positivity, oppositional viewers are not only holding Netflix accountable for its actions but are taking part in exactly what hooks describes as the oppositional gaze. She writes the gaze is utilized “wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see” (hooks, 248). We are naming the fat phobia and we are fighting against it.
I sincerely hope that Netflix will learn from this error and start to portray fat characters of all gender identities, sexualities, and races in a better and more accurate light. The representation of this group is currently riddled with stereotypes, and I am counting the days until I can see myself in a fat character on the silver, or streamed, screen.
Sources:
Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators. Movies and Mass Culture, 1996, pp. 247-269.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms, 1975, pp. 28–40.
Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 