In February 2016, Aubrey Gordon sat at her computer and pressed publish on a blog post. An open letter, it was titled A Request from Your Fat Friend. She decided not to sign it with her name. “I need less sympathy and more solidarity; less pity and more anger,” she wrote, about being denied medical care by doctors, and basic understanding from her thinner friends. Gordon describes herself as a fat woman, who at that time wore a US dress size 26 (about a UK size 30). “If you disapprove of yourself, vivisect your own body, and then compliment me,” she explained in the letter, “I will remember how you talk about both of us.” Within one week, 40,000 people had read the article: not bad for a community organiser from Portland with no online presence.
Eight years later, Gordon is a New York Times bestselling author, and the co-host of the hit podcast Maintenance Phase, which has had more than 60m downloads. She is also the subject of a new film, Your Fat Friend, by the British documentary film-maker Jeanie Finlay (Seahorse), who has been following Gordon with a camera since 2017. The film tracks Gordon’s remarkable journey from anonymous blogger to public figure, as she loudly advocates for justice and liberation for people at every size. But, as Finlay cleverly shows, when Gordon tries to have the same conversations with her parents, her voice falters.
“What does it mean to want to change the world when your own family finds it hard to say the word ‘fat’ out loud?” asks Finlay over a video call from her office in Nottingham. It’s a question the film explores through Gordon’s relationship with her flawed but fiercely loving parents: Pam, a retired schoolteacher whom she dieted alongside as a teenager; and Rusty, a former pilot who expresses discomfort with his daughter’s size.
“I’m a person who’s big in a lot of ways,” says Gordon, joining our call from her home in Portland. “I fill up a room with sound, I fill up a room with person,” she adds, voice booming as she gestures animatedly with her hands. Listeners to Maintenance Phase will be familiar with Gordon’s cackle as well as her charisma. On the show, her robust and generous squawk frequently makes itself known as she and her co-host Michael Hobbes wittily debunk the “junk science” behind all manner of wellness and weight-loss myths, from the body mass index to fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld’s dodgy 2004 book Diet. But when it comes to discussing her own body, Gordon says, “I just get flummoxed and small and quiet.”
By tuning into the moments where she shrinks, Finlay’s film, which won the audience award at Sheffield DocFest 2023, emphasises the vastness of Gordon’s grace and power. At a cosy Thanksgiving dinner, a slim older woman encourages everyone at the table to “turn your scale 15lbs down” when they get home that night. Gordon laughs graciously, and compliments the host’s cooking. In another scene, Gordon, who has previously battled an eating disorder, tells Finlay an embarrassing anecdote about a stranger who removed a melon from her shopping trolley at the supermarket because it contained “too much sugar for you”. And when Gordon’s father orders her a customised birthday cake, the celebratory moment is deflated by his repeated assurance that it’s sugar- and gluten-free (adjustments she never asked for). Smaller moments such as these illustrate how useless “body positivity” is as a defence against daily discrimination. This wearying, low-level needling is as likely to throw Gordon off-kilter as an in-your-face insult or cruel online comment.
When she watched Finlay’s finished film, Gordon says she was struck by the way it depicted people who aren’t fat as part of fat people’s stories. “And they’re not the heroes,” she adds. Her hope is that the film may encourage viewers to recognise, and rethink, their own well-meaning behaviour. “It’s like the David Mitchell ‘Are we the baddies?’ gif,” she says, referencing the comedy sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look in which a Nazi soldier realises he’s on the wrong side of history.
Finlay had initially wanted to make an essay film that explored fatness and the history of dieting. She hoped that Gordon, then still anonymous, might write the voiceover. But when she met Gordon and her family, she realised that depicting a paradigm shift would be more interesting than arguing the need for one. “When I made Seahorse with Freddy McConnell, his personal story was political,” Finlay says. That film, which followed a trans man’s quest to give birth, drew attention to the humanity of its protagonist through intimate, domestic storytelling. In Your Fat Friend, Finlay applies the same principle.
“Did you think she would lose the weight and become smaller?” Finlay asks Pam in the film, about putting her daughter on a diet at the age of 14. “No. I never did,” she replies. It’s a tiny, astonishing moment of intervention that shakes the foundations of Pam’s belief system. The following day, she tells Finlay she’s been reflecting on her parenting, and feeling intense regret. “Sometimes I ask a really simple question, and it’s like throwing a big old boulder in the lake,” says Finlay, reflecting on the scene. “The luxury of having a camera in my hand is licence to ask those questions that could unlock something new.”
Gordon says it was “moving and incredible” to see where her mother landed, and “also really hard” to see someone she loves agonising over their mistakes: “You don’t sign on to make a documentary as a fat lady that involves your parents, and think you’re not going to get into it.” Over the course of the film, Pam and Rusty undergo a radical change of heart (try not to tear up when you see them sitting in the audience at Gordon’s book launch). Gordon says that since the cameras stopped rolling, they’ve continued to become even more full-throated in their support of her work.
“My mum has started having some boundary-setting conversations with people in her life about how much she’s willing to hear about diets,” says Gordon, grinning. And as for devoted Maintenance Phase listener Rusty? She overheard him on the phone to a friend the other day “yelling about the inaccuracy of the BMI”.
Finlay says “the core of the film is about just trying to be a good parent”. Her own daughter was 13 years old when she started making the film. “She’s not a fat person,” clarifies Finlay, “but I wanted to make sure she didn’t hear a terrible story about her body from her parents.” A world in which the word “fat” might be considered neutral, or even positive, is something Finlay says she herself could have done with when she was growing up.
“I was in Weight Watchers when I first met Aubrey,” says Finlay. Midway through making the film, she “spectacularly left” the programme after being asked to imagine a mirror that showed her a future version of herself. “Imagine the version of your body that you will feel OK in and drive ceaselessly towards it? That’s straight-up eating disordered behaviour presented as guided meditation!” says Gordon, horrified. “Yikes on a bike, no thanks,” she says softly.
Finlay spoke out in that meeting. “I said: ‘My life will not be better if I’m thinner. I’ll just be thinner. I think my life’s pretty good,’” she remembers telling the room before leaving.
Finlay says making the film has given her new language to express her feelings about her own body. Through her eyes, Gordon’s body is majestic and sensual. The film opens with Gordon in a hot spring. “I wanted to shoot her like a mountain range,” she says. Gordon told her to put the camera wherever she wanted. “There’s not an angle I’m gonna say is bad. I look fat from every angle!” says Gordon. She says bodies like hers are often depicted on screen as headless torsos, utilised as “boogeymen”. It was surreal, she says, to be treated by a camera with tenderness, interest and curiosity.
“Either you’re slipping on a banana peel, or you’re The Whale, right?” says Gordon, referencing the Darren Aronofsky film. “Those are the options for fat people. Except, in the US, we’re two-thirds of the people. We have more experiences than crying and being laughed at.”
Your Fat Friend is in UK cinemas from 9 February.
