Insatiable or Insulting

When Netflix sent me an alert informing me of my ninety-nine percent compatibility with its recently commissioned series Insatiable, I got fired up. Having gone through all the classics,i.e. Gossip Girl, 90210 and even the full seven seasons of Drop Dead Diva, the acerbic teen comedy seemed right up my alley.

Promoted as a satirical high school comedy with former Disney Channel star Debby Ryan as its leading lady, I knew Netflix would not let me down. As the opening credits rolled through, I let my head rest on my Louis Theroux pillow. I was primed to enjoy this show.

However, once the hour pilot was finished, my previous trust had been well and truly broken.

What the actual fuck Netflix?

Is this what you think of me? You think a show that openly fat-shames a girl (in a terribly designed fat suit), was ridden with stereotypes of the LGBTQ community and made light of substance abuse is my perfect match? You think that I would find humour in sexual molestation?

The pilot’s opening sixty minutes were pretty much just a slideshow of every stereotype we have learned to fight against. Patty Blundell, the show’s protagonist, is seen being bullied for her weight, fainting from starving herself, and getting rejected by every single male. It is only once she is punched in the face --the violence we are supposed to find funny by the way -- that she suddenly finds positive attention from her peers and  a newfound purpose in life. She’s going to be a beauty pageant queen, duh. Who knew that violence could be the best thing that ever happened to her? Her gay best friend is in love with her because obviously all lesbians are in love with their best friends. Her mother is an alcoholic who we are supposed to find hilarious. The Asian guy who works in the gas station is a pervert who gets off on the shop’s CCTV footage, and Patty’s new pageant coach is an accused pedophile. Real entertainment.

I promised myself I would never watch the show again. I fiercely promote body acceptance, so watching a young woman “stuffing another hole in her life” whilst on a binge and then receiving praise for “getting skinny” would be plain hypocritical. My willingness to watch the deification of beauty pageant queens; the girls who preserve the sanitized and licenced 19th century carnival shows, even worse. I simply couldn’t justify watching the applause of idealized beauty standards and the blinding flashes of white teeth.

Yet the following evening, I found myself watching the show again. And again. And again. Until, I had finished the entire season in two weeks and found myself wanting more.

What had changed about the show?

Nothing. If anything, the plot got more warped and the characters got more controversial. But I think I had began to understand creator Lauren Gussis’ thought process a little more. These were characters we had always tiptoed around because we were scared of offending. The fat girl. The creepy drug dealing boyfriend. The alcoholic mother who thinks having sex with anyone around her will fulfill a lifetime of mistakes.The happy couple -- the husband who is clearly gay, the wife clearly lusting over another man.

Put these people in one show and you have a circus. Instead of tiptoeing, you end up crashing into situations full force. Threesomes, exorcisms before the “Miss Jesus Beauty Pageant,” kidnappings, the messy loss of virginity in a motel, cat fights that end up with the irritating girl faking a disability. The whole show is a joke.

But the wild scenarios allow us to watch what makes us uncomfortable. It removes the guilt and the shame assigned to eating disorders, gender, race and sex and asks us just to laugh. I don’t think that Gussis is telling us that the fat girl can’t find love or that every horny boy wants to fuck the hot blond mom. Rather, she is showing us there is another way to go about our societal fuck ups. Despite the ridiculous plot lines and the offensive tropes and jokes, Gussis finds way to slip in real moments of pain, joy and empathy. Watching the initiation of a threesome was challenging, watching Patty uncontrollably binging was heartbreaking. Experiencing Nonnie coming out to her father was incredibly warming and watching a fifty-something Bob finally come to terms with his sexual orientation is .

I can’t deny that Gussis fucked up with over-indulging on fat jokes. Scenes that had the power to be incredibly moving and witty were more often than not sidelined by a cacophony of insults and body shaming. The show most certainly needs a trigger warning. But the over-saturation of reviews labelling the show as the worst thing on the Internet or the show that promotes our prejudices are kind of ignoring the point. Insatiable is not real. Its plot is so incredibly preposterous that it’s clearly not.

But Keeping up with The Kardashians is “real.” So is The Real Housewives. Films like Rocky that suppose being a man means having a six-pack are very much real. Weight loss magazines.This is all real and powerful.

There isn't smoke without fire. Insatiable isn’t pulling these ideas from thin air. It’s just highlighting how fucked up our world really is.

By Sophia Parvizi-Wayne

Duke Student, leader of national campaign on mental health, Cross Country All-ACC, fashion alchemist, Huffington Post writer, and all-around world-runner