#and america ferrera fucking killed it

[paradigmsofbrittaperry]

I wrote this on February 16th of this year. it reads like an extension of the Gloria monologue in Barbie. Greta gets it.

#that monologue it just…put so many abstract thoughts and feelings into concrete words #and america ferrera fucking killed it #bri speaks #barbie 2023

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

will ferrell fucking KILLED IT, ryan gosling is NOT TOO OLD TO BE KEN, america ferrera was GORGEOUS, allan, margot robbie WAS PERFECT-

#barbie spoilers

[sakebytheriver]

Just saw Barbie and it was exactly what I expected, a fun way to kill a couple hours with a good friend dressing up and getting pink food before watching a fairly enjoyable movie I'll probably never watch again

The cast was great as I expected, the big stand outs for me were definitely America Ferrera, she delivers a speech that a lesser actress could have butchered and made incredibly cringe, but she nailed it perfectly for the movie she was in and also Ryan Gosling, he was incredibly genuine in everything he did, he's a very genuine actor in general, you look into his eyes and you believe him everytime

Yes, I understand why Simu's agent staked their whole career on this role

The feminist messaging was very surface level and extremely broad and in no way encapsulates the entirety of intersectional feminism or literally anything past the idea of "women can do anything men can do" and there was also an insanely cringey part where the teenager dresses Barbie down with a whole bad stereotypical gen Z rant about consumer capitalism that really reminds you this movie is being made by a conglomerate of giant corporations and the "Mattel" company in the movie is just .... bad. Absolutely ruins the entire movie. Will Ferrell tried his best, but there was absolutely no way to salavage a single one of those "Mattel" executive parts, so sorry, not even Daniel Day Louis himself coming out of retirement could have sold those roles, they were absolutely awful, Disney channel level of villainry and writing was put into those guys

I have one last thought about a scene I would have done differently, but it's super spoilery so I'm gonna put it under a read more and say my conclusion here,

It was a fun excuse to get dressed up like a Barbie doll and spend the day with my friend, I went in with super low expectations in the hopes that they'd be beaten and they were, it was better than I thought, but also about what I expected. Your uncle buck will complain about the overhanded feminist messaging, but not the way I do! And if you get high like me you might even cry when you think the dad is dead until it's revealed he's actually just off somewhere sucking at Spanish.

All in all Barbie was a fun movie with absolutely nothing under the surface which I will never watch again 💕🫡

Okay, so for all you bitches who've seen the movie or don't care about spoilers, there is a moment where Barbie has to decide whether she wants to be human or not and a montage of a bunch of home family videos starts playing on the screen in a dreamy haze

This moment was at the very end of the movie and it was also The Best Part. Period. Habds down. End of sentence.

And they didn't even execute it right

The montage moves much too slow and it ends way too fast, it should have been the other way around, make it twice as long and twice as fast, have it start of slow and then ramp up more and more and more getting faster and flashier and the music swells and it's huge and big and there's videos of kids at playgrounds intercut with people at funerals and people watching loved ones dying then cut to a wedding and then to a kids first day of school. This montage should have been absolutely jam packed with stuff and it should have been hitting the audience way faster until the end when it hits the cresendo and we cut back to Barbie and the air feels like it gets physically ripped out of her chest violently as she says, "Yes."

In the movie the montage lasts about as long as it took me to think, "oh this is the best scene in the movie" and there's absolutely no moments of sadness in it, like no one at a hospital, no one getting sick, no one grieving, the whole movie is about learning to love the good with the bad and then this montage just shows you kids being goofy and people at bowling alleys, like where is the fucking heart? And then it ends and we cut back to Margot Robbie very delicately saying, "yes"

And that was it

We move on to seeing Barbie in the human world with her human family and this big climacitic moment that should feel the way you feel when symbols crash in a classical song just fizzles

The last scene of the entire movie however I will say was a great way to cap a live action Barbie movie, Margot Robbie's giant grin as she says, "I'm here to see my

Gynecologist!"

Was good.

Okay the end I'm done thanks for reading 💕

#ignore me #my thoughts #barbie review

[sassysailorsiren]

I couldn't focus at work because I saw Barbie last night after discussing it with two friends who had seen it, and turns out my fears came true - I hated it - so I needed to write down all my grievances with it (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I didn’t like the barbie movie and I already feel bad about it because online it seems like if you didn’t like it, you must be anti-feminist.

But this wasn’t any kind of feminist movie, even though it did really try to be. It DID. You can’t avoid being seen as a feminist movie if you’re going to bash the audience over the head with the word patriarchy. It was preachy, and yet it didn’t have much to say about feminism. It had a lot it DIDN’T say while going on and on about patriarchy, and that’s why it reeked of white feminism. Feminism becomes white feminism when it omits certain people and their experiences. When it focuses ONLY on being a woman. And that’s what this movie did with America Ferrera’s speech (which was good, but again, white feminist), and with another moment that I haven’t been able to get out of my head which was when she compared the Barbie world being ruled by Kens to “the 1500s when the indigenous people were wiped out by smallpox” or something to that effect. She then has to explain the joke and say “they were defenseless!”

But that was so incredibly fucking offensive… and I find it really interesting that they gave the “it’s so hard to be a woman” speech AND this horrendously conceived line to the brown woman in the movie… Greta Gerwig and her co-writer are two white people with white points of view and they are very powerful in Hollywood at this point. So they can just get away with espousing their agendas and their views through a brown person AS A DEFENSE from being called white feminist. Well it doesn’t work that way. It was not self-aware; it totally missed the mark. They did this a couple other times like where America Ferrera’s daughter said something like “OK white savior Barbie!” but it didn’t land because Barbie wasn’t being a white savior or any kind of savior… so they were just throwing these lines in there to make it look like they know what social justice is about and to show like they know how to be intersectional. Again, not how it works. And one final time where the same character told her dad “that’s cultural appropriation!”  So unnecessary to the story. So stupid.

The plot was so vapid that I wish they had just let it be campy and stupid ONLY instead of trying to also insert feminist messaging like fighting the patriarchy (the way they bashed the audience over the head with it was exhausting especially because the way they used it didn’t mean anything). The way they threw that word around absolutely cheapened it, and in a way set any kind of anti-patriarchy momentum in the world back. Because now it just seems like a joke. Media that’s going to be seen by millions of people has a responsibility to NOT misinform people and use meaningful words loosely.

But back to the plot. Ken’s subplot was a thousand times more interesting than Barbie’s, so much so that around halfway through it seemed more like the Ken movie – something I resented. By the way, did you notice that all of the genuinely funny characters were male? None of the girl characters were funny at all, they had no jokes. The only time I actually laughed in the theater was when Michael Cera killed that construction worker telling him “shh shh easy easy.” It was just so absurd and unexpected and Michael Cera was hilarious. Will Ferrel and all the suits were kind of funny too, and I liked all the digs they took at Mattel – that was unexpected and I’m surprised they got away with it. So those are my two positive points about the movie.

Ken’s discovery of a misogynistic society was interesting, and the fact that it entranced him so much PURELY because he was feeling unloved… was way more interesting than whatever Barbie’s story was. But I didn’t come to the theater for a Ken movie. It was frustrating watching the Barbie movie turn into Barbie apologizing to Ken. And she wasn’t apologizing for how patriarchy does harm for men as well as women (because that wasn’t the case in Barbieland). She was just apologizing for how she treated him. So… I didn’t need this! Also, they didn’t really change any thing in Barbieland after that, they continued to treat the Kens as accessories – which is fine because they are all just dumb dolls! But then WHY DID WE JUST GO THROUGH ALL THAT IF NOTHING WAS GOING TO CHANGE?

The war of the sexes at the end was so weird and I hated it. Wasn’t it also problematic that the Barbies USED STEREOTYPES OF MEN to distract them and pit them against each other? Hmm... yes very feminist. We just love when stereotypes of women are used against us, so let’s do the same thing to the men? Ugh.

That would have been fine like 15-20 years ago, but with the values of today, I do not find that empowering.

There was such a more interesting version of this movie possible where the issues of Barbie (unrealistic beauty standards, not enough inclusivity or diversity, relying heavily on stereotypes) were MENTIONED, but not sloppily tried to be corrected. (The trans woman playing a Barbie is not representation when her being trans is not part of the story, sorry. There was also zero discourse about being gender non-binary). This is all just shallow diversity, which is what I was afraid of when I saw that this was ANOTHER movie with a white lead and all these POC/other abilities/gender queer in supporting roles.

The more interesting version would have been a story where America Ferrera and her daughter were centered, and Barbie helped bring them back together over the course of the film (which happened, but so quickly that it wasn’t a focus of the movie). There were so many beats missing from THAT story line like… why was their relationship strained to begin with? Just because the child didn’t want to play with Barbies anymore? Nothing was shown except angsty moments between them…

Side note, it was also highly convenient to this non-plot that America Ferrera worked at Mattel.

At the end, the movie seemed like a 2-hour-long ad for Mattel, and that also deeply frustrated me. White feminism is a tool of capitalism, always.

I think that’s it.

[akajustmerry]

yes exactly about the weight loss thing in stranger things !!! it also made me v uncomfortable because the way hopper talked about it actually reminded me of things david harbour himself has said or joked about in interviews and it’s like. the way a show talks about its characters’ appearances is also the way it is talking about its actors’ appearances. you can’t separate that. those are real people having to play storylines that tell them they are inferior or unattractive or unhealthy if they don’t lose weight at whatever cost, and there are real audience members watching who will think the same thing about themselves. the newer IT movies is one of the biggest examples i can think of. a child actor having to play a role where their entire character revolves around insecurity about their weight, where their body is constantly under criticism, and then seeing the second movie where the grown-up version of their character is super thin and fit and is constantly praised for it and is finally seen as “good enough” by everyone around them :/ like yes it’s just a story and actors are just playing a role but still. that is a real child and that is their real body.. and there is a very good chance they WONT just grow up and magically be super thin so what then?? how will they cope with that?

yes!! i generally avoid reading interviews where celebs talk about weightloss because they're triggering for me, but from what I've seen David harbour is saying similarly self-depreciating things about his body that Jim Hopper does in the show and even though they're jokes, it's not a joke to people who are in larger bodies! It's not funny to people with body image issues, or people that struggle with eating disorders. all of these representations eat away at you and confirm your worst fears! they also shape how others treat you and often not for the better!

I remember when I was younger watching America Ferrera in things and that was kinda the first time I saw anyone who looked like me on screen and as much as I loved it, it also really hurt noticing how her characters were treated, how she was never given romantic plotlines in the same way thin characters were. media that shows people who look like you only to pull out the rug under you like, "actually you can't even escape fatphobia in escapist movies" is damaging!

and omg don't even get me started on fat kid representation! it's 2022 and we're still doing the "token not-skinny kid in friend group" trope. my heart goes out to every single fat actor whose cast in a role that in some way centres on their weight. you can just tell how much it hurts them, and that will ultimately hurt others too.

like when I made that post that we as a society needed the jopper kiss to happen before jim lost the weight, I genuinely meant that. I meant it because a) i just think jopper kiss shoulda happened last season anyway and b) people are already being assholes about it! people are joking that joyce finally wanted him cos he had abs or whatever which isn't fucking true but its how the show framed it!

and its all so shitty because like you said, how do the real people in larger bodies who struggle with weight meant to feel about it? how are they meant to cope that this silly show about monsters and superpowers is still signalling to fat people and people who aren't skinny that they should be near-killing themselves to change because then we'll be worthy? makes me feel crazy honestly. glad i am not the only one!

#fatphobia #weight loss tw #anon

[selina-meyer]

#superstoreedit #superstore #america ferrera #ben feldman #amy sosa #jonah simms #amyxjonah #otp: i think you look like a person who is cute #mio #gifset #2017 #m:superstore #m:amyjonah #m:af #m:benjamine #honestly fucking kill me

[hello-em75]

TAGGED BY: my musk ox @chiefhiccstrid and @winxrus ! thanks guys!

last

drink: jasmine milk tea with boba! so goooood

phone call: my mom 

text message: my babe @chiefhiccstrid ;)

song you listened to: “eastside” by halsey, khalid, and benny blanco 

time you cried: two days ago when i watched inside out (how do you not tear up when bing bong sacrifices himself like he’s my hero)

ever

dated someone twice: well i haven’t dated someone once SOOO 

kissed someone and regretted it: haven’t had my first kiss yet loll

been cheated on: in my head yes JK 

lost someone special: i probably thought they were pretty special at the time, but then realized that they really weren’t all that

been depressed: no fortunately. i’ve had my bouts of sadness and loneliness more often than i’d like to admit, but i’ve always been surrounded by a loving family and i have my extra special best friend who always reminds me of how much i’m loved so i’m pretty blessed <333

gotten drunk and thrown up: not yet LMAO

fave color: i always say blue, but i’m always in some neutral color so probably gray, white, or black if it really came down to it

in the last year have you

made new friends: yep! and i’m incredibly thankful for them 

fallen out of love: if you mean an unhealthy level of infatuation then hells yes 

laughed until you cried: luckily yes

found out someone was talking about you: yeah, but it wasn’t anything bad so we’re good 

met someone who changed you: i wouldn’t say they changed me, but @chiefhiccstrid has definitely brought out nothing but the best in me since we’ve become friends, and i’m eternally grateful for that and her 

found out who your friends are: eh, i guess? we’re still “friends” in the sense that there’s still a strong sense of familiarity and trust among us all but they’re not the people i turn to first in the way that friends do

kissed someone on your facebook friends list: no kisses yet

how many of your facebook friends do you know irl: all of them pretty much

do you have any pets: nope! and it kills me every day

do you want to change your name: i used to think it was pretty basic, but now i can’t imagine myself with another one

what did you do for your last birthday: i was in las vegas with family and my dad’s friend’s family! i remember eating sushi, taking a solid nap in our hotel room, eating a overpriced and frankly not worth it “thanksgiving” dinner, opening presents, and eating cake lol

what time did you wake up today: around 10 AM LOLL

what were you doing at midnight last night: sleeping 

what is something you can’t wait for: httyd: thw (obviously) and graduating high school! 

what are you listening to right now: unfortunately, a spotify ad 

have you ever talked to a person named tom: only in my dreams bc tom holland and i are tight af in my head.

something that gets on your nerves: i could air out my laundry list here, but i’ll go with ignorant and narrow-minded people 

most visited website: i honestly don’t know between tumblr, ff.net, or one of my school websites that i have to go to everyday to get a good grade lol

hair color: it used to be a dark brown, but i got a balayage treatment done last year so it’s still brown but has streaks of blonde now too!

long or short hair: aggressively long but i honestly love it

what do you like about yourself: if looking externally, probably my eyes because that’s something people consistently compliment me on. if looking inwardly for something i like about myself (which is definitely harder), probably my sense of humor and go with the flow attitude towards most things lol

want any piercings: i have one set of piercings in my ears, but i kind of want to get another one in my ears to make it two sets!

blood type: i honestly don’t know and neither do my parents (without looking at any of my documents) so if i ever needed blood we’d be in real trouble hehe

nicknames: em is the main one, but pretty much everyone calls me emily irl.

relationship status: a questionably happy single ngl

zodiac: sagitarrius

pronouns: she/her

fave tv shows: race to the edge, voltron, trollhunters, queer eye, and the crown

tattoos: none yet! but i’m leaning towards getting one when i’m old enough to!

right or left handed: right-handed

ever had surgery: thankfully nope

piercings: only in my ears

sport: i probably would be okay at most of them if i was at all fast but nope lol

I have practiced: piano, violin, clarinet, and guitar (which i eventually all quit). 

vacation: gosh, i want to go all over the world because i’ve pretty much traveled only in the us and canada in my lifetime thus far SO LETS INTERNATIONALLY TRAVEL

trainers: if this is relevant to sneakers, then yes i have had them in the past year. but if not, then i have no clue LOL.

more general

eating: nothing atm

drinking: nothing atm

about to watch: nothing, because i should be asleep at 2 AM haha

waiting for: httyd: thw and money to fall in my lap so i can go visit all of my rad httyd fandom friends and not be fucking broke going into college

want: happiness? lasting love? a sense of security? success? is this too deep for this question bc i went there LOL

want to get married: definitely one day!

career: nothing yet! still have to graduate hs and go through college first

which is better

hugs or kisses: hugs

lips or eyes: eyes

shorter or taller: taller

older or younger: for a relationship, i would rather them be older then younger

nice arms or stomach: arms

hookup or relationship: relationship

troublemaker or hesitant: oof can there be somewhere in between?

have you ever

kissed a stranger: nope

drunk hard liquor: psh i’m not that cool jk

lost glasses: yes, but always after i get new ones luckily

turned someone down: yes, but still not 100% sure if they were joking or not when asking me out so maybe no?

sex on first date: nah that’s not really me

broken someone’s heart: gosh i sure hope not

had your heart broken: at the time i probably saw it that way

been arrested: not yet lmao

cried when someone died: if we’re talking about stoick then yes LOL

fallen for a friend: nope! at most they’ve been acquaintances or surface-level friends tbh

do you believe in

yourself: it changes on the daily

miracles: hmm i guess? like i believe that they can happen, but i wouldn’t pray for one or hope for one if there’s a way i can take to achieving something myself if that makes sense

love at first sight: attraction yes, “love” is a hard no

santa claus: at one point in time i did, but not now

kiss on a first date: it really depends on the date and who the guy is 

angels: yes

others

best friend’s name: stefanie :))))))

eye color: hazel

fave movie: httyd/httyd2, spiderman homecoming, mulan, princess and the frog, the incredibles, and probably more bc i’m brainfarting atm

fave actors: tom holland, chris evans, america ferrera, andree vermeulen, jay baruchel, lana condor, noah centineo, awkwafina, gemma chan, anna kendrick, and probably a whole bunch more that i’m blanking on lol

TAGGING: @involuntarydiaphragmspasm , @fanaticfangirl2602 , @astridthevalkyrie , @drchee5e , @hotccup , @howtodrawyourdragon , @ashleybenlove , @whosthatgal , @knowerofuselessfacts , @evilwriter37, @lutavero and anyone else who wants to do it! 

#ask meme #httyd fandom #personal

[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Boss on Lin-Manuel Miranda's Influence Over Larry David's Musical

You have been teasing a couple of big guest stars that you wrote into the show before checking if they were even available. Were Lin-Manuel Miranda and Judge Judy those special guests?

Yes. We knew we wanted to have Lin and we wrote this episode and some stuff that's coming up for Lin. Then we just needed to do one thing, which was see if Lin was interested or available. (Laughs.) You think that the hard part is actually writing the shows, but then you realize that once you've written it, and you've written it for someone specific, that you then need that person. Scheduling becomes the hardest thing, because he's one of the most sought-after people on the planet. Luckily, he's a fan of the show and was super excited to do it. The only problem was that he was going to be shooting Mary Poppins for the entirety of our shoot, in England. Once again, we had no actual plan B. We just figured it was going to work. All of the Lin scenes in this episode were shot on a day in February because he was in town for the Oscars. It was all shot two days before the Oscars because he happened to be in town because he was nominated. We said, "While you're here getting honored, let's do a day!" Then we had to wait six months, until the end of June, to shoot him again for the finale.

Miranda said he met Larry David when David was on Broadway doing his show, Fish in the Dark. Had they kept in touch? And how did Miranda react to your pitch?

They did meet then. Larry is a huge fan of Lin's, and Lin, luckily, is a huge fan of Larry's. So everybody wanted it to work out and somehow, it did. I really, truly don't know what we would have done if he had just said, "Nah, I'm good fellas." He gave us enough time to do everything we needed, very generously. We wanted to do a lot with him so they were some packed days.

It seems that Miranda enjoys shattering his nice-guy image when appearing on TV. Did he enjoy playing himself, but a more controlling and bossy version?

Lin was totally in when we pitched him, and he was so happy to play a different version of himself. The real Lin is fun and brilliant and has all the talent to one day make it big — if he ever gets a break. (Laughs.) He's one of the most fun people you can ever work with. And this version of Lin is very happy to get in Larry's persnickety sandbox and get dirty. This version is just killing Larry but with a smile, and is so graciously condescending to Larry. There is a line after he has completely taken over the entire meeting and direction of the play and he says to Larry, "Go sit back down over there, you're doing great." Larry has done nothing. He hasn't let Larry do a thing at all. He's such a brilliant improviser. He was having a great time with Larry and it shows, and you're going to see more of their incredible dynamic next week.

Both Larry and Lin-Manuel sang and rapped, respectively, some of the opener to Fatwa! The Musical. Did each of them write those verses?

You're starting to see a little bit of the music of the musical. Larry's opening song, "There's a Fatwa," was actually written by us for the premiere and we didn't use it. We know what Larry's version of that song was, and because we didn't want to put a lot of pressure on Lin when he was coming in, we wrote up some versions for Lin to do. Lin wisely said, "You know what, I think I'll just freestyle it." And he did, and every take was different and brilliant. It was like watching someone dunk. You just sit back and go, "Well, I'll never be able to do that." Lin just verbally dunked on us. And, by the way, there were so many funny lines he added that we would have never thought of. The "F is for 'fucking awesome'" with F. Murray Abraham line and the "The verses are going to be Satanic" line — that's all Lin. He is a seriously funny person. Larry had no idea that was coming.

...

How did Ferrera's casting come about as Lin's wife and will she be back for the finale?

Wait and see. But once Lin agreed to do it we knew we needed a scene with his wife. We asked him if he wanted to ask Vanessa [Nadal], or if there was someone else he wanted to play her. He asked his wife and Vanessa said, "Just get America." They are friends and that worked out perfectly, because Lin and America are super close.

#lin manuel miranda #curb your enthusiasm #the hollywood reporter #america ferrera #vanessa nadal #hamilton

[lisacongo2-blog]

‘Shrill’ Shreds Hollywood Stereotypes About How Women of Size Eat

The first time you see Annie, the protagonist of the new Hulu show Shrill, eating, her meal doesn’t look particularly pleasant. Played by SNL cast member Aidy Bryant, Annie grabs a plastic container from the fridge, opening it to reveal three white disks — supposedly pancakes — from a Tupperware labeled “Thin Menu.” While standing in her kitchen, she tries to break off a slab, puts it in her mouth, and wrinkles her nose in disgust. Her roommate, Fran (played by Lolly Adefope), walks by to witness the three doughy pucks, and says, “Good God.”

It’s not the only time Annie eats in her kitchen. Later in the series, Bryant opens a sealed container of leftover spaghetti, standing alone over an island near the sink. She twirls noodles around her fork, grinning in anticipation. She looks confident, blissed out, holding her hand under her chin as a noodle inches toward her lips. She scrunches her eyebrows and crinkles her nose, the perfect opposite of her look of disgust eating the Thin Meal pancakes. She nods and smiles while chewing, enjoying the moment.

The annals of TV are full of stories where women change themselves, from Mad Men’s Peggy Olsen to Eleanor Shellstrop in The Good Place. But Shrill, the six-episode adaptation of writer Lindy West’s memoir of the same name, is a different kind of “transformation” story, starring a woman of size. The show tells the story of Annie, a Portland-based calendar editor for an alt-weekly newspaper, trying to jump start her career, earn the love of Ryan, a painfully oblivious loser, and become a more honest, self-assured person. What Shrill is not is a story of body transformation, of a fat woman getting thin. Although it shows Annie eating diet meals and exercising with her mother, her real goal goes beyond the universal challenge of self-acceptance — she wants to feel powerful, as a woman of size and simply as a woman. She wants to demand respect from the people around her.

Those people often fat-shame Annie, whether it’s her obsessive online troll, her perpetually sneering editor, or an invasive personal trainer who eventually devolves into calling her a “fat bitch.” Still, Annie’s relationship with her body is more nuanced. Her insecurities are more often portrayed in physical details or unspoken interpersonal choices she makes because she feels that, in her words, “there’s a certain way that your body’s supposed to be and I’m not that.”

In media where a woman’s relationship with her body plays its own role, the eating scenes are telling. There are countless movies in which women devour ice cream during break-ups or lonely moments. And for years, when a person of size ate on screen, it was portrayed as comic relief, from Melissa McCarthy consuming a napkin in Spy to a cross-dressing Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live inhaling his friend’s french fries while asking, “Can I have some?”

Even in shows and movies celebrated for their representations of non-normative bodies, eating is reserved for emotional distress. In HBO’s Girls, Hannah Horvath (played by Lena Dunham) is often caught eating during low moments, like when she eats cake with her hands after her purse is stolen on the train. In Real Women Have Curves, it takes a conflict with her mother to get the protagonist, Ana (America Ferrera), to eat a bite of flan in a moment of overall positive defiance. Rarely do women of size get the opportunity to eat happily on screen without some tumult, some churning emotional hang-ups or interpersonal conflict. The exception, of course, is when people of size are shot eating healthy foods, like when the contestants on The Biggest Loser marvel over turkey burgers. But if a not-thin character is caught eating a cupcake, the audience is meant to laugh or cry at their expense.

When Annie eats so-called “indulgent” foods in Shrill, she’s not considered a failure, and it’s not used as a comic device. Instead, it’s often tied to a moment of personal or thematic triumph completely unrelated to her weight. By simply showing Annie eating the foods countless people love in a way that’s empowering, Shrill reinforces the idea that people, regardless of size, have the right to enjoy food in its entirety — not just salads and apples and other pious things, but rather the foods that are seen as permissibly comforting and luxurious for people of a smaller size. Like last year’s hit culinary travel show Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Hulu’s new series rewrites the rules for who gets to enjoy food on television.

Annie isn’t the only big millennial woman eating spaghetti on TV. In a scene on Girls, Hannah grabs handfuls of noodles from a takeout box, dangling them into her open mouth. There is an element of watching this scene that feels relatable, especially for anyone who lives alone, but nothing about that moment is sexy or empowering. At its best, it’s a moment of comic relief born out of universality; at its worst, it’s Dunham’s self-ridiculing humor shaming herself — and other women — for eating without control while not thin.

This is far from the only moment when a woman eating sugary, greasy, and otherwise “bad” foods on television works as a boiler-plate scene representing rock bottom. In her essay “Why is it sad and lonely women who turn to chocolate?” Telegraph culture writer Rebecca Hawkes recalls similar moments in romantic comedies, like when Renee Zellweger devours chocolates under a blanket in Bridget Jones’s Diary, or when Sandra Bullock turns to ice cream in Miss Congeniality. “When you look at the trope in more detail, the implication is that eating chocolate is something ‘naughty,’” she writes. “It’s something that (calorie-counting, figure-obsessed) women shouldn’t be doing, but can’t help resorting to in moments of extreme trauma — or simply due to a comedic lack of discipline.” In her essay, Hawkes also brings up another classic plus-sized person comically shamed and punished for their gluttony: Augustus Gloop, the rotund little boy in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, presumably killed for wanting to eat some of the chocolate in a literal river of chocolate — as if anyone wouldn’t.

Ryan (Luka Jones) and Annie (Aidy Bryant)

Photo: Allyson Riggs/Shrill

But still, beyond little boys, beyond thin ladies, it’s plus-size women whose eating is most often used as a thematic example of a psychological and/or personal failure, whether it’s comical or supposedly tragic. “With any overweight, unruly woman, there’s always a tendency to pathologize their relationship with food,” says Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, author of The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. “[For] women who dive in to the quart of ice cream or the box of chocolate, food is a source of comfort because life is not giving them other types of comfort.”

If women get fat as a plot device, they’re often shown eating something like pizza, ice cream, chocolate, or other sweets — take, for example, Goldie Hawn gorging herself on frosting post-breakup in Death Becomes Her. If a character appears to get them out of a slump, a chicken wing might be yanked out of their hands. And they won’t reach personal fulfillment until they’re skinny again. Meanwhile, women who are thin and confident — whether it’s Drew Barrymore in Charlie’s Angels, or the titular Gilmore Girls — are free to eat as much as they please, to the delight of all who watch them.

Annie didn’t originally eat the spaghetti. It was made by Fran’s brother, Lamar (Akemnji Ndifornyen), who spends the third episode, “Pencil,” visiting his sister and her roommate. For most of the first few episodes, Annie is busy obsessing over a man (Luka Jones) who is so embarrassed by her that he sends her out the back door of his apartment so his roommates can’t see her. On their first date, she eats a salad. When she arrives home after Ryan has stood her up, Lamar and Fran offer her the spaghetti. She turns it down.

Lamar, a chef, spends the episode quietly fawning over Annie. When he arrives, he gives her a box of chocolate turtles, an elaborate reference to a memory from their past. He lights up when she enters the room. And later, when she comes back after choosing not to see Ryan, he admits that he likes her, and that he always did. After they have sex, Annie tiptoes downstairs to the kitchen, where she finds the pasta he made. The scene is romantic and almost sexy, in a totally subtle, maybe even unintentional way. He didn’t make the pasta for her, specifically, but it was made by him.

But beyond the romantic arc of Annie and Lamar, the scene’s impact comes directly from what it means for her, in her path to self-respect: she’s giving herself what she wants and deserves, on her own terms. And the bewildered delight in her face as she eats is so contagiously joyful that the context of her weight becomes irrelevant.

Annie (Aidy Bryant) and Lamar (Akemnji Ndifornyen).

Photo by: Allyson Riggs/Shrill

Beyond the men in her life, one of Annie’s most fraught relationships is with her mother, Vera (played by Julia Sweeney), who’s responsible for the Thin Menu meals. During a pivotal rant, when Annie describes the ways the people around her have made her size seem like a moral failing, she says, “At this point, I could be a licensed fucking nutritionist because I’ve literally been training for it since the fourth grade, which is the first time that my mom said that I should just eat a bowl of Special K and not the dinner that she made for everyone else so I might be a little bit smaller.” One of Annie’s most significant plot developments with her mother, when she pushes back against her health policing, starts with a meal of meatball subs with her father. And when the season ends, we leave Vera lying on the ground with a bag of chips, suggesting that Annie’s number one advice giver also needs respite from controlling everything.

“Whether they’re very curvy like Mae West or they’re slender, I think what we haven’t seen in a long time is the ability of women just to be seen enjoying food,” Karlyn says. “Food is enjoyable (to women), not because they’re neurotic, not because they’re crazy, not because they’re sex-obsessed, just because food is a natural pleasure of life.” That’s how Shrill treats food, but also most of life’s joys: dancing at a party, swimming in a pool, having sex, being honest. Counter to the ways television and movies have previously presented plus-size women, as victims of their own lack of self-control, Shrill shows how restrictive life as a plus-size woman can be, and how often that’s a direct result of their self control. Shrill seems to be advocating for more self-designated freedom for women of size — the freedom to live with abandon. As Annie says, lying in bed and taking charge, “I’ve got big titties and a fat ass — I make the rules.”

Brooke Jackson-Glidden is the editor of Eater Portland. Edited by: Greg Morabito

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2019/3/28/18284128/shrill-hulu-aidy-bryant-food-eating

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

[dominikadecember]

WRITE YOUR OWN FEEL GOOD SHOWS

I’m doing a thing where I want people to be happy and watch shows in no particular order that make life better instead of angst, disgusting writing and sexist behaviour. BROOKLYN NINE NINE (SRSLY GO ON NETLIX AND WATCH NOW CUS LIFE WILL BE BETTER) Powerless (such a short show but stellar and bi superhero!) Parks and Rec (waffles, whipped cream, TREAT YO SELF!!!!!) Arrested Development (SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH) Leverage (It hurts at times but honest to god this show has so much good character development you will cry) Psych (I KNOW YOU KNOW THAT LASSIE AND BUFFY FOREVER AND EVER) Big Time Rush (THEM BOYS!) Common Law (another short lived show about COP PARTNERS GOING TO COUPLE COUNSELLING) Lethal Weapon (I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR DAMON WAYANS TO COME BACK ON MY SCREEN! DUDE DON’T AGE AT ALL!) Friends (a classic about a group of white people doing dumb shit plus joey is the best at caring about his friends, ross can go live with his dinosaurs and phoebe is bi) Galavant (TIMOTHY OMUNDSON SINGING, KAREN DAVID SUPER CUTE AND FIGHTING AND SINGING MAN THIS WAS AN INCREDIBLE SHOW) Community (THIS SHOW IS DEBATABLE, IT’S DESTROYED ME, BRITTA IS TREATED LIKE DIRT, TROY LEAVES, SRSLY TROY LEAVES, I HAVE TOO MANY FEELINGS) Happy Endings (LOOK AT THE TITLE, <---- HOW CAN A TITLE LIKE THAT NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY OR SNICKER WITH A DIRTY JOKE, WATCH IT) It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (they do so much crack and make such bad choices and MAC IS A GAY BBY AND DENNIS IS TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH HIM AND FUCK YOU S12 FINALE JUST FUCK YOU!!!!) It started with a kiss (Taiwanese version) (I LOVE THIS SHOW! I find the characters so cute and lively and They Kiss Again just makes me so happy about how much effort the crew and cast put into this production uggggh) Jane The Virgin (True, it has some heartbreaking moments but it’s honestly such a positive and uplifting show that actually addresses a lot of issues and has so many poc as lead characters and Jane’s dad played Fernando in La Fea Mas Bella!) Kyle XY (HIS PUPPY FACE JUST KILL ME) Melissa & Joey (UHM A MALE NANNY A SABRINA IN POLITICS) Legend of the Seeker (Just one word: CARA) Modern Family (y’all know this show, don’t even pretend you don’t, this show has the best dramatics you will ever see) My Wife & Kids (I grew up on this, it kills me every time) SUPERSTORE!!!!!! (OH MY GOD THIS SHOW WAS SO FREAKING PERFECT OMG Y’ALL NEED TO WATCH IT NOW CUS AMERICA FERRERA AND THOSE OF YOU WHO WORK IN RETAIL LIKE ME WILL RELATE SO WELL!!!!) The Office US (The UK version is garbage, everyone here agrees, it has some awkward moments but overall, I grew to love the characters) REBA (Reba McEntire. ‘Nuff said.) Malibu Country (Once again. Reba McEntire. Oh and Lily Tomlin. This was just her audition to play Frankie tbh. Muneca Brava (this show causes a lot of pain but honestly Natalia Oreiro is so beautiful and she has insane chemistry with Facundo Arana) Sos Mi Vida (Natalia Oreiro and Facundo Arana REUNITED! IN A COMEDY! AND THREE SIBLING ORPHANS THAT FIND A LOVING HOME! I love this show) Warehouse 13 (CUTE PUPPIES THAT PROTECT THE WORLD AND HAVE GREAT BANTER!!!! But the end just was ridiculous and MYKA AND H.G. TOGETHER FOREVER!!!!!!) What I Like About You (Amanda Bynes is back in our lives so let’s turn the clock back and celebrate her achievement with this awesome sitcom) Will & Grace (Can’t wait for JUST JACK 2017 and Karen’s Vodka to save my bi arse) The Get Down (HURT LIKE HELL BUT THE MUSIC LITERALLY SAVED MY SOUL) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (FEMALES ARE STRONG AS HELL) Supergirl (KARA’S SMILE SAVES THE WORLD)

#shows #dominika #ADD YOUR OWN HAPPY SHOWS!!! #this is all I could think of

[officialaemondtargaryen]

just some comments i saw on a post about madonna, america ferrera, and scarlett’s speaches on a facebook thread of people i don’t know (just had to add that, because if i did know them, they’d be gone so fast) i am not taking a screen shot of all of these, but you guys know i couldn’t make this shit up.

“madonna is not allowed to speak about women’s rights, she’s a slut”

“madonna has been in more motel rooms than the bible”

“fuck madonna, too many drugs, slut, probably had sixteen abortions. no wonder she wants to support PP”

“scarlet johanson has a dyke haircut”

“scarjo makes enough to fund every PP for the rest of her life, why is she bitching about it being defunded when she can fund them all herself”

“baaaaaaaad haircut”

“scarlett has lost me as a fan. what an idiot”

“damn, scarlett has really aged. #makeblackwidowsexyagain”

“i can’t wait for america ferrara to be deported with the rest of the spicks”

“it doesn’t surprise me that a mexican woman would support PP. mexicans make up the majority of people who need PP anyways. america ferrara probably has seven kids at home in elsavador”

“that mexican girl looks like she smells like tortias”

and also

“i’m sure there’s a million babies who would have liked to march for their rights. oh wait, they can’t because they were aborted”

“i’m shocked the abortion fanatic chelsea handler wasn’t there to give her two cents worth of bullshit”

“i don’t understand how people expect me to pay for their abortions!”

“my tax dollars should not go towards killing unborn children”

“it’s not the babies fault that it’s useless mother went around and fucked like a rabbit until she got pregnant.”

the uneducated american population disgusts me.

#i am a nasty woman #a women's place is in the resistance #planned parenthood #supportPP #important #text

[tvannotations]

Best of the First Half of 2017 TV

Hey, it’s halfway through the year! Here’s an arbitrary list of the best 20 shows so far, with some viewer-friendly ‘Watch If’ taglines! (My apologies to NYT’s ’Watching’ feature, which should be a mandatory email newsletter for all mediavores.)

20) Better Call Saul

I’m in the camp that found Jimmie’s brother drama to be tiresome, but necessary to bridge the gap. Kimmie was this season’s MVP, and the only reason it notched its way in.

Watch if: you watched Better Call Saul S2.

19) American Housewife

American Housewife is an exceptional joke machine with a great emotional core, super supporting characters (especially Ali Wong) and the show treats ‘Katie’ as a real person instead of a ‘larger-than-life personality’.

Watch if: you like Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, acerbic leading women that don’t have time for your garbage.

18) Girls

Fuck the haters; Girls was always great. Sure, it was often messy and privileged, but it was always earnest, and always showcased point-of-views and relationships that were rarely depicted on TV. The final season was a well-earned bow.

Watch if: you haven’t already dismissed Lena Dunham.

17) Mary Kills People

Way, way back in 1998, there was an episode of Millennium named ‘Goodbye, Charlie,’ which focused on a doctor who dealt with arranged suicides and the cops that followed him. This is basically full season of that, but gender swapped and with kids shoehorned in.

Mary Kills People isn’t a perfect show, but it’s the best we have to a Breaking Bad successor in that: the protagonist is following a dark path she feels innately drawn to.

Watch if: you like murderous anti-heroes that still feel good about themselves, or if you are a Caroline Dhavernas fan.

16) Great British Baking Show

This show is still great, but part of me thinks that it’s a good thing that it’s fragmenting, because there are a lot of self-aware digs in the show that really detract from the wholesomeness that we all tune in for. I know I won’t stick with the original, but I do hold out hope for whatever everyone else has jumped ship to.

Watch if: you like baking, nice people, or Sue Perkins.

15) Zoo

I’m probably slightly influenced by binging the entire first two seasons just prior to the 2017 premiere, but goddamn, this show is my kind of bonkers. Caroline Framke said it best:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/6/15905042/zoo-cbs-season-3-review-hybrids-wow-just-wow

Watch if: the concept of a rhino’s blood growing into a fetus that can telepathically communicate with scientifically-grown hybrid animals appeals to you; you enjoyed reading Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake.

14) Patriot

A TV espionage show via I Heart Huckabees. I’m still not entirely sold on the sustainability of the show itself, but there’s one scene in S01E08 that is a masterpiece of camerawork, blocking, and scripting that I'll be thinking about for some time.

Watch if: you liked Fargo S1, or read the prior paragraph and realized you should have watched I Heart Huckabees.

13) Superstore

I’ll let Maureen Ryan explain why you should watch this:

http://variety.com/2016/tv/features/superstore-nbc-america-ferrera-ben-feldman-season-two-olympics-1201841147/

Watch if: you liked Parks & Rec, or like work-family hangout sitcoms

12) Review

The darkest of all meta-comedies finally brought the hammer down.

Watch if: you like Christopher Guest films, cringe comedy, people’s lives being destroyed.

11) Great News

Look, this isn’t a 30 Rock spin-off, it’s a ‘zanier’ riff on Mary Tyler Moore and, while it took a few eps to find its footing, it’s one of the only ‘classically’ created comedies on the air right now (despite the single-camera, the joke construction is all old-school.)

And yes, I know Nicole Richie is in the cast, and it's the role she was born to play.

Watch if: you like to laugh, liked 30 Rock/Mary Tyler Moore, or like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

10) Big Little Lies

Remember when we all laughed at David E. Kelly when we saw a leaked version of his Wonder Woman pilot and thought he lost the plot when it came to women, characters, and screenwriting? Apparently he found it again.

I’m not a huge fan of Big Little Lies' narrative structure, or its very questionable asides, but the performances alone are worth watching for. Plus they stick the ending, which is more than I can say about most HBO minis.

Watch if: you like suburban melodrama or neo-noir.

9) Twin Peaks: The Return

I think it’s shortsighted to even attempt to mull over Twin Peaks: The Return until the season is over, but goddamnit, the eight episode was astounding, and will undoubtedly be the cinematic TV high of the year. (At least until the next mind-blowing Twin Peaks episode.)

Watch if: you have seen Twin Peaks, other Lynch works, don’t mind existential horrors.

via GIPHY

8) Legion

Presentation is everything.

Watch if: you like the surface unexplainable; didn't find the above description maddening.

7) Steven Universe

I’m a bit behind on Steven Universe, but S4 really blew up the universe in unexpected ways. While it was low on musical numbers, it was high on emotion.

Watch if: you like empathetic scifi adventures; you have a kid; need some queer-positive mindthink.

6) Mystery Science Theater: The Return

Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter and am a diehard MST3k fan, and saw them live for my birthday this year. However, initially, I was skeptical of the end result; while I’ve enjoyed the side-riffs from the MST3k folks (like Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax), I wasn’t sure Joel could recreate the magic, but I donated simply because he previously brought me so much joy.

My skepticism was wrong; ’The Return’ crackles as brightly as any MST3k season, and is an utter delight to watch and re-watch.

Watch if: you know what MST3k is, or are snarky about films that fall short of shooting for the stars.

5) Brooklyn 99

Brooklyn 99 has it all: it’s a gag machine, rom-com, action-sitcom, poignancy; until this past season it’d mostly avoided socio-political discussion, but it executed it in a brilliant and heartfelt way.

Watch if: you like to laugh, especially at deadpan reactions from Andre Braugher.

4) Please Like Me

Please Like Me is a journey of a 20-something gay man, his friends, and family, and it’s so warm-hearted, but doesn’t flinch from the realities of wounded people. While the show’s been discontinued by the creator, I desperately hope for a revival 5-10 years from now.

Watch if: you like cooking, good friends, and aren’t afraid of sudden tragedies.

3) The Good Place

I’m a sucker for high-concept comedies, and The Good Place amped it up in the back third of their season. No spoilers, but the end of the first season is an exhilarating delight that will make your head spin.

Watch if: you thought LOST needed more laughs.

2) Downward Dog

I believe Downward Dog’s manta (even back in its YouTube days) was: make the viewer empathize with all of the characters, then make the viewer feel like shit for empathizing, and then let the viewer cry out their frustration upon reflecting on their own life. Admittedly, this is not a great engine for a dramedy, but it was exceptionally realized and it was oddly bold programming choice for ABC. Unfortunately, like all recent bold ABC sitcoms (Happy Endings, The B— in Apt. 23, Selfie, etc.) it was canceled, causing more tears.

Watch if: you like bittersweet rom-coms; you like or hate dogs; hate or think you love yourself.

1) The Leftovers

It’s still difficult to articulate how amazing and moving the third season was, so I won’t bother; The Leftovers went out as perplexingly as it started, but with an character core it wore on its sleeve and a flurry of batshitcrazy that somehow still felt emotionally grounded and satisfying.

Watch if: you like kitchen-sink melodramas and can suspend disbelief; liked Fringe; like antithetical love stories.

via GIPHY

Disqualified shows:

Don’t @ me; these weren’t in the list because I can’t watch everything, but I’m working on ‘em. I have another six months.

12 Monkeys

American Gods

Dear White People

Handmaid’s Tale

GLOW

The Keepers

Jane the Virgin S3

Master of None

The Mist

One Day at a Time

Preacher S2

Sense8 S2

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt S3

Wynonna Earp S2

The Young Pope