I thoroughly enjoyed the new Hulu series, Shrill. After Dietland’s premature cancellation, I was concerned I would be seeing fewer fat women on television.
Shrill’s protagonist, Annie, is played by SNL’s Aidy Bryant. The series is based on Lindy West’s memoir of the same name, but also draws from the experiences of Bryant and some of the show’s writers. (Put a pin in that, we are coming back to it in a moment.)
Shrill has received most of it’s praise for how it handles the topic of abortion, and the now famous pool party scene. Unfortunately, in online Body Liberation and Fat Positive circles, there has been controversy about the scene many have found to be empowering.
To keep it very brief: There is a scene in episode 4 in which Annie attends a fat girl pool party and has a personal epiphany. Enter Virgie Tovar, who’s blog bio describes her as, “one of the nation’s leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image.” Beginning on March 20th , Tovar began to share a series of posts on social media, claiming the scene in Shrill has eery similarities to a personal story she discussed in her Ted Talk and wrote about in her own book. Tovar felt the fourth episode of Shrill directly plagiarized her work, and placed a white woman at the center of it.
The pool party scene from Shrill is not a part of Lindy West’s book. The episode was written by Samantha Irby, who is a queer fat black woman.
Marina Hayes, a close friend of Irby, had this to say on one of Tovar’s public Facebook posts:
As a midfat white woman, I to acknowledge that white people have, and continue to, plagiarize and steal from people of color since the dawn of time. As much as I enjoy Shrill, I realize the majority of fat woman in media are able bodied, cisgendered, small to midfat white woman. We need to see people of color, people in larger bodies. and people of other marginalized identities star in their own tv shows and movies. Virgie Tovar addressed this, but in doing so, accused another fat woman of color of plagiarizing her. She has thrown Irby under the bus continuously throughout this public discussion. To my knowledge, Tovar has never apologized to her. To my knowledge, Irby has not spoken publicly about the controversy.
This is not an apology. It troubles me that Tovar speaks this way about Irby’s work on Shrill. It is more than likely the show is a project that Irby is passionate about.
Shrill is not perfect. But IT is a show that not only casts people of color. Shrill is also a show that employs queer people of color in the writer’s room.
I will repeat: White people steal from marginalized people all the time. But that is not what happened here. Virgie Tovar is one of many people who have had a spiritual awakening in a fat friendly space. Samantha Irby wrote about a similar experience as part of her work on Shrill. Rather than acknowledging this, Tovar makes some shocking insinuations about Irby, when she isn’t ignoring her contributions completely.
Further reading:
- Virgie Tovar’s original Instagram post, which includes an excerpt of her Ted Talk.
- IjeomaOluo twitter thread.
- Virgie Tovar’s blog post about Shrill.
- Virgie Tovar’s follow up Instagram post.
- Samantha Irby’s twitter.
- Samantha Irby’s blog.
(Disclaimer: All of my prior of knowledge of both Lindy West and Virgie Tovar comes from listening to their guest episodes of the Food Psych Podcast. Virgie Tovar’s books have been on my to-read list for awhile, and I plan to explore the written work of all parties involved in this controversy.)
Here is an unrelated review of Shrill from YouTuber DearHarriet.
Bite Me 