superodalisque
Well-Known Member
this documentary is airing on independent lens Monday 3/24. 11PM eastern time. check your PBS station for times in your area or if your PBS station is not showing it you can see it streaming on pbs.org 24 hours later.
For Those Hoping to Lose, a Hard Look in the Mirror
All of Me, an Obesity Documentary on PBS
By MIKE HALEMARCH 23, 2014
Fat people arent very visible on American television, and when they appear, it tends to be in one of a few approved roles: comic props in blue-collar reality series, cautionary figures in exploitative medical shows, huffing and puffing contestants in weight-loss competitions.
Alexandra Lescazes documentary All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts, showing in PBSs Independent Lens series on Monday night, is a welcome exception. Its examination of obesity is serious, intimate and not at all sensationalistic, despite some graphic images of weight-loss surgery and its consequences.
And Ms. Lescazes film confounds expectations in other, more significant ways. All of Me follows several women in Austin, Tex., who are or have been part of a group of big beautiful women, with social lives and in some cases livelihoods tied to their size and the attraction it holds for some men. Now they are having (or saving up for) weight-loss operations, and while they are eager to lose weight, their feelings about it are anything but straightforward.
Friendships and relationships shift and strain as a womans size and possibly her outlook on life change. Husbands feel threatened by a wifes new look, or insecure about their own girth. Conversely, women who were hired as fetish models or courted online and at gatherings of the like-bodied worry that they will lose their desirability along with their pounds.
One of them is asked: You were a spectacular fat woman. Are you afraid youll be less spectacular as a normal woman?
Then there are the physical effects of surgery, brought home vividly in a scene of a woman trying to eat a burrito after her gastric band has been tightened. What used to make me happy were things I cant eat now, she says.
Ms. Lescaze crams an awful lot of psychology, medicine, cultural history and complex emotion into an hourlong TV documentary, but her biggest challenge is finding a tone that works, one thats neither too cautionary nor too celebratory and accepting. She settles on a slightly generic note of sober uplift, though theres no hiding the crushing sadness implicit in at least some of the stories. One 470-pound woman whose insurance wont pay for weight-loss surgery and who ekes out her income by posting photos of herself on fat forums says, If thats what guys are going to pay to see, then its time to go to the circus.
Independent Lens
All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts
On PBS stations on Monday night (check local listings).
Directed by Alexandra Lescaze; director of photography, Deborah Eve Lewis; co-produced by Ms. Lescaze and Ms. Lewis; edited by Sarah Devorkin.
View attachment allofme-superJumbo.jpg
For Those Hoping to Lose, a Hard Look in the Mirror
All of Me, an Obesity Documentary on PBS
By MIKE HALEMARCH 23, 2014
Fat people arent very visible on American television, and when they appear, it tends to be in one of a few approved roles: comic props in blue-collar reality series, cautionary figures in exploitative medical shows, huffing and puffing contestants in weight-loss competitions.
Alexandra Lescazes documentary All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts, showing in PBSs Independent Lens series on Monday night, is a welcome exception. Its examination of obesity is serious, intimate and not at all sensationalistic, despite some graphic images of weight-loss surgery and its consequences.
And Ms. Lescazes film confounds expectations in other, more significant ways. All of Me follows several women in Austin, Tex., who are or have been part of a group of big beautiful women, with social lives and in some cases livelihoods tied to their size and the attraction it holds for some men. Now they are having (or saving up for) weight-loss operations, and while they are eager to lose weight, their feelings about it are anything but straightforward.
Friendships and relationships shift and strain as a womans size and possibly her outlook on life change. Husbands feel threatened by a wifes new look, or insecure about their own girth. Conversely, women who were hired as fetish models or courted online and at gatherings of the like-bodied worry that they will lose their desirability along with their pounds.
One of them is asked: You were a spectacular fat woman. Are you afraid youll be less spectacular as a normal woman?
Then there are the physical effects of surgery, brought home vividly in a scene of a woman trying to eat a burrito after her gastric band has been tightened. What used to make me happy were things I cant eat now, she says.
Ms. Lescaze crams an awful lot of psychology, medicine, cultural history and complex emotion into an hourlong TV documentary, but her biggest challenge is finding a tone that works, one thats neither too cautionary nor too celebratory and accepting. She settles on a slightly generic note of sober uplift, though theres no hiding the crushing sadness implicit in at least some of the stories. One 470-pound woman whose insurance wont pay for weight-loss surgery and who ekes out her income by posting photos of herself on fat forums says, If thats what guys are going to pay to see, then its time to go to the circus.
Independent Lens
All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts
On PBS stations on Monday night (check local listings).
Directed by Alexandra Lescaze; director of photography, Deborah Eve Lewis; co-produced by Ms. Lescaze and Ms. Lewis; edited by Sarah Devorkin.
View attachment allofme-superJumbo.jpg
