I very much want to see Precious. I have heard nothing but good things. Push is an incredible book and it sounds like the film does it justice. And I absolutely love Gabby Sidibe, who plays the lead role.
What I don’t love is the media narrative about the film and about Sidibe. Luckily, she seems like she can handle it, and has been critical of attempts to cast her as the ugly duckling turned swan: “They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I’m awesome,” says the actress. “But the truth is that I’ve been awesome, and then I got this role.”
Gabby Sidibe is also fat, and that’s something that the media, and even the director of Precious, can’t seem to get over. From the NYMag article:
[Precious director Lee] Daniels, who saw hundreds of audition tapes from across the country (350-pound actresses don’t grow on trees), was blown away by Sidibe. “She is unequivocally comfortable in her body, in a very bizarre way. Either she’s in a state of denial or she’s so elevated that she’s on another level,” he says. “I had no doubt in my mind that she had four or five boyfriends, easily.”
Ah, yes, her weight. When Sidibe was 11 years old, an aunt offered to pay for a cruise if she lost 50 pounds. Friends and family continue to pressure her about it. “I still hear it from people who don’t know that they’re pretty close to hurting my feelings,” she says, “people who care about me, like this one friend. I was eating a light potato chip, and she eyeballed me like I was the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. She says, ‘Every time you want to put something disgusting in your mouth, think of the designers who won’t make a dress for you because you’re fat.’ ”
But at some point, says Sidibe, “I learned to love myself, because I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don’t like myself, there’s no reason to even live the life. I love the way I look. I’m fine with it. And if my body changes, I’ll be fine with that.
God bless this girl.
But perhaps the biggest offender I’ve seen so far is the New York Times Magazine. The Magazine article isn’t just incredulous at Gabby’s fatness, but also totally weirded out by the fact that this movie was made mostly by black people. Some of them are even fat black people, like Mo’nique, whose every bite seemed to be chronicled in the story. And some of them are even gay black people, like Lee Daniels, whose gayness is proven via a comment about Vivienne Westwood (but about gangsters, so, still black).
It’s sad, but I’m dreading the release of the film, just because I don’t want to read the reviews.