‘I’m big in a lot of ways’: activist Aubrey Gordon on reclaiming fatness in a new film about her life
In February 2016, Aubrey Gordon sat at her computer and pressed publish on a blog post. An open letter, it was titled A Request from Your Fat Friend. She decided not to sign it with her name. “I need less sympathy and more solidarity; less pity and more anger,” she wrote, about being denied medical care by doctors, and basic understanding from her thinner friends. Gordon describes herself as a fat woman, who at that time wore a US dress size 26 (about a UK size 30). “If you disapprove of yourself, vivisect your own body, and then compliment me,” she explained in the letter, “I will remember how you talk about both of us.” Within one week, 40,000 people had read the article: not bad for a community organiser from
Portland with no online presence.
Eight years later, Gordon is a New York Times bestselling author, and the co-host of the hit podcast Maintenance Phase, which has had more than 60m downloads. She is also the subject of a new film, Your Fat Friend, by the British documentary film-maker Jeanie Finlay (Seahorse), who has been following Gordon with a camera since 2017. The film tracks Gordon’s remarkable journey from anonymous blogger to public figure, as she loudly advocates for justice and liberation for people at every size. But, as Finlay cleverly shows, when Gordon tries to have the same conversations with her parents, her voice falters.
“What does it mean to want to change the world when your own family finds it hard to say the word ‘fat’ out loud?” asks Finlay over a video call from her office in Nottingham. It’s a question the film explores through Gordon’s relationship with her flawed but fiercely loving parents: Pam, a retired schoolteacher whom she dieted alongside as a teenager; and Rusty, a former pilot who expresses discomfort with his daughter’s size.
“I’m a person who’s big in a lot of ways,” says Gordon, joining our call from her home in Portland. “I fill up a room with sound, I fill up a room with person,” she adds, voice booming as she gestures animatedly with her hands. Listeners to Maintenance Phase will be familiar with Gordon’s cackle as well as her charisma. On the show, her robust and generous squawk frequently makes itself known as she and her co-host Michael Hobbes wit