Petition seeks to cancel Netflix show ‘Insatiable’
122,000 sign, claiming the series promotes body shaming of girls
The television industry is a landscape littered with programs that came out of the gate full of hype and promise, and which fell flat on their faces. Many shows don’t live past a single season, and a lot of programs get the ax after just a few episodes.
But, what about canceling a show before it airs? Or, one that has been produced, has a release date, and which is set to premiere on the biggest streaming TV service around?
That’s the case involving an upcoming new Netflix series called “Insatiable.” The show, starring Debby Ryan, formerly of the Disney Channel series “Jessie,” is about a high-school student named Patty. Some of the characters on the show call her “Fatty Patty” because of her weight issues. The premise of “Insatiable” is that Patty wires her mouth shut one summer, loses a lot of weight and comes back to school in the fall looking better than she ever has.
And, in the words of a Netflix statement about “Insatiable,” Patty “is out for payback against anyone who has ever made her feel bad about herself.”
Netflix describes the series as a “dark, twisted revenge comedy.”
All 12 episodes of “Insatiable” are set to premiere on August 10. Or, maybe they won’t, if a petition currently on Change.org gets its way and causes Netflix to cancel the program before the first episode shows up on the streaming service.
The petition was launched by Florence Given on Friday. As of Tuesday, more than 122,000 people had signed the petition online. The petition has set a goal of garnering 150,000 signatories.
“The toxicity of this series, is bigger than just this one particular series,” said Given, on the petition page. “This is not an isolated case, but part of a much larger problem that I can promise you every single woman has faced in her life, sitting somewhere on the scale of valuing their worth on their bodies, to be desirable objects for the male gaze. That is exactly what this series does. It perpetuates not only the toxicity of
diet culture, but the objectification of women’s bodies.”
The petition goes on to call for the cancellation of “Insatiable” before it even airs because, “The damage control of releasing this series will be far worse, insidious and sinister for teenage girls, than it will be damaging for Netflix in their loss of profit.”
A Netflix spokesperson said the company had no comment on the matter. However, “Insatiable” creator Lauren Gussis has said that the series is not about shaming anyone of any kind, but is based on some of the experiences she went through during her teenage years.
Gussis on Twitter called “Insatiable” a “cautionary tale to believe the outsides are more important — to judge without going deeper.”
“Please give the show a chance,” she said.