I Love You, LC! and fat narratives in film

By all accounts, I Love You, LC! is a standard advocacy film pushing for the benefits of Low Carb Intermittent Fasting. In it, Patty (Jef Gaitan), the proprietor of a restaurant/bakery, falls in love with Lloyd, a handsome and fit man. It's not a particularly well-made film, though advocacy films rarely are in my experience. However, the film lead me to ask some interesting questions about fat people in local films and pop culture.

The narrative of I Love You, LC, reads like a lot of established fat narratives in pop culture. Patty is well off, relatively happy, and is comfortable with her body (more or less.) On the other hand, she is depicted as relatively unhealthy, having recently come from the hospital for problems related to her eating. Her parents have also suffered early deaths, thanks to obesity related problems. She falls in love with Lloyd Corpuz (Marlon Marcia), but she overhears him saying unkind words about her. As a form of revenge, but also due to a combination of internalized subservience to societal expectations and the expectations of a man or men, she decides to lose weight.

These expectations aren't static, and this hasn't always been the case in the history of man. Fatness or added weight was originally seen as a symbol of wealth, good health or privilege*; the logic goes, if you had enough money or resources to feed yourself, you were a desirable mate or partner. Old paintings from classical times reflected this aesthetic. And this wasn't strictly limited to women, either; in some societies men were seen as desirable and more powerful if they were bigger and more hefty, owing to that same logic.

That notion changed when lifestyles turned even more sedentary and people started equating fatness with disease. Scientific evidence pointed to obesity as having a negative effect on health. Aesthetics also changed over time, owing to the fashion industry and the arts. The notion of fatness being equated with wealth also changed. Though one could still equate fatness with wealth (in that one could afford to be fat), it could also be a marker of a lack of wealth, in that fat people have neither the privilege of time or money to exercise, or that their dietary choices are limited by their budget, as healthy foods are usually more expensive than unhealthy foods. 

Fatness became equated with ugliness, and being thin was commodified and sold as fad diets, diet pills or miracle cures for obesity. In movies and popular media, if you were the lead and you were fat, more often than not you had to undergo a transformation (more on that later.) Otherwise, fat characters in films were relegated to supporting characters or comedic relief. In the Philippines, fat comedians and comediennes were aplenty: Dely Atay-atayan, Nanette Inventor, Ruby Rodriguez, Edgar Mortiz and others. The basic premise of Joel Ferrer's Baka Siguro Yata (2015) operates on this foundation as well: had the lead actor been a hunky man instead, the conflict of the story wouldn't have been as effective to audiences operating under such biases.

There is a scene in the middle of I Love You, LC where Lloyd and his gym buddies are working out, the camera fixated on their muscles and male physique. It functions equally as gaze, fantasy and as aesthetic ideal, depending on how the scene is interpreted. Patty undertakes a transformation, a common trope in fat narratives, where she becomes that bodily ideal. Immediately after she transforms, the camera treats her differently. As a female now with a body that conforms to societal ideals, the film fixates on that body A LOT, complete with poolside bikini babe scene. The film's gaze has turned to that particular body, considering it as worthy of that gaze.

The transformation of the fat protagonist into a fitter, healthier person is commonplace in narratives where a fat person is in the lead. It's also prevalent in narratives where the fat person is male (with fat males being even more underrepresented in film than fat women, even though the social stigma for females is arguably more deeply felt.) Take the example of My Big Love, the 2008 Star Cinema rom com starring Sam Milby, where after transforming, our protagonist turns into the most sought after bachelor in town. What was wrong with his character pre transformation? Nothing, other than the fact that he's overweight. In these kinds of narratives, fat people are also given the consolation of being really kind and good natured people, a consolation prize for their fatness, or something written into their characters to "offset" their "ugly" exterior.

One film in particular stands as an exception, subverting the expectations of these kinds of films: Jason Paul Laxamana's Ang Taba Ko Kasi (2016.) In that film, there is no transformation, and the character is as flawed and shallow as her peers. That film stands as the exception to a long standing rule that stigmatizes fatness as undesirable.

In I Love You, LC, there is a bit of a subversion in the final act: Patty had been motivated to lose weight thanks to a guy, but it turns out the guy was not interested in her at all, regardless of her weight - because he is gay. She quickly falls in love with another LC - straight this time - and asks him if he would've loved her if she were fat. He doesn't really give a satisfying answer to the question.

Regardless of whether being fat is healthy or not, such a portrayal in popular media does little or nothing to overweight people in general in terms of making them relate to such narratives.  Too much fatness, of course, isn't healthy at all, but then we have to clearly define what fatness is as the definition sometimes includes normal body type variations. Hollywood is starting to move away from that trend, and other filmmaking cultures still follow their own aesthetics. We, on the other hand, are still caught up in narratives that are outdated and not very understanding towards fat people. 

As for the film, points to it for trying to promote a healthier lifestyle. Thanks to it, I tried researching a bit on intermittent fasting, and if it all works out, who knows? I might give it a try.

*and in some societies and cultures, they still are.

sources: 
http://blog.sermo.com/2015/07/02/history-obesity-renaissance-1910/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1357034X07074780
http://blog.sermo.com/2015/07/15/history-obesity-last-100-years-global/
http://blog.sermo.com/2015/07/10/history-obesity-last-100-years-us/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257663670_Why_Fat_is_a_Feminist_Issue
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464700116666253