I’m not sure what I think of Lifetime’s new serial “Drop Dead Diva” yet. So far, I’ve seen two episodes and there has been a lot to love and some things that really grate me the wrong way. Have you guys seen this show? Thoughts?
The plot summary of the show as posted by Wiki:
The series revolves around a vapid blonde aspiring model, Deb Dobson (played by Brooke D’Orsay in the pilot and in flashbacks), who is killed in a car crash. As her soul enters the gates of Heaven, she finds herself declared a self-centered “zero” by the gatekeeper Fred. After not liking what she hears, she presses for a return to her former body, hoping to get back to Earth. Deb gets her wish, only to be brought back to life in the body of a recently deceased, intelligent, overweight lawyer named Jane Bingum. Initially horrified, Deb – in her new human form – discovers the meaning of inner beauty as she finds the ability to juggle legal cases, aided by her assistant Terri, while attempting to reconnect incognito with her still-grieving boyfriend, Grayson Kent, who just started working at Jane’s law firm. At the same time, Deb begins to rediscover her past while learning more about her inherited body’s current life and how Jane was treated when she was alive. In addition to former gatekeeper Fred (who was demoted to guardian angel and had been assigned to watch over her at the law firm), only Deb’s long-time mortal friend Stacy knows Jane’s true identity.
As a size acceptance blogger, you can prolly guess many of the reasons why I like this show. Hello! Fat Acress in the LEAD and a show that takes on (some) fat stereotypes! Yay! Yippy! Whooo hoooo!!!
On the other hand, the show where Jane defends a fat waitress who lost her job for gaining weight promotes the myth that all fat women (or people in general) overeat or really like food or have some disordered (like stress eating) relationship with food. Grrrr. Ah well. Win some, loose some. Perhaps I should focus more on being thankful for all the good aspects of the show and there are many… more than I am going to go into in this particular post.
Now, this particular episode that I just mentioned also grated me very hard, but for my own personal reason. At the same time, I’m also really grateful that the show took the issue on… the issue of how fat women are often treated at certain fru fru night clubs. The scene where Jane is ignored while her thin friend is given a free drink by the adoring bartender hit very close to home. I suddenly realized that that behavior is straight up rude to shun one friend in order to shine the spotlight on the other. Even when I got that kind of attention from men at clubs at the expense of friends with me, I loathed it, cuz I know how rude it is… how unnecessary it is… and how much it can hurt. I would’ve far preferred a man to be respectful and kind to the woman he’s interested in AND her friends. It is certainly possible to express interest in someone without completely alienating their friends that you may find less attractive or interesting!
After spending some time in nightclubs as a fat woman, Jane does something that I wish I had done 12 years ago. She tells her clubbing friend that she doesn’t feel comfortable in those places and she’s not going anymore. Somewhere deep down inside, 20-year-old me is flabbergasted and asking, “Wait! We’re allowed to do that???… We’re allowed NOT to go???” As a young adult, it felt to me like going to these places was a mandatory (if torturous) part of life if you wanted to have friends, dates and all that stuff. Has anyone else ever felt this way?
After watching this episode, I spent the evening with icky memories of bad behavior I have seen in nightclubs and how I wish I had simply decided not to go like Jane did! I also remembered all the feelings of inadequacy and the horrible sinking feeling when I realized that some guy interested in my thinner friend was going to take the approach that included being rude and alienating me in trying to woo my friend. Sigh. But, ultimately, I am glad I saw this episode, because I got the chance to process and I’m feeling more at peace with the feelings and memories…
Regarding the picture at the heading of this post that I took straight from the Lifetime website – it is photoshopped… and it annoys me how Jane hardly even looks fat in that picture. What is the point of all that photoshop? On the show, Jane is a real fat woman… not the maybe fat woman in the picture above. Well… win some, lose some.
Have ya’all seen Drop Dead Diva? What do you think?
And… am I the only one out there who has always hated clubs and have been treated rudely to spotlight thinner friends?
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Well, I REALLY love some parts of it, sometimes. The episode of the night club I thought was messed up, too b/c sometimes that can be true. I mostly went to not-so-expensive ones when I could and more often than not, where a fuller figure was appreciated.
I try to make sure to watch it every Sunday because I identify with both sides of it.
I only caught one or two (one and a half?) episodes, but was also mixed about it. Some of it was good (yay, battling stereotypes and falsehoods!) and some of it was bad (Jane is way too interested in food as a point of humor).
Amen on the nightclub thing. Yech. There was rarely a night I didn’t feel like “the fat friend,” there just to serve as a foil. (Not that my friends intended this – they had no idea – it’s just how it worked out.)
And, yeah, that’s photoshop. How annoying.
I gotta say I really like the show. There are some espects that are so true about and then, of course, there are things about it that make me sometimes want to scream! But overall, I really like it.
I think the part that I really like about it is that she sometimes goes back to thinking how she felt when she was the thin, pretty model and realizes she won’t be that thin, pretty model anymore. I like that she never criticizes herself for her “new fuller body” but that she sees it as it is and adjusts to it instead of trying to fit into a mold.
Instead of constantly watching her weight and what she eats (as is implied that she did with her thin friend Stacy in her old body), she seems to accept who she is and doesn’t talk about eating or exercising as a “way of life”.
I like watching it with my husband because it gets him riled up and we end up talking about it. He says he gets sick of the show “fighting for a cause” (fat acceptance) and wishes it could just a regular show with a fat lawyer. I told him that I love the shows that emphasize size acceptance and that there are a lot of fat women out there who have waited many years to see a show like this. It does spark some interesting conversations between us.
A quick overview of one of my favorite shows starred Kathy Najimy who had a young teen aged daughter who wanted to lose weight. The young girl talked her mother (KN) into ordering her a “diet program” and the girl saw this “woman diet guru” who promoted the product as her savior and did whatever the diet told her to do. She was basically starving herself and getting sickly thin. KJ sued the founder/guru of the program because it was doing horrible things to her daughter and when the female guru got on the stand and Jane cross examined her, it was determined that the guru knew it was not safe and was, in fact, very dangerous.
That show pointed out that girls will do anything to be thin and accepted…anything. AND….that these diet gurus will do anything to sell their product. It’s about the money for them, not the health of the people buying their products.
So yeah, I like the show.
This has never happened to me in a club, but I have been in situations where a guy would hit on my friend and totally ignore me. I absolutely hated it, especially when I was with a friend who was married. I’d always say to my friend afterwards, “Nice, hit on the married woman and ignore her single friend!” Then again, a particular married friend of mine is absolutely gorgeous; next to her I totally feel like the ugly duckling in the room. I always tell myself that if my life was a chick flick, I’d be the fat and ugly best friend to the gorgeous female lead.
I wish I had cable so I could check this show out.
I have been in situations where a guy would hit on my friend and totally ignore me.
I’ve had that happen…when I as on a DATE with the woman I’m with. Funny how guys go away when a woman is already with a man but not with a woman….
I checked Drop Dead Diva out a few times because, as a fat advocate, I thought I should. Whatever the politics behind it, I dislike the show because it is mind-numbingly dull.
I haven’t watched the show…I was too put off by the idea that it had to be a thin woman “inhabiting” the body of a fat woman. Why can’t it just be about a fat woman? Even a fat woman who USED to be thin (in her own body) would be OK, it’s not like that never happens, or anything…but to me there is just something creepy about this set up. Like, somehow a fat woman’s experience can really only matter if, in some sense, a thin woman is having it.
We can sympathize with her problems because we know she wasn’t the bad, lazy, gluttonous soul that made the body the way it is. (I know the actress really is the fat woman, obviously, but the context of the fiction itself sends a message.)
Way too close to those freaking awful fat suit experiments for me.
Great point about the thin woman living in a fat woman’s body! I hadn’t considered that angle… but I agree with you… agh, this stuff just makes me mad…
I’m 26, and I’ve only been to “clubs” once or twice in my life. The first time I went, it felt like a meat market. I thought that this was a fluke, and I should go to another, classier club to see what it was like. Even though I was a size 12-14 at the time, it felt like I had USDA PRIME stamped on my butt.
My friends and I agreed that we didn’t have a good time, and we should just invite a few people over to drink good booze, eat pizza, watch movies, and play cards – whatever caught our fancy. So, that’s what we did – and I got a husband to show for it.
Honestly – what kind of guy are you going to meet at a club? He’s just looking for some quick action, and then it’s see-ya later. For that matter, what kind of guy would TAKE a woman to a place like that for a night out? ICK!
Dinner and a movie please.
Or beer and pizza with Monty Python reruns, if ya got it.
The young girl talked her mother (KN) into ordering her a “diet program” and the girl saw this “woman diet guru” who promoted the product as her savior and did whatever the diet told her to do.
Anyone else notice this Woman’s first name was “Jillian”?
I may be two years too late at add my two cents here but I just saw an episode of the show for the first time today and at first I thought it was interesting but then it occured to me – Deb’s family and friends get to mourn her death and talk about how great she was but no one mourns the death of the real Jane. Her family and friends don’t know she’s dead. This implies that the real person that Jane was doesn’t matter compared to the real person that Deb is. That the real Jane had no identity worth mentioning, no life worth grieving over. This show is supposed to be about changing the stereotypes about fat people. If the show can dismiss the real Jane with no one to mourn for her then that speaks more loudly then anything it can say about the value of treating all people with dignity and respect.