As I first watched Fat Friends, the overt focus on weight gain and weight loss felt a little crass. I winced at the lack of progression, felt sporadic pangs of sadness for the characters and sighed at the narrow ideals of attractiveness. It’s a confronting experience, to watch back the society that raised you, and here I was, rescreening of the birthplace of my insecurities.

The period when Fat Friends originally aired, 2000-2005, I aged from 8 to 13, approaching the disruption of puberty and early adolescence with gusto. Though I didn’t watch the series at the time, discovering it is like a hug, like an old friend, like a family home. The turns of phrase, the picture of pre-digital living and sweet the simplicity incite solace, for sure, yet the thread of prevalent 00s diet culture has left me with a sinking feeling too deep to ignore. The pro-skinny movement was so subtle yet so obvious, so hidden yet so brazen, so controlled yet so utterly chaotic. I wonder how, at the time of airing, the provocative storylines and clever callouts of a culture obsessed with slimming impacted those who were watching Fat Friends. Did it trigger its viewers? Was it a wake-up call? Did it grant permission for catharsis? Or did it perpetuate questionable weight loss methods even further?

“Watching Fat Friends on Netflix is a painful reminder of the body-shaming society that raised me”