8 Plus-Size Bloggers Rate Netflix's Dumplin'

For fat girls everywhere, the release of Netflix’s Dumplin’ was always going to be highly anticipated. The movie adaptation of Julie Murphy’s 2015 young adult novel was three years in the making. Exploring many problems for the plus-size community, the story follows a fat protagonist who has a point to prove by entering a beauty pageant in her small town, one that has never had a plus-size contestant before. Dumplin’ resonates with a community that struggles to find positive representation in the media.

Willowdean Dickson, played by Danielle Macdonald, is angry at herself and the society she’s in for making herself, her aunt and her plus-size peers feel unworthy over their weight. Instead of changing her body to fit in, Dickson is leading a revolution against the skinny standards that have held fat people back. By introducing a lead who is mostly content with her body, Murphy and now Netflix are providing a fat positive story in movies for teen girls.

A teen romance that explores a struggling mother/daughter relationship and the typical problems of growing up, Dumplin’ is elevated by specifically showing the difficulties of growing up fat. To further explore why exactly a teen film can have such an effect on a whole community, we asked eight plus-size influencers to explain exactly why Dumplin’ is a revolution for fat representation. Click through to read their reviews...