Is This Movie About Fat Shaming?

[KeebeThePlush]

You gotta dig a little to find the truth of this film since it can tackle problems fluently

[RiveroftheWither]

I actually did watch this after his review and it is genuinely a really good movie. Definitely uplifting, sweet, cute and decently funny. The thing I like most is that its not a "The plus sized girl learns to love herself!" story, it's the opposite. She already loves herself, instead it's on the vain love interest to learn what true beauty is, that getting to know someone and loving who they are is more important than superficiality. This is great because the problem with a lot of "learn to love yourself" stories is that they often botch the message.

[sofi_]

What makes this even better is this was made in South Korea where their beauty standards are ridiculously toxic. So, to see a film about body positivity made by a SK studio is quite huge and different. There have been K-dramas and Korean movies that have overweight main characters and of course, the solution is surgery to make them look beautiful.

[rozeebadeebap]

the fact that she says “this is me” without the shoes shows how she is comfortable in her own body, but everyone outside may think otherwise. great movie

[hufflepuffler]

If I remember correctly, the actress herself even went to Twitter and called out the bad marketing saying she was disgusted and would never promote something like that and they had it removed

[blackbun]

I love that Red was outright confident with herself from the start and it wasn't about her accepting herself. She had always preferred her actual body but knew there were advantages with the slimmer body so she saw it as a convenience rather than a goal.

Edit: the amount of people immediately defaulting to "overweight and unhealthy" just from seeing a bit of thickness is astoundingly troubling. Girl was athletic and strong as hell in the movie with her own body too, she was so obviously healthy

[popoful]

Reminds me of how in Shrek were introduced to Fiona as being stereotypically beautiful, only for us to later, see her transform into her “true-self” as an ogre, which shrek ends up really falling in love with

[BeefyBastardy]

I was near my family when she took off the shoes and said “ah~ yes~” and they looked at me weird

[Azusashusband]

Fun fact: In Korea, what we would consider pretty average may actually be considered overweight in Korea. I think this movie was trying to make people more confident in themselves no matter who it is. (Because Korea has a ridiculously high standard of beauty and pretty privilege is very prominent).
Edit: No one's mentioned this, but I'd thought it would be interesting to bring it up. A common misconception about Korea's beauty standards is that it matches the West, which isn't really true. Korea since ancient times has been known for beauty (most notably the Goryeo and Joseon periods). Light skin represents a higher being due to peasants having darker skin from working in the sun. Also, in ancient times, women (especially in Joseon) were objectified a bit and should look cute and submissive, which are standards that still influence today's Korea.

[BarbieGurl.]

WHEN SHE SAID “UGH YES” THATS SCARED THE SHIT OUTA ME 💀

[POPCATtherd]

DISNEY:"We'll do the opposite"

[whackquack]

Korean movies are masterpieces. No victory, no winning, no losing, no nothing. Everyone is happy or portrays an important message at the end

[ena]

I also love how her love interest learns to stop being so vain and love others. My favourite quote from it is “would you have helped me, even if I didn’t have the shoes?” This movie shows how beauty is subjective and the dude (I legit forgot his name) learns to love Red Shoes for who she is, not for who she pretended to be. Not to mention, he learned to love himself despite his looks.

[el-karasu]

I've noticed a common theme among Korean media is to have social commentary.
Case in point, Korea is a very lookist society, and this is one (out of three) Korean works that I've seen talk about it.

[ringer]

Ngl when this controversy happened I thought this movie was gonna be an example of a writers poorly hidden fetish.

[eldritchteletubby]

I'm also glad that the message isn't just "the way you look doesn't matter" but it also says that overweight people can be beautiful. I've seen too much media that tries to be kind to overweight people, but ends up just reinforcing that they'll always be ugly unless they lose weight.
Edit: Guys. I can promise you that you don't need to tell fat people that they're unhealthy. They've heard it. They've heard it from their doctors, their families, their friends, their coworkers, the media, and literally everywhere else. Also, fat shaming has been proven to not correlate with healthier lifestyles. If you actually care about fat people, you'll shut up, treat them like the adults they are, and let them live their lives. Acting like you, as an average sized person, need to be the one to tell a fat person how to fix their body, is both wildly arrogant and incredibly infantilizing. Leave people alone.

[jisuskitty]

as a plus size woman myself, i appreciate this movie

[friendlyneighborhoodnoob]

Imagine spending thousands of dollars and hours on a nice animation for a movie that tries to spread body positivity.... just for some idiot to poorly advertise it

[Turtleycute]

After I saw your review, I watched it and I absolutely loved it. I’ve watched it several times since and every time I’ve thought of it as funny and honestly just an amazing story. Thank you for bringing it to my attention (as well as lots of other movies and series that I watched after seeing your reviews).

[SouperWy]

Remember, you shouldn’t be a jerk to someone because of their weight. However, being overweight is a health issue. If you or someone you know is overweight. Try to encourage yourself/them to work on it in a kind way.