I watched Secretary last night. It was my whipped potatoes/four peas suggestion from E. Edward *fishboy* Grey. And it was fine - I mean - you now, it was nicely shot and efficiently told and Maggie Gyllenhaal (pronounced 'jill en hall') has the prettiest, most expressive face - especially her mouth - and James Spader was good too and it's good I mean, yeh.
But I was expecting it to be dirtier, or erotic, or sexy and it wasn't any of those things. A friend of mine said "when Hollywood does 'kinky' its a bit like Sesame Street with a whip".
I dunno I mean, yeh, see it, it's worth seeing and it has some funny bits and it's interesting and it's loving and it's shot well and all that jazz. And again, as with Lost in Translation, it's so nice to see a movie that doesn't cast the _entire_ world but concentrates on the relationship between two people.
The real highlight of my night though, lay on the television. I'd forgotten Expose: America's Fattest People was even on until my sister mentioned she'd been looking forward to it. This documentary (for want of a better word) was about Houston, where over 30% of the population is obese. It started off with a woman who was 5'2" tall and weighed 275lbs. She didn't think of herself as big as she was until she made a life size wire frame of herself, and upon seeing the proportions of herself asked her husband if she really looked like that and he thoughfully considered the question and told her "yep, it's pretty much on the money". Later she was saying she drives her kids to the bus stop which is a nice mom thing to do until you realise the bus stop is 50 feet from their house. She talked about never having the sensation of feeling full, or satisfied with food - she also talked about being like an anorexic in the way their mind distorts what they see in the mirror. She said when she looked in the mirror - even though she knows she's overweight, she doesn't see a fat person.
The next woman was truly huge. She weighed in at 625 pounds - she looked like a ocean-of-woman with a face floating on top. She couldn't look after herself, she needed home-help, and she couldn't walk anywhere on her own and had a modified electric wheelchair to get her around town. She introduced herself and said there had always been obese people in her family - on both sides - admittedly, she said, she was the biggest but then again, she said, she thought she was also the prettiest.
She seemed confident - as nearly all of them did - she talked about how she still felt like a sensual woman and that she was proud of who she was. She showed two "Glam" pictures she'd had taken in sexy attaire - the first was a three quarter shot of her in a black bra and a feathered hat, shot with soft focus; the second she was dressed in an all-in-one black lace ankle-to-neck affair (she described it because the photo was only a torso/head shot) wearing nothing beneath the lace. This was her evidence she still felt she was a sensual woman. I had a sudden urge to know if the People of the North used nets to catch their village's winter stores.
Later, when she was talking to a friend over tacos in a local restarant, she admitted that the men she met in the personal adverts seem to think that because of her size they could treat her and talk to her anyway they pleased and that she should be grateful to even *have* a date with any of them. Her large-but-not-quite-as-large-friend-with-bad-taste-in-hats agreed that "there were real preditors out there". Again, my mind turned to the frozen North and traditional hunting grounds of the Inuit peoples.
They followed a guy too - he was 265 lbs, if I remember rightly - he was a professional eater. Said he'd tried driving cars competitively and never won a race. Tried racing boats, and had never won a race. But, he said as he showed off all his trophies - he wins eating competitions all the time. He's been banned from two all-you-can-eat restaurants in Houston because - well - he can eat a LOT! As with the woman who drove her children to the bus stop 50 feet away, he admitted there's no way he'd walk to his letter box. He would always coincide checking his mail with driving past the box which is 20 feet from his front door. He ate out nearly all the time, looking for all-you-can-eat places and if-you-can-eat-this-32-ounce-chicken-steak-it's-free places.
There was one young woman who was tired of being overweight so had opted for the dangerous and drastic operation to staple her stomach. It showed her later in the show ordering and upsizing pizza for dinner. She was the only one who admitted feeling tired and sad that her weight was out of her control. She also worried about her son who, at 11 years old, weighted 168 lbs.