Shrill Is The Best New Tv Show I’ve Seen This Year

Shrill is the new Hulu comedy starring Aidy Bryant as a plus size girl just trying to, well live.

And it’s one of the greatest things ever to happen to plus size women and body positivity. For the very first time, it’s not just a show about a girl who’s weight defines her and she spends every waking hour trying to lose it, (I am looking at you, This Is Us) but instead it’s about a plus size girl being okay with who she is and living her life.

Which, for the record is SO allowed. This is a thing that happens to plus size girls every single day. We have to apologize for not apologizing for who we are, and television does nothing be perpetuate that.

Not Shrill though. Shrill shows what life is like for actual plus size girls living their life, doing whatever they can to just be themselves, and facing all the same problems everyone else is.

The crazy thing is, the amazing awesome clothes she wore for the show were actually mostly made for Aidy because they couldn’t find cute stylish stuff in her size. Girl, same.

Lindy West, who wrote the memoir this show was based on has one of my favorite quotes of all time for npr.

You don’t see fat people being happy on TV. If there’s a fat character on TV they are sad. They’re trying to lose weight, or they’re having a makeover montage, or they get whacked over the head and believe that they’re beautiful because it’s a delusion. You know it can’t just be a sincere truth.

– Lindy West

This show is literally everything it needs to be. From a struggling writer (hello, me) to a big girl just having fun and living her life. And not despite the fact that she’s plus sized either.

She doesn’t apologize for her size. She is OVER diet culture. Which I get, I so get. When you are spending your entire life focusing on losing weight, you lose a big part of your life to that, and honestly it sucks.

I love her interactions with her mother, too. When they are walking along exercising and her mom starts pushing her to exercise more. Girl, we have ALL been there. Can we just live in the moment, just for a second and not focus on how we need to exercise more just because we are doing it now?

This show– the thing is, it’s so good that I can’t say enough good things about it, and it’s so REAL that I can’t summarize it all. If you haven’t watched it, go watch.

Thank you, Shrill, and thank you Aidy for being the voice the rest of us need.