On February 8th, Amy Schumer tweeted out the link for her new comedy film I Feel Pretty.
The synopsis of the movie follows her character Renée, a thicker built woman, as she struggles with self confidence and self love. Renée enrolls in a SoulCycle class where she later suffers a head injury. This injury causes her to have self confidence in herself without changing her outer appearance. As you can guess, the Internet is having a field day with this including fellow comedian Sofie Hagen created a Twitter thread about the problematic issues that are being shared in this movie.
One issue viewers have is that Schumer’s character seems to be making a claim that she is fat, and therefore undesirable, when in fact her appearance matches that of many American women. At the same time, it can be argued that Schumer is actually re-claiming her own autonomy and identity within her own body as a woman. It makes for an intersting discussion as to whether or not this film is actually body-positive without being tone deaf.
Schumer’s movie has been pushed up 2 months for release to theaters. After an original release date of June 29th, the film received a new release date of April 27th. Now, trailers can make a movie seem one way so opinions could change, but for right now, the reaction to this movie doesn’t seem great.