We Are Women: A Body Positive Journey | Treatment & Outline

Tagline: Body-positive novice, Emilie, sets out to uncover the world of body positivity.

Logline: BOPO novice Emilie sets out to uncover the world of body positivity by examining its history, exploring women’s body image issues, & gathering opinions from a range of activists, experts & medical professionals with the intention of exposing the toxicity of body shaming in this modern-day age of social media.

Synopsis: The intention of this documentary sets out to uncover the world of body positivity by examining its history, what it encompasses and touching upon Emilie’s own body positive journey. Emilie goes on to explore other people’s opinions, journeys and experiences with body positivity by talking to a variety of different women & experts over zoom. Through gathering information, opinions & personal stories, the documentary aims to expose the toxicity of body-shaming and what impact the body positive movement has on society, all while aiming to answer the question- What is body positivity?

Treatment: What is Body Positivity? We’ve all heard of it, right? But, what exactly does it mean? This documentary aims to uncover the world of Body Positivity (BOPO) by examining its history, exploring other women’s BOPO journeys, discovering different opinions & experiences all while exposing the toxic truth of body shaming, weight stigma & fatphobia within today’s society. The aim of this project is to reveal these, often hidden, issues by addressing them head-on as well as giving this marginalised community the representation on screen they’ve been craving. It’s not every day you see a plus-size woman on TV being empowered by her size. Or a woman with a visible skin condition accepting her unique features. Or even just an average woman appreciating her belly rolls & stretch marks. The normalisation of these different body types is lacking within the media but this project is about to change that. We Are Women: A Body Positive Journey is dedicated to each and every woman who has ever experienced body-shaming, weight stigma, fatphobia or even developed a mental health issue due to their body image. This largely unscripted construct will unravel & develop more throughout production to offer a very personal, raw & real look at these individuals’ stories told honestly. The ultimate goal of sharing this documentary is to aid in normalising all body types, disprove fatphobic propaganda & help women become empowered by celebrating their bodies through their own body positive journey.

This documentary begins with body-positive novice, Emilie, narrating her thoughts on BOPO and posing the question ‘What is body positivity?’ Through this question, the audience is invited to accompany her on this body positive journey, while examining the world of BOPO, body shaming & buying into unrealistic beauty standards. Historically, what we now know as ‘BOPO’ originated from fat black women and organisations such as the fat acceptance movement & Fat Underground who wanted to create a safe space to celebrate different body types. Emilie investigates the history of BOPO and talks to a variety of women about it too. To gain a more modern perspective on body positivity from a social media point of view, Emilie interviews a few influential BOPO women on their opinions. One of these online activists includes Oliver Callaghan- @Selfloveliv, who has dealt with body-shaming, fatphobia & eating disorders for the majority of her life. She talks about these issues with Emilie and reveals how all of this has impacted her mentally over time. Courtney Belle (@Bodypositivebelle), is another BOPO activist and social media influencer who discusses her journey with Emilie in detail providing a unique insight due to her popularity online. Kayla Logan (@kaylaloganblog), creator of the ‘perfectly imperfect campaign’, chats with Emilie about how she founded the campaign, her experience with body-shaming & how she deals with haters. To offer a different point of view, Emilie speaks with Allison Lang (@allisonelang), an amputee & advocate for body inclusivity from Canada. Allison gives Emilie a look into her daily life as a female amputee and what that means for her own body positivity. Emilie then decides to also talk with a few trans women to discover their experience with BOPO and body shaming to gain their perspective on the subject. Emilie can see that body image & weight stigma is a big issue in society for women in particular. Wanting to investigate this further, she decides to talk to a few medical professionals including doctors of different fields to provide a more factual opinion. Emilie chats with a few medical & psychological professionals to gain their insight. Dr Henrietta Cook provides her stance on HAES in accordance with her medical career while also speaking on weight stigma. Once Emilie speaks with these medical professionals, she acknowledges it is only fair to also gain insight from a patient’s perspective. Emilie sets up an interview with Amanda Lee, a woman living in California who recently went viral online for posting a Tiktok video about her experience with weight stigma from her doctor. Amanda opens up to Emilie about her experience with weight stigma, her recent diagnosis & talks about her opinion on the body-positive movement. Since speaking with Amanda, this got Emilie thinking- is there such a thing as a body-positive doctor? After researching, Emilie finds a couple of body-positive medical professionals that are passionate about de-bunking fatphobic misinformation and wish to give their opinions. Dr Katelyn Baker, a fat activist & doctor of psychology weighs in on her opinion of weight stigma, fatphobia & the mental health side of body image. These interviews perfectly compliment Miss Lee’s contribution and offer a unique insight while also creating a little controversy. Emilie then reflects on the notion of medical professionals being more body positive, fat accepting and the potential positive impact that may have on patients. Emilie contemplates what the world would be like if body-shaming didn’t exist, allowing women to live their lives without societal pressures of unattainable ideologies of what a woman’s body should be. All of this contemplation makes Emilie reflect on her previous photo series project back in 2019, called ‘We Are Women’ (WAW) that aimed to showcase all different kinds of women and challenge the stereotypical idea that women have to look a certain way to be deemed attractive. Emilie askes a few previous participants why they wanted to take part in the project to acquire a more personal understanding. While talking with Kea-ra & Amy, two previous WAW participants who have now become close friends, Emilie touches upon eating disorders with the two ladies from a more personal perspective. After talking with all these women, Emilie notices a correlation. Most of the women she has interviewed have, at some point in their lives, dealt with an eating disorder (E.D’s). Emilie expands on this issue through facts and explaining E.D’s. Another connection she makes is that all of these women have experienced some form of body-shaming. This realisation makes Emilie want to investigate why so many women go through similar experiences with E.D’s and body image issues. She explores this matter further by exposing diet culture & interviewing a few body image psychologists, E.D therapists & dietitians to gain their insight. Emilie uses these interviews to talk with experts to gain their view and answer the question of why we base so much of our worth on our body. Emilie also speaks with an E.D charity to provide resources for others suffering. Moving on from E.D’s, Emilie exposes the beauty & fashion industry for profiting off of women’s insecurities and body shaming by creating unrealistic and unattainable ideologies of the female body that women will buy into. She speaks to a few beauty influencers about the beauty/makeup industry to gain their thoughts on the issues arising. Once all of this info is collected, Emilie reflects on this journey and summarises what she has learnt throughout this process, recapping important highlights. She provides an answer to the question of what bopo is with influence from the interviews and women involved in this project. Emilie’s own opinion shines through, supporting the idea that BOPO can be whatever you need it to be for your own personal journey to self-acceptance, self-love & self-liberation. This documentary states that every body-positive journey is different and encourages the audience to take their own body-positive journey one step at a time.

Step Outline:

1. Introduction
2. Title
3. History of body positivity & how it’s progressed
4. Interviews of women who talk about the history of BOPO
5. Reflection on how far we’ve come and intro to social media BOPO
6. Interviews with a few influential BOPO women
7. Does the average woman in today’s society face body image issues?
8. Interviews with a few trans women to discover their experience with bopo and body shaming
9. Contemplation of what medical professionals may think
10. Interviews with doctors from different fields to gain their insight
11. Wondering what it’s like to experience weight stigma as a patient
12. Interview with Amanda Lee
13. Posing the question- ‘Is there such a thing as a body-positive doctor?’
14. Interview with a few BOPO Drs and medical professionals
15. Reflection on what the world would be like if weight stigma and fatphobia didn’t exist in the world
16. Reflection on the ‘we are women’ project from 2019 followed by speaking to past participants about their bopo
17. Correlation regarding eating disorders & body-shaming is noticed
18. Investigation into why so many women go through similar experiences with E.D’s and body image issues
19. Diet culture is explored
20. Interview with a few previous participants of the We Are Women shoot Kea-ra & Amy to talk about their E.D recovery & BOPO Journey
21. E.D’s are also investigated more with a representative of an eating disorder charity too
22. The impacts of body shaming and what effects it can have
23. The beauty industry and how it profits off of women’s insecurities
24. Interviews with a few beauty influencers to get their opinions too
25. Reflection on this journey and summary of what has been learnt through this process
26. An answer is provided by Emilie to the question of what bopo is
27. Emilie ends by stating her opinion overall & how every bopo journey is different. She then encourages the audience to take their own bopo journey
28. Credits roll

Narrative Structure:

This documentary will follow a similar narrative form to the classic 3 act structure.

Act 1- Establishing the equilibrium of a body-shaming society & showcasing body positivity’s roots in history. The question of ‘What is body positivity?’ is also posed at this point.

Act 2- With the aim of answering this question, other women’s experiences & opinions are explored in detail. Medical professionals, psychologists, dietitians & other experts also provide their thoughts on BOPO & its impacts often challenging our preconceived conceptions of weight stigma. Many aspects of fatphobia are investigated as well as diet culture, body-shaming, eating disorders, media representation & more.

Act 3- The documentary comes to a resolution by reflecting & summarising what we have learnt. This creates a new equilibrium after unveiling a more body-positive outlook on life and encouraging the audience to take their own BOPO journey too.

Research

Body Positive origin & history

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Copyright / intellectual property of EmilieShoots/ Emilie McMahon

This idea is submitted in confidence & has not been sent to any other production companies.

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