Dietland Feeds The Soul
The War of the Sexes Rages in the Dark Comedy
The feminist novel Dietland, released in 2015, was just slightly ahead of its time. The central themes of the debut novel by Sarai Walker, focus on misogyny, body shaming, and hyper-sexualization within the fashion and beauty magazine industry. Talk about perfect timing with #metoo and #timesup.
Which makes the television version of the book so pertinent. The dark comedy revolves about Plum Kettle (Joy Nash), an anonymous 300-pound advice columnist for a teen magazine, Daisy Chain. Her ambitious editor, Kitty Montgomery, is played by the incomparable Julianne Margolies, who hasn’t been on the small screen since The Good Wife.
Plum fantasizes so much about being thin in her skinny mag world that she decides to take the plunge and get weight-reduction surgery. Just as she’s about to commit, she’s thrust in between two extreme rival feminist groups and all kinds of fabulous hell breaks loose.
Dietland debuts June 4th on AMC.
