I'm quite fond of time travel stories, so it should be no surprise that I'm fond of this movie. My favorite detail is that at the end, Marty's plump older sister who was desperate for a date at the start of the film now has too many boyfriends to track and she hasn't lost an ounce.
But off the top of my head, I can't think of another film that does something similar. It's much more common to have a female character lose weight as a critical detail for finally being more confident and attractive.
In both The Mirror has Two Faces and The Devil Wears Prada, the main character loses weight and begins dressing better. I have read that Bette Middler "loses" weight in just about every film she makes.
No, she doesn't ACTUALLY lose weight for every film. The character she plays loses weight. They just dress her differently at the beginning and end of the film.
Bette Middler has an hourglass figure. She reminds me of, I think, a Romantic body type under the body typing system in David Kibbe's (out of print) book Metamorphosis.
The Before and After pictures for that body type in the book look like she lost twenty pounds. She didn't.
Basically, if you have an hourglass figure, regardless of your weight or level of fitness, you will be prone to looking plump in a lot of "normal" clothes. You can look like you've lost ten or twenty pounds just by dressing differently.
This is a well-known thing in the fashion industry, that just dressing badly can make a person look "fat." It's common for make-overs to make an ordinary person look slimmer as part of the process without having them lose an ounce. (Makeovers are often done in a single day.)
If you are a woman with fitness goals, more power to you. But a lot of women don't have fitness goals per se.
A lot of us are just pressured into conforming to the idea that we need to be thin to be attractive and we need to be attractive to make our lives work at all because marrying well is something of a default assumption for how women pay their bills.
Even very wealthy women tend to marry "up." Janet Jackson, multimillionaire, was married for a time to a billionaire.
So while I love time travel movies generally, I am especially fond of this little detail of this film and the point it makes that maybe there is nothing wrong with your body or your weight. Maybe it's your social fabric, your mental models, your self concept and similar that needs revising rather than your body per se.
"Greg or Craig called you just a little while ago."
"Which one was it? Greg or Craig?'
"I don't know. I can't keep up with all your boyfriends."
But off the top of my head, I can't think of another film that does something similar. It's much more common to have a female character lose weight as a critical detail for finally being more confident and attractive.
In both The Mirror has Two Faces and The Devil Wears Prada, the main character loses weight and begins dressing better. I have read that Bette Middler "loses" weight in just about every film she makes.
No, she doesn't ACTUALLY lose weight for every film. The character she plays loses weight. They just dress her differently at the beginning and end of the film.
Bette Middler has an hourglass figure. She reminds me of, I think, a Romantic body type under the body typing system in David Kibbe's (out of print) book Metamorphosis.
The Before and After pictures for that body type in the book look like she lost twenty pounds. She didn't.
Basically, if you have an hourglass figure, regardless of your weight or level of fitness, you will be prone to looking plump in a lot of "normal" clothes. You can look like you've lost ten or twenty pounds just by dressing differently.
This is a well-known thing in the fashion industry, that just dressing badly can make a person look "fat." It's common for make-overs to make an ordinary person look slimmer as part of the process without having them lose an ounce. (Makeovers are often done in a single day.)
If you are a woman with fitness goals, more power to you. But a lot of women don't have fitness goals per se.
A lot of us are just pressured into conforming to the idea that we need to be thin to be attractive and we need to be attractive to make our lives work at all because marrying well is something of a default assumption for how women pay their bills.
Even very wealthy women tend to marry "up." Janet Jackson, multimillionaire, was married for a time to a billionaire.
So while I love time travel movies generally, I am especially fond of this little detail of this film and the point it makes that maybe there is nothing wrong with your body or your weight. Maybe it's your social fabric, your mental models, your self concept and similar that needs revising rather than your body per se.