When I am thin, I am going to laugh with friends. I am going to wear shorts. My friends will be proud of me. I will be a great actor. I am going to swim in the ocean. I am going to kiss a lesbian.

I found this list I had written when I was 14 about what I was going to do, once I had lost all the weight. Yes, the kissing of the lesbian also threw me, reading it back. I am also not sure why losing weight would somehow make me become a great actor. Possibly because I would have had to spend a lot of time pretending to like kale.

The idea that everything changes when you are thin is the core of every single diet book. Similarly, it’s an ongoing trait in popular culture. Take Friends: “Fat Monica”, played by Courtney Cox in an unconvincing fat suit, is one of the series’ longest-running jokes. Young and fat Monica is a slob – she eats pizzas, falls into bean-bag chairs, and is awfully inelegant and desperate to be kissed. Adult and thin Monica is a clean-freak with graceful features. She is simply another person.

In another US sitcom, New Girl, Schmidt is a cool and sexy guy. In the flashbacks, where he is fat (and also played by the same actor in an unconvincing fat suit) he is a pathetic loser. It is almost as if Hollywood can’t imagine a fat person who is graceful, cool and sexy. It is as if you can’t possibly be fat and happy.

There were people campaigning against these hurtful tropes when they happened – and it felt as if no one was listening. But now, more than 130,000 people have signed a petition to stop Netflix releasing the TV show Insatiable. The petition has only been up for a couple of days and the number seems to be rapidly growing. When you search for Insatiable on Twitter, it’s full of condemning and disappointed tweets.

Let’s see if it’s really as bad as these 130,000 people claim, on the basis of its trailer. So, the main character, Patty, is a fat teenager played by 25-year-old thin actress Debby Ryan wearing a fat suit. Oh dear. It’s already not the best start. The bullied and miserable 25-year-old teenager gets punched in the face and has to have her jaw wired shut, which prompts her to lose all the weight. She arrives back at school, thin and hot, ready to take revenge on all those who have wronged her.

First of all, the fat suit is a problem. We only just got through the controversy of Scarlett Johansson temporarily thinking she, a thin cis woman, could play the role of a fat trans man in Rub & Tug, only years after she, a white woman, played an Asian woman in Ghost in the Shell. Surely we have reached the point where we just don’t do this any more. Let fat people play the role of fat people. I understand that it’s much nicer to look at a thin person in a fat suit – it gives the illusion that fatness is a thing that we can just take off, removing the awfulness that is before your eyes. I’m sure this is why the fat suit is always unconvincing. To relax the audience: don’t worry, we were never going to show you someone actually fat.

This is all make-believe. It treats fat as a weird external thing. And it’s really not. Fat people exist in our full, glorious fatness and we are going to have to face that.

Patty loses weight by … Wiring. Her. Jaw. Shut. If you have never dealt with eating disorders and the urge to do the most violent and terrifying things to yourself in order to lose weight, you cannot possibly understand how triggering it is to watch this in an “entertainment show”. Teenagers will be watching this show. People who struggle with their body image every day.

Finally, we have the tiring and damaging idea that once you lose weight you achieve everything you want. Because your worth is based on what other people think of you, especially whether or not boys will have sex with you. You become happy, hot, desired – and in this case, vengeful and mentally strong. And there’s also a certain type of personality associated with fatness: sad, bullied victims.

When I found the list of the things I would achieve once I became thin, I was a fat adult woman who had indeed laughed with friends, worn shorts, kissed lesbians and taken a swim in an ocean. I even once kissed a lesbian in an ocean, but that’s another article. I am now a fat, happy woman. Not because of a fat-phobic toxic pop culture, but in spite of it.

So here’s a better idea for Netflix: let fat people write great roles for fat actors. Let’s see a happy fatty. Or a vengeful fatty. A desired fatty. I’m free to play the role. Even though I am fat, I am a great actor. Mmm, kale, yum.

• Sofie Hagen is a writer and comedian

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