Taryn Brumfitt puts the squeeze on unattainable female beauty myths in her new documentary Embrace

FILM REVIEW: Body image activist Taryn Brumfitt challenges female body myths in her engaging and accessible crowd-funded documentary Embrace.

EMBRACE

Three stars

Director Taryn Brumfitt

Starring Taryn Brumfitt, Ricki Lake, Mia Freedman

Rating MA 15+

Running time 90 minutes

Verdict Attention-grabbing body doco

Passion projects don’t come much more personal than this one.

Taryn Brumfitt describes herself as a body image activist. The Adelaide-based mother-of-three began her “crusade” in 2013 with a reverse before-and-after shot that was posted on her Facebook page.

The first image was taken when she entered a female body builders’ competition. The second celebrated the naked truth of her curvaceous post-baby body some time later.

From the outset, it was clear that Brumfitt had touched a raw cultural nerve with her very public attempt to reimagine her relationship with a body she had come to loathe. More than 100 million people viewed the photograph. She became an international celebrity.

BODY ACTIVIST SLAMS CENSOR'S DECISION

The ‘before and after’ body pictures that propelled Taryn Brumfitt to social media stardom.

Brumfitt’s crowd-funded documentary, in which she interviews an eclectic bunch of like-minded women, feels like a logical progression to that early impulsive act.

As a piece of storytelling, Embrace is similarly intimate and idiosyncratic. And that’s what makes it so accessible.

Brumfitt is a naturally engaging frontwoman. And she is not afraid to put herself on the line.

In a revisionist US fashion shoot, she appears in her underwear alongside a remarkably diverse bunch of female body shapes, including a transsexual woman and another who is physically disabled.

Brumfitt also fronts up for a potentially bruising consultation with a plastic surgeon.

The scene in which one of her subjects encourages us to take a close up look at a whole bunch of different female genitalia sparked the documentary’s controversial MA 15+ rating.

Brumfitt has a warm and easy rapport with her interview subjects, which include a plus-size model, a long-time anorexia sufferer and a woman whose successful brain tumour operation erased the lines from one side of her face.

High profile media personalities such as Ricky Lake and Mia Freedman add their two bob’s worth.

A simultaneously sobering and uplifting look at the fraught issue of the female body image.

Embrace opens on August 4.

Originally published as Taryn Brumfitt puts the squeeze on unattainable female beauty myths in her new documentary Embrace