Published October 15, 2025

Content warning: Body image, fatphobia, food, disordered eating, anti-trans hate, and other stuff, probably. Protect your peace.

Documentaries can’t tell the whole story. It’s impossible. But they can paint a portrait. And they can make us cry.

The portraiture and the heart of “John Candy: I Like Me” made me cry. And think. And remember. Not all of it was fun.

There were charming moments, though. Many.

 

I’m drawing a blank as to who that interviewer is, but my immediate reaction was that I was seeing a dear friend for the first time in decades. That too made me cry.

If you don’t have Amazon Prime and want to get a sense of the portrayal, you can read the transcript. What you’re reading here right now is about what resonated most with me.

Several times during the documentary, we see clips of interviewers asking Candy about his weight, about his body. I recognized in his eyes and in his responses what that did to him year after year. For many people, our weight is the defining characteristic of our place in the world. If you’re not jolly, if you’re not making us laugh, why are you here?

Young people give me hope when they point out how gross it is to comment on another person’s body, even after they’ve lost weight. Especially after they’ve lost weight, as if it validates their personhood finally. I know it was in part because he did comedies, but interviewers seemed so fixated on his body and not at all on his creative choices or his kindness toward others.

Please sit there and smile while I comment on your body and ask you questions about it, instead of about literally anything else, such as your craft.

There’s that word: weight

In the documentary, comedian Dave Thomas says, “He carried the weight of his father passing almost every day. Those things were in his mind, in his heart, and he carried them.”

Rosie, Candy’s wife, says, “You can’t carry it. The weight of everyone. The weight of his past.”

But sometimes it can feel like almost nobody will let you set it down.

Actor Eugene Levy says, “I seem to recall John saying, ‘I don’t know whether I’m going to make it past 35.’ ”

Tom Hanks, whose son Colin directed the documentary, says, “So, John’s father dies at 35, on (John’s) fifth birthday. And John knows that he has his father’s heart. I think I met John when he was 33 or 34. So right then and there, his sensibility is that he is living on borrowed time and he is going to go away in the wink of an eye, just like his father did.”

The world told me I was a boy until it started telling me I was a man. I’d read the stories about how Mickey Mantle assumed he’d die young because of his family history. I was 19 when my dad died at the age of 52, and that number became a blinking light for me.

Eventually, I figured out to the day when I would have lived longer than my dad did. When that day — Sunday, November 10, 2013 — came and went, I thought, “What now?”

I came out as a trans woman less than four years later.

Nearly 12 years after that Sunday in November 2013, I’m more convinced than ever that I have the heart of the women on his side of the family. Women who lived into their late 80s and early 90s. And that calls to mind a quote attributed to Mickey Mantle, among others.

“If I knew I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

What the bleep do we really know?

I can tell you stories about many people I know, or know of, who were seemingly in much better shape than I’m in who died in their 40s and 50s. Medical science is still learning about the role of genetics in all of that.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with heart failure. No, it turned out, my heart is super strong. I’ve been fighting a lot, and my heart has kept me alive through all of it.

I began putting on weight not long after my father died, as so much of my world came crashing down around me. People noticed — the weight, anyway, not the crashes — and they weren’t shy about mentioning it to me, as if I didn’t know.

“I remember you playing guitar in church,” a man told me. “You’ve got a lot more beef on you now. I didn’t recognize you at first. You know, the beef.”

“Carrrrrrrrrrrrrrlyyyyyyyyy,” is the updated version of what another man said to me, using my former name, when he saw me at a movie. “You’ve put on weight!”

“You don’t look like you’ve been missing too many meals,” said a man whose wife was anorexic. “Mix in a salad once in a while,” said another. “Have you ever thought about going on a diet?” the father of a classmate of mine said, laughing as he elbowed me in the side.

“You’ve grown so much!” a woman who was part of a group visiting our house one day told me.

“Growing the wrong way,” my mom said before telling me with her next breath there were brownies on the counter.

Oh, thanks. Sure. A brownie would be perfect right now. Maybe two.

“How’s the diet going?” I heard all the time. It was obvious that my weight was more important to everyone else than it was to me. I’ve got a thousand stories like these.

I liked me. I couldn’t understand why it seemed so conditional for others.

Here I am anyway

John Candy, who knew that he had his father’s heart, died at 43. I’m 64, and I’m trying every day to tell people, “I like me.” But not all of us are allowed to like ourselves as we are.

I say that also as a trans woman in America in 2025. It’s all been a lot. And people still think it’s their place to tell me how to eat, or that eating is a gendered thing, or how much better I’d feel if I lost weight.

Let me say again to them: You’d feel better if I lost weight. Don’t invert stuff.

John Candy lost weight, and then moviemakers told him not to lose more. They wanted him fat. Fat is funny. Here, have something to eat. We have brownies.

It’s complicated, of course. I don’t need you to tell me that. And blog posts can’t tell the whole story. It’s impossible. But they can paint a portrait. And writing and reading them can make us cry. This post is a blubbering mess. I don’t apologize for that, because it’s honest.

Blubber! Get it? That’s funny!

I cried as I watched the documentary and wanted to crawl through the screen and hug John Candy, or at least check in with him, the way he did for child actors he worked with. Macaulay Culkin talks about that in the doc.

Man, the weight of it all. I saw it in John Candy’s eyes and heard it in his voice. I related to the anxiety they described. It was all a relentless force in making it so hard for him to convince people that he liked himself and the life he chose.

We are all on borrowed time. Some of us feel that sooner and more often than others. And if you want someone close to you to never lose weight, maybe someone with a stubborn streak and a lot of pride, make sure the message you send to them is that you’ll like them more if they’d only eat less.

“Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight, carry that weight a long time.”

Sending love. Protect your peace.

♥

Thank you

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