Annie’s standards come sharply into focus when she dumps him in the final moments of season two because she’s “an adult” in need of “a real partner”. However, that control ultimately proves elusive Annie had more opportunities at the Thorn than as a freelancer, and Ryan shows himself to be human garbage. Her “friends with benefits” arrangement with manchild Ryan has become an actual relationship, while quitting the Weekly Thorn and escaping Gabe’s narcissism has afforded her more independence. The second focuses on her gaining control of her life.

In the first season, Annie is treated poorly at work and in romantic relationships. It is also extremely funny, thanks in no small part to Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant as Annie, and Lolly Adefope (Ghosts, This Time with Alan Partridge) as her roommate and confidante, Fran. Shrill encapsulates the constant politics of being a fat person. Photograph: Allyson Riggs/BBC/Brownstone Productions/Hulu It’s little wonder that even being sent to cover the achingly body-positive, brilliantly titled Fat Babe Pool Party sends Annie into a state of existential dread. Strangers insert themselves into her life at every turn, whether it’s the fitness instructor who tells her: “You could be so pretty” (emphasis on the could), the online troll who sends her a picture of a dead pig, captioned: “This is Annie,” or the boss (John Cameron Mitchell’s cutting Gen X-er, Gabe) who sets up a fatphobic exercise regime for his employees. Many people project their own thoughts and feelings (mostly revulsion and pity) on to her, whether about health or food or sexuality. Annie is bright, talented, a little selfish – and she is fat. Shrill follows Annie Easton, an up-and-coming journalist at an alternative magazine in Portland, Oregon.

And not just that, but writing you might want to read, by people who felt real – because they were. Finally, a show set at a magazine where people actually did some writing. When the series first aired in 2019, it felt fresh and radical. It would later form the backbone of a storyline in Shrill, a TV show based on her memoir, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, and streamed on Hulu.

So wrote Lindy West in a 2011 article titled Hello, I Am Fat.

Shrill memoir