I don’t know that I watched the film adaptation of this when it came out on Netflix back in 2018, but I did eventually watch Dumplin’. Then, so many odd years later I came across the book at a steep discount. Remembering the gist of the film and that I found it in the category of feel-good watch, I decided to pick the book up.
Luckily, from what I remember, the film follows what’s on the pages of the book pretty closely. The titular Dumplin’ is in fact Willowdean Dickson, who lives in Texas with her mother. She’s still wallowing a fair amount six months after the loss of her aunt Lucy. The pair bonded not only just over their extreme love of Dolly Parton, but also the fact that they were both on the bigger size. Lucy, so much so that she basically never left the house in her final years and died young of a heart attack. Willowdean takes comfort in her best friend, Ellen, and survives on the crush she harbors on fellow diner employee, Bo.
Willowdean’s world changes a lot when Ellen starts making some new and not so nice friends, and then she also starts stealing kisses from Bo by the dumpster at work. All of this throws her carefully crafted life out of balance, so she decides to join the city’s local pageant, where her mother has been a staple since she won some twenty years prior. Willowdean uses this to get her confidence back, but to also basically throw a middle finger up to all the people who rag on and torture people like her. Along the way, she ruins things with Ellen and Bo for a while, but ends up making some really unexpected and meaningful friendships.
For the most part, I’d say Willowdean has her head on pretty right for a high schooler. Sure, she’s indecisive in ways plenty of teenagers an young adults are. And for all the confidence she exudes, she just like a lot of the rest of us who have doubts flooding our insides. I was happy in the end that she finally mended those broken relationships and managed to get her confidence back to boot. I think what she did, fictional though it was, is an example a lot of small towns or stereotypical pageant-adjacent events could learn from. Expect a re-watch of the film in the near future.