Synopsis: Stella must avoid dairy temptation but soon faces delicious enticement when her friends introduce her to the most beautiful person she has ever met… a man made of ice cream. Who knew love could be this sweet?

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Although dairy is the tantalizing forbidden fruit of this film, it is a sweeter spin on the underlying personal experience of dating as a fat woman. I can say that being Irish and having late onset lactose intolerance is really a rough time. My inability to have dairy began when I was around 17, and inevitably got worse so I actually have to listen to it or face the consequences. During this time, I was also internalizing a fear motivated self-deprivation impulse aka I will stop any and all romantic feelings to avoid heartbreak or humiliation due to fatphobia. Later down the road, I found myself shunning the idea of dating, even though I’m a hopeless romantic, it was two powerful emotions fighting. “I like you even though you’re fat” “Whatever, you’re fat anyway” “You’re not fat, you’re beautiful”, are said everyday! Being fat felt like a dirty secret and that I had to make up for it in some way. Eventually I found myself going down the road of romance, and it was so difficult to do anything but freeze, trying to fight this self-preservation impulse. With the help of many supportive friends, I realized I was stopping myself. If this person likes me, they probably have already figured out that I’m fat, and it’s just as much a part of me as being tall, or having curly hair. The goal of this film was to have a beautiful, sexy, AND fat woman overcome a self-inflicted boundary, realizing if she had only asked, she could have been with this creamy hunk from the get go. It was important to me to have a fat woman receive unconditional love, no ifs, ands, or buts, because that would have shaped my world growing up.

Mary Budnitz will be graduating this May with a BFA in Digital Arts from the Pratt Institute. She is currently working as a freelance character designer/illustrator. She has worked as an animator, compositor, storyboard artist, and asset proffessionally, but her passions lie in character design and writing. In her free time, Mary is drinking bubble tea, writing, or forgetting to save in video games and promptly dying. She currently resides in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland with her cranky dog.

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