Sierra Burgess really is a loser for catfishing, slut-shaming, and worse

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser was a hotly anticipated teen movie coming to Netflix, but the film falls flat on its message.

There is nothing I love more than a cheesy teen rom-com. Sure, sometimes the acting is awful, or the storyline is unrealistic, but I can’t help but feel butterflies when it all works out for the best. The Internet went wild after To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before debuted on Netflix on August 17, which upped the excitement for the premiere of Sierra Burgess Is A Loser. The teen flick was also heading to Netflix and also starred new heartthrob dujour, Noah Centineo.

Unfortunately, Sierra Burgess is a far cry from TATBILB.

Sierra is a teenage girl who is overweight, but very smart and mature. She’s teased by her popular classmates for her dowdy appearance, but usually keeps a pretty positive demeanor. When Queen Bee Veronica gives a hot boy from another school Sierra’s number instead of her own as a joke, things get interesting.

The boy — Jamey — texts Sierra, thinking it’s Veronica, and she instantly realizes the texts weren’t for her. She knows it’s wrong, especially because she has no idea who this guy is, but they hit it off. She soon realizes he thought he was texting Veronica, but Sierra still goes along with it. Sierra and Jamey talk on the phone — she claims she has a cold to explain the deeper voice — and eventually she convinces Veronica to help her out to keep the charade going, which Veronica agrees to.

The film aims to portray Sierra as an underdog, a person we’re rooting for to win over the cute guy despite not being the “pretty” popular girl.

In the end, all this film did was creep me out, and made me really dislike Sierra as a character. The worst part is she’s never given a redemption arc, but she (spoiler!) still wins over the guy in the end.

It started out innocent enough, but Sierra was stringing this guy along for way too long for it to be considered “cute”. As soon as they made plans to FaceTime or go on a real date, she should’ve ended things. But no, Veronica agreed to help out, and then it only got worse. When Jamey goes in for a kiss on their first date, Veronica makes him cover his eyes, then brings Sierra out to kiss him instead, without him knowing. THAT IS NOT OKAY.

Reverse the roles for a second. Imagine it was Jamey catfishing Sierra, hiding under a car, only to come out and kiss her under false pretenses as his friend watches. No one would think that was a cute rom-com moment. It would be assault. People would be outraged. We should be outraged in either situation, but again, there’s an odd awkward-girl-meets-pretty-boy lens that seems to cover the outrageousness of this scene, and much of the movie.

Later in the movie, Sierra is distraught when she sees Jamey kissing the real Veronica. What she doesn’t witness, as she already runs off in anger, is Veronica quickly backing away knowing it was a mistake.

It’s too late though. It turns out the normally timid and polite Sierra wasn’t such a nice girl after all. She hacks Veronica’s Instagram and posts a private photo of her and her ex-boyfriend kissing, calling her out for getting dumped by DMs. The post goes viral, and soon the whole school sees it when someone (not connected to Sierra, just a random jerk) projects it on the big screen at the football game. Veronica is humiliated.

This was a huge invasion of privacy, it was a betrayal of trust, and it was just straight up nasty.

Yes, Veronica initially was a nasty person herself. After Sierra reaches out to Veronica for help, we see this supposed popular girl open up and reveal her imperfect sides to Sierra. She befriends Sierra, even though friends mock her for it. In fact, at no point did I feel bad for Sierra, but I felt crushed for Veronica. She is the only character in the movie that really has any character development. This moment proved what I suspected the whole movie: Sierra was the mean girl.

In the end, we’re left with an unrealistic happy ending. A non-happy ending could have shown Sierra learning her lesson, and perhaps teach others as well that these behaviors are unacceptable.

She knew exactly what she was doing the entire time, and had no excuse for going as far as she did. Catfishing is no joke, and it’s creepy. If she had faced repercussions for what happened, or if Jamey or Veronica had not been so quick to forgive her, maybe the movie could have been saved. But that didn’t happen.

With all that said, that’s just the main issue with the film. I haven’t even mentioned the many jokes at the expense of queer people, despite there being no queer characters. People constantly call Sierra a lesbian as an insult and even imply that she’s transitioning because she’s not as feminine as them. These jokes are played out and based on crude stereotypes, and in 2018, we should be better than that.

There’s also the major issue of Sierra pretending to be deaf so that Jamey doesn’t hear her voice, and she keeps up the charade in front of his deaf brother. America’s Next Top Model winner Nyle DiMarco (who is deaf himself), was outraged by the film using being deaf as a punchline, and rightfully so. “Pretending to be deaf is NOT ok,” he wrote on Twitter.

Overall, this film portrays a lot of nasty and dark behaviors as not-so-bad and not-so-harmful.

Catfishing, slut-shaming, making fun of disabled and queer people — none of this is acceptable, rom-com or not. A movie that doesn’t show the seriousness of this sends the wrong message to its audience. We all have to know that these actions are serious, and there would be repercussions in real life. Unless you’re Sierra Burgess apparently.

I really wanted to like this movie, because who doesn’t love an underdog story. But it turns out Sierra Burgess really is a loser, and worse.

How did you feel about Sierra Burgess Is a Loser? Let us know in the comments.