Quick, name the movie… “Drink your juice, Shelby!” and “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Those two lines are likely what’s burned into the brain of anyone with diabetes who saw… you guessed it! (if you read the post title)… the movie Steel Magnolias.
It’s the 1989 film in which Julia Roberts plays Shelby, a young woman with type 1 diabetes, who’s dealing with family stresses alongside complications in the U.S. South. There’s the famous scene in the beauty parlor, where Shelby has a low blood sugar while getting her hair prettied up before her wedding. Beads of sweat appear on her lip and brow, and she’s trembling and being held down as she fights off the cup of orange juice that her mom — played by Sally Field — is trying to force down her throat.
And then there’s everything else that happens in this movie that’s influenced a generation of women — and some of us guys — on the topic of diabetes in a not-so-positive way. Shelby wants to have children, and struggles with a diabetic pregnancy. While it may have been “technically” accurate for some circumstances, many PWDs (people with diabetes) see the movie’s approach as overly dramatic and focusing too much on the worst-case scenario rather than what living with diabetes is actually like in contemporary times.
Amazingly, 2019 marks the 30-year anniversary of the release of Steel Magnolias, and to honor that milestone it’s being re-released in theaters across the country this weekend — with special insights and commentary from Turner Classic Movies. And ICYMI from several years back: the Lifetime TV network did their own remake of the film in 2012 with an all-black cast and some minor modern revisions, but the storyline and the impact of diabetes remained mostly the same.
Reacting to How Diabetes is Portrayed in “Steel Magnolias”
We’ve heard many in the Diabetes Community say they refuse to watch the movie at all because of what they’ve heard about how diabetes is handled. Others have shrugged it off as “Hollywood fiction.” Personally, while I can’t talk much about the child-bearing aspect, I find the juice-drinking salon scene very powerful. Truth be told: I get a little choked up and emotional every time I watch that scene, because that’s exactly how I’ve acted and felt during lows. You may not agree, but that scene really hits home for me. So that’s a type 1 guy’s POV on the original Steel Magnolias, which obviously isn’t the same as a female’s perspective.
Our own Rachel Kerstetter offered some insights from her end, as a woman with T1D:
“I know Steel Magnolias brings up a lot of different opinions and feelings in many PWDs, especially among us ladies. It actually came out the year I was born, so I never saw the movie as a kid,” she says, noting that she didn’t watch it until after her diagnosis with type 1 diabetes at age 22 after seing blog posts about the movie and its diabetes storyline. “I mentioned to my best friend that I was going to watch it and she recommended very strongly that I shouldn’t. But… of course I did.”
Rachel says the “drink your juice” scene didn’t affect her much, but other parts of the movie did.
“The part where Shelby’s mom is telling the ladies that the doctor said Shelby shouldn’t have children — not that she can’t — got me a little, but not on the family planning side. It just made some comments from older family members from shortly after I was diagnosed make so much more sense. I was actually diagnosed with diabetes because of a pregnancy test, which was negative.”
“The part of the move that really hit home with me was the dialysis and comments about Shelby ramming spikes into her arms. That all came back to me when I had to go see a nephrologist because of protein in my urine and really freaked me out.”
The reality is that Steel Magnolias portrays a time when diabetes management was much different than today — a time before continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) existed and even insulin pumps were really mainstream, before the A1C test was established as a “gold standard” for D-management and prior to faster-acting insulins and analogues being introduced. Today’s reality thankfully different, even though economic and cultural gaps certainly exist that keep some PWDs from getting ideal treatment.
For that reason, I’m not particularly thrilled about Steel Magnolias being re-promoted for its 30th anniversary. And that’s not even taking into account the reboot made several years ago.
Dissecting the “Steel Magnolias” Remake by Lifetime TV
The 2012 remake of the movie Steel Magnolias by Lifetime TV kept mostly to the original script: It’s basically a film about female friendships, and the emotional crux here is the fact that Shelby is struggling with chronic kidney illness caused by her diabetes, which complicates family planning.
