Don’t kill Shelby, kill the movie

Steel Magnolias? A remake? Are you freaking kidding me? Who in their right mind would go out of their way to remake that gawd awful flick? I mean, unless they were bullied by a diabetic, or had a nasty run-in with a gang of diabetics, or just have a plain ol hate on for us T-1s, there’s no plausible reason for putting this movie out on the shelves again.

Strong opinion on something seemingly small to the majority, you bet I do!

When Steel Magnolias was released in 1989, I was a young, impressionable, fairly newly diagnosed type 1. And let’s just say, it probably wasn’t the best film for me to be viewing at the time. Thanks to this movie, I spent a good part of my adolescence thinking I would be punished with kidney dialysis if I made one screw up with my disease (and believe me, I made a LOT of screw ups with Dear Diabetes). I also spent years thinking if I ever got knocked up, I’d be on a one-way train to the worlds six feet under. And even if I opted out of having little kidlets, there were still many days where I believed I wouldn’t graduate into adulthood because of my diabetes – thanks to this movie.


With shots like these, it’s not hard to imagine how a 12-year-old could think she was next in line for the Grim Reaper to attack.

It was so bad, my moms sent me to counseling in my teenage years to help deflate my doomed diabetes anxieties. I mean, seriously, it’s not exactly the greatest feeling to think you’re doomed at any age, but my gawd to think it that young, not cool.  And it wasn’t until my mid 20s, when I really took control of Dear Diabetes and started looking more into the disease and stopped listening to those without the disease, that I realized stupid Steel Magnolias was just another diabetes “know-it-all” bully.

And yet, even with that revelation in my back pocket, to this day, if I hear mention of Steel Magnolias, I cringe; if I see a glimpse of the Southern belles in that teased to the nth degree hair salon, I flip the channel in a shaken heartbeat; and when, earlier this week, I heard of the remake, I went into a rage.

It doesn’t matter how new, or how modern, or how supposedly more knowledgable a face you put on this flick, it will always be the movie that stole a chunk of my childhood. Not cool. Not cool at all.

1 thought on “Don’t kill Shelby, kill the movie”

  1. sucky movie for sure. hey, do you remember Watcher in the Woods? because it was Disney many parents were fooled that it must be an ok movie. i think hundreds of thousands of kids must have watched this movie without their parents knowing what it was or how creepy it was. it wasn’t until i BRAVELY watched it when i was 27 that i could move on and not be FREAKED out just by the thought of the movie.
    thank you for sharing about your movie experience. i now have a deeper hate for that movie too. stupid movie.

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