Steel Magnolias: Movie Still Hits a Diabetes Nerve 30 Years Later
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.
