Fatphobia Sells

You know that moment when someone says something nasty about a woman's weight and you kind of reel back and they quickly say, "not you, you're fine" but the fact is that you weigh more than the person who was just denigrated?

Kristan Higgins wrote a book called Good Luck With That which is about three girls who met at fat camp, became lifelong friends and then one died from being too fat and the other two have to learn to love life and love themselves... I don't know if that means lose weight or just realize that people are more than their BMI. I don't know. I won't know because I don't plan on reading this book.

When the review copies for this book came out, there was a little uproar because apparently the blurb described the book as the fat phobic book it really is. But then the blurb got changed and readers (like me) who have always enjoyed Kristan Higgins told her that she's sweet and lovely and we trust she's not writing fat shaming fiction.

We were wrong. Apparently she did. Which made me feel like I described in my opening paragraph: slapped in the face because someone I thought who liked me has been secretly judging me based only on how many pounds I carry.

I just finished the book Hunger by Roxane Gay. It's an autobiographical novel about Ms. Gay's relationship with her body. She was gang raped at age 12 and never told her parents (or anyone) what happened. But she started eating to hide herself and to create uncrossable boundaries so she wouldn't get hurt again.

I completely related to the book until it got to the point that I wanted to give the author a lecture about living and not just living as a victim. But it's her journey and she obviously isn't in that place yet. It was the one issue I had.

But Hunger approaches how women feel separate from our bodies and how we create our own chasms between us, our fat and our dreams. I found the beginning of the book hard to read because I knew exactly how she felt. I found the end of the book hard to read because I didn't relate any longer to how she felt.

So two books about weight. I saw a feed on Twitter of someone reading the Higgans book and describing the plot as it happens. Had to laugh because the woman in the book who was dying from extreme fatness has slightly elevated vitals but nothing to kill her.

Also fat doesn't kill. It just jiggles.

I'm just so disappointed. I wanted Higgans to be a better person. I wanted Roxane Gay to evolve from her victimhood.

Carolyn: maybe it's time we write our own book. Fat is Jiggly and Jiggle Don't Kill.