13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, an eating disorder story
If you know any of those fat girls who are unpleasant because they feel bad about themselves, if you are one of them, if you have a dark humor: read this. It's beautiful, disturbing, poignant.
13 ways to look at Lizzie. Lizzie seen by herself, in the mirror or eating ice cream with her fat friend at McDonald's; Lizzie seen by a guy who goes to her every time it fails with his chick because he knows that she, at least, will be nice to him; Lizzie seen by her thin and scornful friend; Lizzie seen by her mother, who is as fat, if not fatter, than she is; Lizzie seen by her husband when she gets skeletal.
As a teenager, Lizzie doesn't worry too much. Later, she tells herself, she will develop an eating disorder, and she will be thin.
The beginning of the end
You have to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Lizzie will become an woman with huge complexes in adulthood, who jumps around on her "Gazelle", her machine between the elliptical and the treadmill, who disgusts her husband with strange vegetables out of the oven, who measures her dry white wine with a measuring cup, and who hides her belly every time she undresses to have sex.
We will never know Lizzie's weight. Even when she eventually loses half her weight, and we finally get to see her bones, her actual weight will remain a mystery. Because after all, it's the least important.
Verdict
What a beautiful book. I'm lucky with the books I find by chance. I started, and I was immediately obsessed with it.
How lucky I am not to be fat. But how easy it is to feel fat. As soon as you're not the thinnest, you feel like you have weight to lose. But nutritionists strongly discourage this. If you don't need to lose weight, you shouldn't try. Everyone agrees that you need to eat right and exercise, but beyond that, it becomes an eating disorder.
Anyway, it made me think. And laugh, because it's desperately realistic. Everyone knows a Lizzie. How did you treat her?
(For a Globe and Mail review, go here.)
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Mona Awad
10,82 $ (la version Kindle est plus chère que la version papier…)
