Comments on: Me and “Me and Fat Glenda”

By: mary mack

mary mack — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:54:12 +0000

ELMORE — Toledo’s top glass artists have joined together for the first time to present

By: Lexie

Lexie — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:36:58 +0000

I was teased a lot in school and my teacher let me borrow a book called “Don’t Call Me Fatso.” I fell in love with it at that time. But, now that I look back on it- not so much. It supported the idea that the girl was fat because she ate too much and because she was lazy. Hey… some people are… But not all. In the end the girl lost weight and had friends and was happy… but why couldn’t she be that way when she was heavy? She deserved it. She was smart and pretty… and the kids were the ones with problems. I still look for the book because of the childhood memory…

By: signthelist

signthelist — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:34:18 +0000

Ooh, okay, I have one. Maybe you can help me figure out the title. I read it in 7th grade so that would be 1997 or there abouts and I think it was a few years old at that point — or, at least, the paperback I borrowed from the library was well-read. A girl, who was self-described as fat (don’t remember if she was for-real fat or size 6 fat), was BFF with a geeky boy, who secretly had a major crush on her. She wanted to lose weight so she could date this super popular boy. Over the summer, she went to the beach or something and got food poisoning and lost all her weight (of course). Then she came back in the fall for school and got to date the popular boy! Yay! Who, as it turned out, was a jerk! Boo. Then she finds out that geeky BFF is tots in love with her. And I don’t remember if she started dating him or not. I just remember learning that food poisoning and other ills make you thin so from that point on, I always hoped to catch one — just for a week or two, you know, nothing deadly.

That’s so messed up.

By: polyesterbridesmaid

polyesterbridesmaid — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:20:29 +0000

Oh, god, i remember all these books! I think it was one of those Glenda books that had a saleswoman muttering that Glenda was shaped like a goblin, which has been forever burned in my brain when trying on clothes in department stores. I loved the Paula Danziger books, even when the fat girl got thin — but boots, I totally forgot about the terror freakshow that was the Fat Girl. I was convinced for years that every boy who liked me was going to try the same thing.

By: boots

boots — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:19:27 +0000

Oh, man, this thread takes me back. I used to love books about either fat people or eating disorders. Disturbing, right? The librarians at my school and county libraries must have thought I was awfully studious, but honestly, I was just too embarrassed to check out Cherry Boone O'Neill's Starving for Attention for the 18th time, so I read it at the library. It's depressing cause I wasn't even fat as a kid, just thought I was. Anyway, this thread is making me realize that most YA fiction handles fat in a strange way; either weight-loss wish fulfillment or dark psychological stuff. Three things I remember reading: One Fat Summer, The Fat Girl (this was a weird book--a popular kid starts dating a fat girl in order to make her over, then starts to hate her as she becomes more confident and independent), and I Was a 15-Year-Old Blimp, which is about bulimia but has a reasonably positive message at the end if I recall.

By: Mango

Mango — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:08:36 +0000

In about the third grade, I read a book called “Fatso Jean, The Ice Cream Queen” by Maryann McDonald which, if I recall correctly, was pretty fat-positive. Or rather, the main character finds confidence and happiness without having to get skinny.

Jean, who is fat, insecure, and tormented by the pretty girls, who call her “Fatso Jean, the Ice Cream Queen.” She then discovers that she’s good at making ice cream, and starts a summer ice cream making business. She is discouraged from this because, of course, fat girls are pigs and she must just be planning to eat it all and it’s unhealthy for her to be around, you know, food that she likes. She rejects this for the hogwash it is and becomes very successful selling her ice cream from a wagon she pulls around the neighborhood, turning “Fatso Jean, the Ice Cream Queen” from a jeer to a slogan. If I recall, she’s trying to earn money to go to Fat Camp (!). She’s really good at making ice cream, and thus sells an enormous amount of it and makes a ton of money. By the end of the summer, she’s happy and confident because of her success. It is also pointed out to her, in the end, that she’s lost some weight because of the exercise she’s been getting walking around the neighborhood, which she hadn’t even noticed. She gives the money to a kid who’s trying to get into the Special Olympics, and everyone’s happy.

By: Annette

Annette — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:04:19 +0000

Did anyone else read a book called (I think) Life in the fat Lane? If I remember correctly, it was about a “perfect” cheerleader who contracts a rare disease that makes her fat. She is the same person and nothing else is affected, but I think she becomes almost 100 pounds heavier. Its all about the discrimination faced by fat teens. I remember liking it.

By: Arlene

Arlene — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:26:22 +0000

I can’t recall the title or author, but I do remember reading some YA book in middle school/early high school about a thin popular pretty girl who made fun of the fat girl in her class and then ended up getting some disease that caused her body to retain everything she ate and she gained 100 pounds. And she ended up losing her boyfriend and friends and wound up at the bottom of the social ladder just because she gained all that weight. And when she tried to make friends with the original fat girl, she blew her off because she’d been such a bitch to her before she got fat. The message seemed to be something along the lines of, “don’t be mean to fat people or God forbid it could be you someday.” Not the greatest moral.

By: The Manolo Week in Review » Manolo's Shoe Blog

The Manolo Week in Review » Manolo's Shoe Blog — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:21:59 +0000

[...] Francesca… When Francesca was perhaps 11 or 12 years old, her Aunt Bianca came from America with a gift for Francesca: a book in English called Nothingâ€™s Fair in Fifth Grade. [...]

By: miep

miep — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:57:07 +0000

Ah! Anne Shirley and her longing to be a raven-haired, dimpled, ample beauty. It was pointed out to me last year that authors tend to write one kind of protagonist, and in YA fantasy, that protagonist tends to look either startlingly like the author, or to be blessed with inhuman beauty.

I recommend to you all Ysabeau Wilce’s Flora Segunda , whose titular heroine is short, plump, plain, and absolutely delightful. It’s one of my favorite YA books of the last few years, and it’s fantastic.