Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
After a lifetime of obsessing over her weight, the author of "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" embarked on a mission to free women from their fear of fat.
May 3, 2004 | Don't be turned off by the title: Wendy Shanker's self-help memoir, "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life," isn't just for overweight women. Shanker's frank and funny look at living large in America will resonate with any woman who has obsessed over her body image (and who hasn't?). Sounding off on everything from diets to drugs, models to magazines, food to finances, "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" recounts the strategies that Shanker, a TV and magazine writer and stand-up comedian, has used to "come to terms with the skin I'm in." She's unapologetically Fat with a capital F -- "fat is a state of body," she writes, "but Fat is a state of mind" -- and wants to demystify and reclaim the word.
She didn't always feel this way. Shanker begins "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" with some of the most significant moments of her "fifteen-year odyssey of self-loathing and self-doubt." She recounts her dieting debacles (including a fluke armed robbery at a Weight Watchers meeting), embarrassing setbacks (like getting caught devouring the last piece of her college roommate's birthday cake), and her efforts to figure out the psychological factors that influence her relationship with food. She's incredibly candid and doesn't shy away from sex or between-the-sheets body-image worries: "I'd live in fear that the guy lurking down below would suddenly lift his head and scream, 'Ewww! You're fat and disgusting! What the hell did I just touch? Is that even a body part that other people have?'"
In early 2002, Shanker hit rock bottom and checked herself into the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, a renowned research center and weight loss treatment clinic in Durham, N.C. For one long, frustrating month, she ate like a monk, exercised like a Olympian, spent almost $10,000 on programs, therapy and travel -- yet still only lost two pounds. It was this experience that shaped her current attitude toward fat -- and her vow never to diet again. "If we can't take it off, " she writes, "then we might as well just take it on."
Salon met with Shanker at a local bakery (yes, the cappuccinos were full fat) to discuss America's obsession with obesity and her quest to empower Fat Girls.
Titling the book "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" is a pretty bold move. Did you have any fear of people being put off by the title?
From the first minute I thought about writing this book, I knew I was going to call it "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life." I was shocked that title wasn't already taken by somebody! Part of what I'm trying to do is demystify "fat," to make it a word about size and not a word about personality. My publisher and I talked about softening it up, putting a subtitle, something like "Your Body's Great!: The Fat Girl's Guide to Life," but we could never decide on the right phrase, and I didn't really want to go there anyway.
One of the questions I keep getting is: "I'd really like to buy this book for a friend of mine, but I'm afraid I'm going to offend them." But if that's the case, then tell them that this is the story of a fat girl named Wendy Shanker, and then they can pretend that they're reading about me and secretly they can be thinking about themselves.
You open the book by saying, "This book is for you, whether you feel fat or look fat or act fat or none of the above." Do you think those "none of the above" people will really pick up the book and read it?
OK, 68 percent of the adult female population is wearing a size 12 or larger, so even if I just spoke to women whose doctors would say, "You're fat and you need to lose weight," that would be two-thirds of the population. That'd be great, but part of what I think is crazy about body-image dynamics right now is that there are so many skinny girls and average girls who think they're fat and are looking for answers to some of their fat problems. If you think that you're physically fat, you're gonna read this book and say, All right, fine, so I'm fat, big deal. That's me and I'm happy. And if you're not, then I hope that you can plug in to it.
