This week we are discussing Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught Chapter 1 - Chapter 6.
Spoiler Warning!!! This post is full of spoilers for Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught.
Trigger/Content Warning!!! Fatphobia, Disordered Eating, Surgery
Jacilyn: Hello friends! Welcome to our first discussion of My Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught. Jamie, actress and journalist extraordinaire, is a senior in high school and vying for a journalism scholarship. So she creates a Fat Girl column in her school newspaper, where she chronicles her experiences as a fat girl in today’s society in the hopes of bringing in the prize. As someone who has been overweight my entire life, I have never read a fat positive book so I have to admit, reading this book has been simultaneously difficult and liberating and I’m looking forward to talking about it.
I already love the characters of this book. Jamie is unapologetically fat and lives accordingly, but still struggles with the way that she’s treated by the world. NoNo is extremely anxious, but organizes with grassroots organizations to fight for her convictions. Freddie is an impeccable dresser and dedicated anchorwoman, but seems to struggle with her confidence from what I’ve gathered from her romantic life. And Burke is an incredible athlete who might be the sweetest boyfriend in the world, but hates his body and the fatphobia he faces so often. Each of these characters are so relatable and nuanced and the support they all have for each other reminds me of our own friend group.
Michaela: I have also been overweight my entire life and reading this book is honestly just really weird. I’ve never read any book centered around someone who is fat, plus size, curvy, overweight, what have you. Any book that has a fat character they’re always the funny sidekick to the main character. And while some of those characters can be a good representation, it's still not enough representation. Which makes this book a breath of fresh air. However the story is centered around that fact that Jamie is the Fat Girl so I would like more books where the main character is bigger but that isn’t what the whole story is about. Fat people exist, we’re everywhere, get over it and write some representation without it being about losing weight or fighting the fatphobic system. I think we’ll get pretty preachy with this book since we can relate so closely to the subject.
I do like the characters in this book and the different aspects of mental health and weight they represent but I also think they all have flaws. Right now I’m struggling with Jamie and Burke a little bit. I think Burke sounds like the sweetest guy but I also think he’s a little naive when it comes to him thinking nothing will change about his feelings for Jamie. Their relationship will change, it just will. But I also think Jamie convincing herself that she won’t “fit” into his arms is also really naive. They’re both really young still and that attributes to a lot of what they’re feeling here but I can see myself in all of these characters which makes this book both hard and easy to read in different ways.
Jacilyn: I was thinking the same thing, actually. I think books like this are really important for representation, but I would also really like to read a book with a fat protagonist who is just living their life and the plot itself focuses on other things. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere, so we should be on the lookout for those as well.
The naivety is one of the things I like best about Jamie and Burke. I know that when I was in high school, I definitely had some naive conceptions about life and love and I also remember the anxieties that both Burke and Jamie are facing in regards to their weight and their future. The characters all feel so genuine to me, they don’t all make decisions I am happy with, but that gives the book a lot of resonance and life.
Jamie’s Fat Girl column kind of reminds me of Your Fat Friend, a blog created by Aubrey Gordon, a queer former-organizer who has dubbed herself a “fat lady about town.” Aubrey is one of the hosts of a podcast that I listen to called Maintenance Phase, which discusses various aspects of health and wellness. Aubrey writes about fatphobia and has shared personal instances of awful treatment by everyone from friends to complete strangers and I think her work is so important in creating a dialogue about the marginalization fat people experience. Jamie is doing very similar work in Fat Girl, speaking honestly about awful experiences and the feedback she gets isn’t always great.
Michaela: The naivety of these characters really helps me see right where I would fit in in this group and this high school. It takes me right back to how I felt about myself and how I looked in high school. Because of how our society views fat people, in particular women, adolescence is one of the worst times, in my opinion. Especially growing up in the 2000s, a time in which your body type and shape was what was in fashion, it was so hard for me to accept what I looked like. In that time period, the clothes were not the most important thing, it was the shape and size of your body. Everything Jamie, very smartly, sees wrong with diet ads and other such things, I just could not see when I was younger. I was always tempted by those diet ads or meal substitutes. I’m really glad I had no money as a teenager because I, unfortunately, think I would have spent too much money on those things.
I completely understand Burke’s desire to feel “normal”, but now that I’m an adult and in my late 20s I can also see the issues with that thinking. I wanted to be “normal” so bad in high school. But the thing is, despite what the fashion industry and diet culture wants you to believe, there is no “normal” body type. There is no such thing as a “picture of health” body. It’s all a lie. Dieting is a lie and it’s unhealthy. And just because you see “results” from those pills or from diets, it doesn’t mean they’re healthy results. Health is what’s important, not what your body looks like because they’re not synonymous.
I think as a teenager I would read Burke’s decision to get this surgery and think “of course he should do it, then he’ll be happier and feel better” but now...the risks Jamie keeps thinking about completely overrides that desire for a “normal” body. Your life is more important than losing weight. I want to be clear that Burke isn’t making a bad decision or a wrong decision, it’s just his decision. But I do think his reasoning is not the best reasoning, it’s very image centric and not health centric.
Jacilyn: I definitely didn’t have an understanding of how inherently fatphobic society was until very recently, even though I experienced it myself all the time. It is incredibly difficult not to believe all of the judgements that society normalizes, to internalize the harmful assumptions. Meanwhile, the wellness industry profits off of our trauma. I’ll be honest, I’m having a difficult time writing about this. I think it’s safe to say that we have both endured a lot of trauma related to our weight, and it is a process to come to terms with it all. You’ve used the word “recovery” before, and I think that really is the perfect description of what this process has been like. It’s not easy, but, like reading this book, it is liberating.
I’m very scared about the outcome of Burke’s surgery. I think you’re right, he’s making a decision based on the judgement of others. I understand that. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the same motivations in the back of my mind most of the time. It breaks my heart for him, really. I think you’re right in saying that the surgery is going to impact Burke and Jamie’s relationship, and now it’s something that they are dealing with in the public eye as well. Fat Girl is gaining attention, some positive and some negative, and that additional pressure would make it even more difficult to come to terms with the surgery and be supportive at the same time. Like usual, I think Jamie and Burke could really benefit from having an honest conversation and communicating the entirety of their feelings with each other.
I think it’s important that we discuss Jamie’s disordered eating. I think that for some, it might be difficult to understand how someone who is so accepting of being fat and actively draws attention to anti-fat bias in society can also have disordered eating, but I understand. You can be aware that the only reason you feel badly about yourself is because of societal expectations and assumptions that don’t have a basis in reality and simultaneously continue to feel negatively towards yourself. Jamie only eats in front of her best friends and Burke, and with the former she is always very aware of how much she eats. So she basically restricts access to food during the day and overeats once she’s safely at home. I am no expert on this topic and quite frankly I feel uncomfortable providing much commentary on this aspect of the book because of that, but I think it’s really important to acknowledge this part of Jamie’s life.
Michaela: I do use the term “recovery” when I think of fatphobia. It’s a lot of unlearning what you’ve been taught to think about yourself. It starts with just discovering that what you’ve been told is wrong and that in itself is so, so hard. There are so many traumatic experiences related to my weight that I never realized were traumatic (medical experiences in particular stick out in my mind) until recently, and so many thoughts and feelings I used to have that I never realized were unhealthy and dangerous to my health. I think it will be a lifelong recovery process for me. So many times I’ve been dismissed socially by peers for my body type and even those I have had relationships were dismissed or teased because they hung out with me (gotta love those memories from high school). And let me tell you, what I thought was “too big” for me in high school...it’s the average size of women in the United States. In high school I thought I was huge and gross and I hated my body, but in reality I was the most average of sizes in this country.
I have also been dismissed in medical situations because of my weight. “If you lose weight you wouldn’t have that back pain” (jk…actually your gallbladder hasn’t worked in roughly two years and you’ll need surgery as soon as possible), “if you lost weight you wouldn’t be depressed” (jk...that’s just called depression/anxiety and it doesn’t just go away), “try losing weight then we’ll see if we’ll diagnose you with any mental health issues”, “if you lost weight you would be happier” (jk...for some people sure but sometimes you’ll think you’re happier because everyone tells you you should be). All absolute bullshit, and I’m not even kind of the only one who has experienced this. People have died because of being medically dismissed because of their weight when that was not part of the problem. Instead of getting actual health analysis, tests, or diagnoses fat people just get told to lose weight as if that is a magical solution to everything. News flash, it isn’t. It sucks that I and other overweight people have to fight just to be taken seriously by the people who are meant to help us.
I really hate that Jamie and Burke have to deal with this struggle so publicly. It’s hard to deal with any struggles with health and relationships in the public eye and especially as teenagers. But I agree, they need to have an open honest conversation and communicate. I’m not sure that they will though. But they really need to do this for their relationship to survive this hurdle.
As you said, I don’t feel comfortable commenting on Jamie’s disordered eating beyond saying I understand her thought process with it. I used to abhor eating in front of people when I was a teenager but I never went without eating at school, I never would have made it through my 5am to 9pm days at school. I was a busy bee in high school just like Jamie and when you’re doing that much learning and activities in a day you need sustenance throughout the day.
I would really like to know your thoughts on the whole Hotchix episode that happened in this first section of the book. I’m a little torn on how I view what happened actually.
Jacilyn: What happened at Hotchix was fucked up. I think it was a clear example of anti-fat bias and highlighted the lack of size inclusivity in fashion, and it’s important that people realize that happens, but I think NoNo was legitimately traumatized from the experience and I don’t feel great about Jamie using her in that way. The girls went in there with the intention of baiting the clerks, which some people might view as unfair, but I don’t agree with that.
Michaela: I agree that NoNo was legitimately traumatized. I really do not like how Jamie and Freddie seem pretty dismissive to NoNo’s aversion to animal products. Not only is NoNo living a vegan lifestyle but it kind of seems like she might have a phobia of those things as well because of how she feels about animal products. I’m disappointed in Jamie and Freddie for that. But I’m pissed at the employees at Hotchix for utterly lying to NoNo about the contents of those clothes. That is so fucked up, on so many levels. I agree that this was a good example of anti-fat bias. Something I do not agree with though is how the girls took their frustrations out on the employees who have no control over what the store sells. I’m not saying that those store clerks were absolutely horrible to the three girls because they were completely horrible. Many times, in stores like these, the employees are coached on how to “handle” people who don’t fit into their “ideal body type” for the clothes, which is disgusting.
However, as someone who works in retail, please don’t go around being pissed at the person behind the register, unless it’s the owner who can make the changes. Employees don’t get to decide what the store sells or makes or anything, and sometimes a job is a job even if you don’t agree with the ethics of the company. I thought that that side of this situation was messed up on Jamie and Freddie’s side. I think that even if the clerks had been better people in the situation the girls still would have taken out their frustration on the clerks, who aren’t the ones who can change anything. Ultimately I kind of felt like Jamie and Freddie were thinking the same level of mean spirited thoughts towards the clerks as the clerks were of Jamie and Freddie. I don’t think anyone handled that whole thing in the correct manner. While I understand where Jamie and Freddie were coming from it was just a journalistic stunt that just rubbed me the wrong way, even though I agree with the sentiment of it.
Jac: I agree that you definitely shouldn’t take out your anger on a retail employee. I see what you mean. I reacted to it how I did because the employees seemed to show active disgust towards Jamie, and then lying about what the clothes are made of to NoNo… it just didn’t sit right to me. I don’t think the clerks should be berated because of the lack of size inclusivity, but I do think they deserve to be called out (though maybe not berated) for the way they treated the girls. I don’t think that was called for, in spite of the fact that the girls were also acting in bad faith at some points.
I definitely don’t think they realized the impact that story would have on themselves personally. Jamie being accosted by the reporter during the senior shoot was a direct result of their story on Hotchix and I think we can both agree that the reporter went way out of line. Can you imagine a grown woman going after a teenager like that? It was absolutely disgusting the way she was speaking to Jamie. It was really sweet of quiet Heath to try to stand up for Jamie like he did (hello second love interest, anybody?). I have to give props to Jamie, because I think she handled the situation way better than I would have.
Michaela: The employees definitely handled things in the wrong way and did wrong things. But it’s the thought process the girls went into the store with that bothers me. Like you wouldn’t walk into American Eagle and yell at the person folding shirts about them not selling inclusive sizes, its a preposterous thing to do. But that is essentially what their plan was, it just so happens that these employees were just terrible people and that made it easier to be mad at them. The employees were absolutely atrocious though.
I do not understand what that Lois Lane newscaster was playing at. I’m not entirely sure what this angle is meant to be yet. I’m sure we’ll find out more soon. I think the main idea this newscaster is trying to put forward is that Jamie is promoting obesity and hates skinny people, which isn’t true. I hate that kind of news coverage. I can’t stand it. Someone is trying to do something good and show how things are for people and people like this just take it and twist it all the way around. I got so so angry reading that part. That lady caused Jamie to have, what I believe to be, a full on panic attack right in front of everybody. WHERE were the teachers?! What self respecting educator sees multiple news vans pull up to a field of minors and just things “ya sure that’s fine”? If I was one of those kids or a parent of one of those kids I would be throwing hands at that newscaster and those teachers.
Heath handled that so well and was so sweet to Jamie, I almost couldn’t handle it. I think those two are going to grow a lot closer as the story continues. I’m excited and scared to see what happens next.
Can you relate to any of the characters? What was your take on the Hotchix situation? How would you have handled the newscaster? Let us know your thoughts on this first part of the book in the comments below!
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