Customer Reviews

Fat Girl: A True Story

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Judith Moore never tells us exactly how much she weighs. She doesn't need to. Throughout her sobering, scathing and terrifying memoir, we know. She is fat. "Fat Girl" ought be read by every American teen-ager; its unusual conversational voice, absolute candor and terrifying storytelling give the memoir a transcendent authenticity. Moore's courage is astounding; her willingness to divulge the most intimate aspects of her hellish life makes the memoir almost too-painful to read.

Self-loathing permeates Moore's description of herself. Her arms "are as big as those maroon-skinned bolognas that hang from butchers' ceilings." The skin on her thighs is "pocked, not unlike worn foam rubber." Her repugnant odors humiliate her. She doesn't perspire; she cascades sweat. Judith Moore is a "short, squat toad of a woman."

It is no surprise to hear her confide: "I hate myself. I have almost always hated myself...because I am fat." Moore unflinchingly instructs us that food provides comfort; it becomes "the mother, the father, the warm-hearted lover." But it is also the curse. As a "fatso," More knows that she elicits disgust, pity, disapproval, condescension and embarrassment. As one drunken date confesses, she's "too fat to [fornicate]."

The author is unrelenting in her staggering self-description and equally uncompromising when she details her horrifying childhood. Abandoned by her father and brutalized by both her mother and maternal grandmother, Moore spiritually "had been starved." She never experienced love. In an exquisite metaphor, she likens herself to the three little pigs; she was the one "who built a house of fat to keep from the door the ravening wolf from whose long teeth dark blood dribbled."

After the dissolution of her parents' marriage, Moore's mother left Judith to suffer her maternal grandmother's emotional assaults. Ironically, this "Nazi of the barnyard" could cook, and the author "got her elbows up on the kitchen table...and fed her face." Yet no amount of food could assuage the gnawing fear of a young girl growing up without a father. "I do not think I so much missed the man who was my father as I wanted a father." Sporadic visits by her mother only exacerbate Moore's isolation and dwindling sense of self-worth.

Eventual relocation to New York with her mother brings new terror into the author's life. Not content with unleashing a daily barrage of verbal abuse, Judith's mother savagely beats her with a belt. Schooldays carry their own unique torture. Moore cannot raise her hand to answer a question for fear of her sweat-stained underarms. She's too fat to do a somersault. Regular visits to the school nurse for weigh-ins reinforce her sense of grotesqueness. Inexorably, Moor's odyssey through her childhood leads her from shyness to silliness to self-abnegation. Every day, she hears reminders from her mother that she is worthless, ugly, vile.

Shame becomes her constant companion. Regular beatings, designed to break her will, "compounded with the shame of my fatness, left me cowering." Shunned by the world, Moore began to bite her nails. "I turned into a voracious eater whose meal was herself...I ate myself raw." Blood "popped up in bright droplets at my chubby fingers' ends." Nothing works to alleviate her anguish, and the author's exposure to the seedier side of urban life further dwarfs her ability to perceive any goodness in the world. Not even a kind upstairs neighbor can staunch her emotional wounds.

There can be no happy ending to "Fat Girl." No miraculous cures, no warm and fuzzy bromides. No tidy conclusion. All that is left is the unadulterated courage of a weary, honorable woman who has never shied away from the elemental truth of her life's story.

This is one of the most intense books that I have read in the past few years. Having been slim and heavy during by life, I have experienced the perks and attention given to attractive people, and the invisibility given to someone when they are fat. I could feel her pain and longing, that I too felt as a child. A void that could never be filled. Her honesty is amazing and courageous, and on top of that the book is just beautifully written. Amazing.

Judith Moore is a gifted writer. This is a horrifying book.
I could have seen it coming from the quotation on the inside cover from Frances Kuffel, author of Passing For Thin : "Judith Moore is lost in the seascape of the overweight, and food is the Circe whose enchantment turns humans into swine. Oh, but the words of that spell!" This is not the only time in this book that fat people are compared to swine, elephants, and a variety of other animals -- it happens frequently.
In spite of the fact that she mentions that not every fat woman is like herself ... and in spite of the fact that in her story it is clear that genetics has a LOT to do with being fat (in fact, in the end, she talks of her two daughters, the thin one who eats nonstop and is lazy and inactive, and the fat one who is so painfully careful about what she eats and is extremely active) ... this book is like taking all of the fat hatred that ever existed and giving it legitimacy and power. You can see where it comes from. You can see where this woman learned to hate herself and her fat. But it's not like other books such as Shadow on a Tightrope where there is dismay at the horrible treatment of fat people. There is no battlecry --which she states clearly in the beginning -- she is NO fat activist.
That was an understatement. If you want to read how fat people are ugly and disgusting ... and even if it isn't their fault, they smell and are out of control and deserve to be hated and ridiculed -- thisis the book to read. If you want to read about how much everyone is repulsed by fat people -- because she's been skinny and she hasskinny friends and she knows how they talk behind fat people's backs -- and she even knows how fat people think and talk about other fat people -- if you want this poison in your mind or if you want an eagle's view of the poison that exists in some people's minds, then this is a book to read. This is a book that dehumanizes fat people at the same time it puts a face on a fat child and her pain at being fat.
Her self-hatred isn't just about being fat -- it is also clearly about being female. She talks of how people smell throughout the book. The smell from between the legs of women is always disgusting, even if the woman (like her mother) is thin. She talks of her own disgusting, "meat-like" smell (just regular body smell) -- and she talks of the delicious spicy meat smell of the boys in grade school. Why do women smell awful and men smell clean and delicious?
This is her story and her truth and I can't be critical of that -- but I CAN be critical of the constant fat-bashing, the constant over-generalizations of what "everyone" thinks of fat people even now, and of the fact that even now, she speaks of fatness with a quiet disgust and acknowledgement that fatness is gross, smelly, unattractive, awful and every other negative word you can think of -- and that fat people are NOT loved, lovable, or in any way worthy of feeling happy and at home in their own bodies. Yuck! This book couldn't be more negative about fat than a KKK instruction manual (if they exist)could be about dark skin color. In every possible way, she pounds the message of fat people being inferior -- that has been the message she has gotten all of her life from a variety of sources. She mentions, but doesn't seem to realize the people who did show her love and kindness. It's like the positive aspects of her childhood, the people who hugged her and accepted her, she writes about, but
doesn't let them sink into her consciousness. Her childhood was
horribly sad and scarring. But, you know what? At some pointyou
become an adult and you get to choose to heal and you get to choose what you value and believe. She could look back and see that the things her mother said to her and how she beat her were evil and wrong! She could change her self-concept through grown-up eyes. Not to give away the ending, but she is still wanting to diet. She is still hating her fat body. She pretty much made that clear in the introduction anyway.
Some of the things she says just make no sense. She talks abouther father (I think, some of the characters have gotten mixed up in my head -- the tone of the whole book is so dark that I feel like I've been in another world) -- being too fat at over two hundred pounds and 5'11" -- being unable to bend over and tie his shoes. Excuse me? I'm well over 200 pounds at 5'7" and can easily touch my toes. This kind of thing happens a lot in the book -- shock at howfat a person is, how much they weigh, and all of the things they can't do because of their incredible girth -- which is never really that big. The characterizations of fat people are through the eyes of a child that has been taught to absolutely hate and despise fat. But she's writing as an adult, so I struggle with that. Even as a child's voice, I struggle with the level of self-hatred and fat-hatred.
In the end, it is not a book worth reading. I am frustrated and angry that it is THIS sort of book that gets published written by fatauthors about fat experience -- and that gets heavily promoted. Sure, if it's fat-negative, let's push it. But where are the fat-positive books? Sitting unpublished in our drawers because publishers aren't generally interested in publishing anything that would make fat people feel good about ourselves or feel powerful. The handful of books like Fat!So? are not nationally promoted or put on the "New Releases" tables at our bookstores -- they are to be special ordered by people who have the awareness and connections to be able to know about them. Most libraries won't have a copy of Fat!So? but will have a copy of Fat Girl -- and that is just wrong. Simply wrong. Separate drinking fountains wrong.

This book had me hooked from the first sentence. Judith Moore makes no apologies for her blunt and honest prose, and she even prepares you for it. She makes no attempts to "sugarcoat" anything about her life, and I admired her bravery in doing so.

What I did not admire were the instances where complete strangers ridiculed her or treated her with disdain, and she rehashes many of these scenes for the reader. Especially disgusting was the time a blonde woman, walking down the street carrying a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken, had her bag of dinner attacked by Moore's little dog, who smelled the food and grabbed the bag with her teeth. The blonde's dinner went all over the sidewalk, and she reprimanded Moore for not keeping better hold of her dog. Moore sincerely apologized and handed the woman a $20. Was she grateful? Of course not. She gave Moore a dirty look and hurried away. Keep in mind that the chicken dinner probably cost six bucks at the most.

I am very sad for the author and immensely angry at a society that treats overweight people this way. I honestly had no idea that total strangers vocalized their disgust so readily, without thought to anyone's feelings. It really opened my eyes to the prejudices that obese people face.

What Judith Moore has done is something almost every woman has done at some point in her life--belittle herself. Most women do not publish their self-loathing, however, and that is what makes this book so astonishing. Fat or thin, male or female, this book has something that everyone can understand. Heartwrenching and true, you'll end up wishing it was just really really good fiction.

Why is it that all the size positive books out there seem to sink into oblivion, but yet another self- and fat-hating book gets touted to the skies? That the author had a traumatizing childhood is undeniable. That this childhood makes every woman smell like "meat" and every fat person worthless is ridiculous, offensive, and hateful. This book is anti-woman and anti-size, and is written with the language of an adult, but the emotional knee-jerk reaction of a child. The author's childhood makes my heart ache, but it's time to grow up.

I loved Fat Girl. It was as though I was reading my life story. I have written extensively about my life as a fat girl and it is good to recognize a sister. Our bodies define our experience. Nobody loves us fat--not even our mothers. We keep hoping and working toward a time when we aren't judged by our bodies. That time never comes. We keep hoping that one day we will shed our bulky bodies and a new person and new life will emerge. Time passes and life goes on and we are still fat-despite all of efforts. We are what we are. I think everyone should read this book.

I have to admit I was a little bored in the beginning because the author seemed SO bitter about her life and about being fat (she must have repeated that word a hundred times in just the first chapter! Wasn't there another word she could use just for variety?) Then after Chapter 4, the memoir began and I was transfixed. I'm a firm believer that every person in this world has an interesting life story. Ms. Moore's was not only fascinating to read, it was extremely painful. There was so much more to her story than just being "a fat girl".....a broken home, an abusive mother & grandmother, no friends, basically no love expressed to her at all. How sad. Now I'm not one to require a fairy-tale ending in all the books I read, but I was truly hoping that SOMETHING good would finally happen to her. It didn't. All in all, it was a well-written and brutally honest portrayal of a girl struggling to fit into her world. I just felt the ending was a bit rushed, and it cut off without much closure.

I was very disapointed by this book. The animal references towards women, fat women in this case, shows that the author has a very developed amount of bigotry. I understand that she was abused, horribly, as a child but now it seems she's internalized that hatred and has decided to spend her time acting in the same way her abusers were towards her.

This is not a great book. This is no where near the fantastic reviews written here. This is a woman who for no other reason feels it necessary to print what happened to her and her warped sense of self hatred (the part about women smells was especially disgusting). It is imature, it is a waste of time and ultimatly, pure blinding hatred. Hatred for all, not just those who are fat.

I find it interesting that at the beginning of this review page, there are so many glowing reviews for this book. Could it be the authors or her friends doing? It must be.

To Collette: I don't mind reading a book that is written by a fat person. Every fat person needs a place to share their voice, especially now in these fat bigoting times. However, it's my right to voice my opinion. I can understand not seeing a person or book, in this case, for what it truly is. The hallmark of bigotry has always been to exclude people via "smells" and lump them in together and use shame to damn them into further exclusion, and to then normalize it till the people being excluded begin to accept it.

There is another, far better book that explains all this that I hope you seek out. It's call "The Invisble Woman--Confronting Weight Prejudice in America" by W.Charisse Goodman. Chapter 1 for instance talks about "Obese and Dirty". Please read it instead of this mess.

This riveting account of growing up in an abusive home is tough to read. Judith Moore's mother was the chronically-dissatisfied product of a broken home. Her father was obese from childhood, and felt inferior because of it. It is likely that this man's own insecurity prevented him from taking steps to protect Judith when he and her mother divorced. Thus, at about 4 years old, Judith was plunged into the misery of living with "Grammy" on an Arkansas farm, followed by a life with a vindictive, physically abusive mother. The only respite from this hell was the time Judith spent with her kindly gay uncle Carl. Throughout, the now-obese Judith was tormented by children her own age and came to loathe herself.

This book raises the old "chicken and egg question": Did Judith Moore become fat because she filled the hole inside her with food, instead of love? Or was she genetically predestined to become fat, and was mistreated as a result of it? After reading this book, I am inclined to believe that it is not an "either-or" proposition. Judith Moore almost certainly has "fat genes," from both her father and from Grammy; she exacerbated the problem by bingeing where and when she could find food (although this was likely in reaction to the strenuous diets her mother forced her to follow); and, most important, if Judith had not been fat, her mother would have abused her for reasons of her own.

There is almost no levity in this book. Aside from Uncle Carl's "chartreuse party," where green food is served to celebrate redecorating a green room, it is one harrowing situation after another. Yet, this downbeat memoir raises a lot of important questions: Are fat people forced to work harder to obtain the same love granted those of normal weight? How does growing up fat (as did Judith and her father) affect one's body image as an adult? Does it lead to a permanent "inferiority complex"? This searingly honest story is worth your time and attention.

I understand that this is one woman's memoirs of growing up fat and in an abusive situation. I don't deny that she experienced hatred because of being fat, because fat people today still do, but to generalize her experience onto every single fat person, as when she uses the word "you" to explain her own experience, belies her hatred for fat people in general.

*I* would hate for a non-fat person to read this book and decide, because Moore reinforces all the negative stereotypes about self-loathing and how disgusting fat people are, that it all must be true--we are all living tragic, lonely, sexless, food-obsessed lives.

If you still think she doesn't think this way, read the article she wrote (...)where my favorite (not!) quote is: Even the Size 3000 pantyhose made especially for fat women rip and tear when you try getting your tiny hog feet through the hosiery's filmy fabric.

I'm not orders of magnitude bigger than a size small, I do find clothes and hosiery to fit me, everyone has clothes made "especially" for them (it's called "your size"), I am able to put them on wiithout tearing them, and I don't have "tiny hog feet" (I'd wager Moore doesn't, either, and yes, I do understand the shallow meataphor), I have normal-sized human feet! I wish I could fill the margins with notes for every sentence like this in the book.