Customer Reviews

Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self

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4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I thought I was going to like both this memoir and its author, but I came away feeling ambivalent about both. (I read about Frances Kuffel in a magazine, and got the impression that her book would be well worth reading, but I did not find that to be the case.)
What put me off the most about Passing for Thin was that, despite having once been fat herself, Kuffel seems devoid of empathy for those who are still fat. She refers to a woman in her OA program as a "fatty" and to her lover's obese son as "Dudley Dursley". (Harry Potter's cousin.) This might be an apt comparison in that Dudley Dursley is indeed obese, but he is also mean, petty and spoiled rotten, so it seems more than a little unkind of Kuffel to mention this particular fictional character when writing about her lover's son.
Having lost half her weight, Kuffel now seems as contemptuous of the obese as the people who used to give her "appalled second glances" when she herself was obese.
I was also put off by Kuffel's relentless narcissism. It's very peculiar that she would choose Janeane Garofalo as a role model, because as far as I can tell, these women have very little in common. Garofalo has been quoted as saying (about a time in her life when she lost a lot of weight in the hope that it would help her land more parts) she hates the vanity that goes with being thin. Kuffel, on the other hand, seems to embrace this kind of vanity, going on and on about various aspects of her appearance. (I watch What Not to Wear and buy fashion magazines from time to time, so the fact that even I was bored by the endless descriptions of Kuffel's various outfits is saying a lot.) It also doesn't seem to occur to Kuffel that, having been supported and encouraged by various OA members for quite some time, she ought to start thinking about supporting other members in return. It is only after her sponsor gently suggests that she should "pay attention to something besides what you look like" and recommends that she volunteers to sponsor someone, that she even considers doing so. And the woman Kuffel ends up sponsoring is chosen because she is "prettier" than all the other OA members in need of a sponsor. Where is it written that if you are the proud owner of a pretty face, you are by definition a fascinating creature and deserving of all the help you can get, whereas if you look like what Kuffel calls a "Drab", then you must surely be drab on the inside as well and not really worth helping? (Or at least, you can't expect someone who is "pretty" to help you.)
I am also mystified as to why the book description compares Passing for Thin to Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face. I read Autobiography of a Face several years ago, and it was, as I recall, a far better memoir than Passing for Thin. For starters, Grealy is nowhere near as self-absorbed as Kuffel, and her writing also flows better. Kuffel's writing style is not as consistent. Sometimes it is ornate to the point of becoming stilted, while other parts of her book read more like the kind of simplistic article you might find in a magazine like Cosmopolitan than like a memoir. (One example is the Planet of Fat/Planet of Girls metaphor, which becomes more tiresome with each passing chapter.) I really don't like book descriptions that try to attract potential readers by comparing the book in question to an already published and greatly acclaimed book. (It's like those annoying movie ads that say: "If you liked that movie, you'll love this movie!" By allowing whoever wrote the book description to compare Passing for Thin to Autobiography of a Face, Kuffel is in effect saying: "Hey, MY book is that great, too!")
While I found Passing for Thin disappointing, I do admire Frances Kuffel for managing to lose weight without the aid of gastric bypass surgery, and despite having been obese for most of her life, and I find it touching and heartening that she was brave enough to put herself out there in terms of dating and romance, despite her insecurity and lack of experience.

I agree with some of the other reviewers in that sometimes I didn't like Frances. Sometimes she is whiny and self-pitying. Sometimes I wanted to grab her and say "get over it, girl!" But I applaud her for such a raw, open accounting of herself and her journey. Weight loss is hard. Adjusting to the results of weight loss is harder.

I know, because I am in the middle of that journey myself. In the last 18 months I have lost 125 lbs, on my way to losing 175. To those who commented that it seemed like the book was written by two different women (Fat Frances and Thin Frances), I can say that weight loss *can* turn you into a different person inside as well. The way I relate to the world is completely different. My role, as I see it, and as others see it, is completely different. At age 33, that's going to cause some tension and some problems. I see tension and changes in some of my relationships. I'm trying to keep an eye on them and nurture them through the changes. So far I haven't lost any of them, but I could see it happening.

To those who said Frances became more selfish... it's true. I definitely find myself being more selfish. Why? Because I spent most of my childhood and early adulthood desperately trying to make people like me and "overcome" the fact that I was fat. Now it's time to do some things just for me, and just because I want to do them. Doesn't mean I'm becoming mean-spirited or self-involved, I'm just beginning to really love and value myself and recognize that sometimes I have to put myself first.

Her story was so compelling to me that it has inspired me to write my own. Might take a while (particularly since the story is not finished yet) but I think this aspect of weight loss desperately needs more attention. As others have said, the "how" of weight loss has been adequately covered, the "what" of weight loss hasn't. When I talk to friends and acquaintances about my experience, they're mildly curious about how I eat, but what causes them to really sit up and listen is when I talk about how it has changed (and continues to change) my life. I will probably talk about my struggles with discipline, and sticking to my eating plan amidst personal challenges, and how I was able to successfully make a change in my behaviors this time.

As for the vanity thing, you know what? I didn't think she was impossibly vain. I completely related to her... for someone who has never been able to shop in a "normal" store, the idea that I could wear Dolce and Gabbana is a total thrill to me too (not that I can afford it!). Someone who has been able to wear all kinds of clothes all of their life can't possibly understand the thrill of being able to pull a wide variety of styles on and have them 1) fit and 2) flatter. If that's vain, so be it. Yes, I'm more obsessed with my body as a thin(ner) person now than I ever was as an obese person. I'm harder on it now. But I also appreciate it more now. I appreciate it for what it can *do* even more than how it *looks*. I got that out of Kuffel's book, too, more than I got "vanity." I imagine eventually I'll get over it and clothes will just be clothes again, but right now, they represent freedom!

I read Frances Kuffel's "Passing for Thin" with mixed emotions. As a person who has (and continues to) struggle with weight, body issues and weight loss, I could readily identify with many of the topics Kuffel writes about.
For instance, she writes about needing to wear shorts underneath a denim dress to prevent chafing of her inner thighs in the summer...and of being refused entry to an amusement park ride - and the condescending remarks of pity offered by one woman afterwards as a sort of consolence...and of being hot and feeling in poor health all the time...so much of this a large reader can understand intimately.
I also think she does a very good job of showing, early in the book, how family dynamics affect her weight gain...her family (and one brother, in particular), come across as very insensitive to her during her childhood.
Yes, Frances Kuffel has spent much time on "Planet Fat" (her own descriptive phrase for what it's like living as a very fat person in this world) and she knows alot about the terrain, the rules and so forth.
She also does a fine job showing how difficult it is to make the transition from "Planet Fat" to a normal life in a "normal" body after her loss of about 150 pounds. (Not just in terms of the physical weight loss...but how, mentally, emotionall and spiritually she had to adapt to a new way of living and being in the world after her huge weight loss).
Despite all this, I did have some problems with the book. Kuffel's assessment of fat women (she devises her own system of grouping various "types" of fat women under such headings as the "Drab", the "Perfectionist", the "Orphan" and so on) leaves much to be desired in terms of actual respect (and insight, I felt) of women who live in a large body. Yes, I'm sure many women are just as Kuffel describes in her "types"...but surely there are also lots of fat women living lives of happiness too? Or is this too hard to imagine (much less give credence to) in the fat-phobic world we are All living in?
I don't mind when Kuffel details the elements of her own self-loathing, but when she extends this to All fat people, women in particular, I feel uncomfortable.
She was able to lose a huge amount of weight in a 12-step program (and more power to her) but such programs are not for everyone. I got a distinct feeling from her book that people who do not (or can not) lose weight in this way are somehow "in denial" about their weight problems (and addictions to food).
Reading this book, I got the impression that my only option, in terms of living a normal, sane life with food would be to do as Kuffel did: join a heavily spiritual program and do their "diet" (weighing and measuring of certain foods on a very restricted food plan), otherwise I'd be forever on "Planet Fat" too. (Kuffel refers to the "barbituate" effect of certain kinds of food and explains that she could never eat such food again if she were to maintain her newly thin body).
It is all well and good that Kuffel can do this. Many people either can not or do not want to. This does not mean we are "in denial" about our problems...or that we must forever hate ourselves as her book seems to suggest.
I applaud her strength of will (and higher power) that brought her to this state and I'm glad she's written her story. It is, in many ways, very inspiring.
I do feel she's left alot out, though. For instance, a more thorough, in-deph understanding of her self-loathing (aside from it mainly stemming from fat = bad) would have given her book a deeper perspective, I think.
Reading this book, I find that Kuffel (both when she was fat and now that she is thin) does little to question many entrenched attitudes towards fat people.
Maybe this book does not need to do that. For myself, it would have made her book much more insightful if she had done so.

I know what it is to be like Frances, both ways. I also know that you don't have to shed brain cells with your fat cells. She writes well. Her observations on how fat women are treated and her "fat story" ring painfully true. I freely commend the incredible work she did in weight loss, (all the more impressive since she clearly has multiple addictions to address). These elements simply don't balance, for me, the fact that I am appalled at the person she has revealed by the end of the book. She is only too ready to tell us--endlessly and jocularly--how beautiful she is, an opinion I'm afraid I cannot share. She boasts endlessly of this and her intellect--despite a lackluster career record and occasional startling lapses in her writing--to an extent that can only suggest a virulent self-hatred, and which severed my support of her early in the book. This is never more appallingly clear than when she refers disdainfully to other fat people as "fatties," in particular describing a zealous new O.A. member as "a fatty smug in her chub." A good deal of text is devoted to her quest for A Man (hardly unique), how many men "look" at her and shopping-- "my crowning achievement in being able to wear Dolce & Gabbana." Her narcissism is never clearer than in the statement, "I'm a snob. I don't really like fat people much. I want a pretty sponsee, someone I can be proud of," who had "what I wanted to encourage" rather than a unique self for her to help reveal. For me, she ranks with Carnie Wilson in defining herself by, and embracing, those very values--shallow, cruel, competitive and contemptuous--that have made life in a fat body so painful for her, and for all overweight women. She's the quintessential "upwardly mobile" climber from a second-class status who has kicked the faces below her on the ladder and slammed the door behind her. Her chronicle records such a pattern of increasing recidivism with every "binge," that I think her story is far from over, but I can't wish her luck.

I picked this book because I wanted to read about someone else who has struggled with compulsive overeating and who has recovered/is recovering from it with some success.

I really did appreciate the descriptions the author, Frances Kuffel, gave of her life as a compulsive overeater - her thoughts, her feelings, her food associations, the secretive nature of this problem, the amount of time, energy and money taken up by food - eating it and thinking about it. I could identify with so much of her experience.

But...

There was as much about the book that I disliked as I liked. Frances Kuffel is a writer by trade and she seems to have written this memoir with an audience similar to herself in mind - that is, for other writers and people in the "literary circle". In my opinion, her use of "big words" detracted from the message of her story. Despite the fact that I have a graduate-level education, I found that on most pages of this book, there were either words or references that I did not understand. I came across so many words that I have never heard of that I lost count. I wasn't far into the book when I lost the desire to look them up as well. I ended up doing my best to approximate the meaning of unknown words using context clues, then moved on. In addition to so many "big money" words, there were countless references to classic literature (which I will admit, I did not "get"). There were also many "relates" to plays, Broadway productions, classic movie stars and gay icons (Barbara Streisand, etc.).

So...all that was annoying enough, but...

Toward the end of the book (p. 228 out of 257 total), Ms. Kuffel drew a comparison between the end of a 3-month relationship and the loss of a child:

"I'd been disappointed in love when I was fat, but it was the grief of miscarriage, a deformed possibility of mostly unadmitted love that couldn't survive gestation. This was a funeral for an infant. It had a name and a personality and a future. And it was dead."

I found this so offensive, it's hard for me to put into words how I felt when I read it. My jaw dropped. It was one of those, "Oh, no she didn't!" moments. I could hardly believe it. I mean, where on earth does she get off comparing the end of a three month relationship - even if she did fall in love - to the death of an infant???? I get that she was making a point, trying to explain the pain she felt over the loss of her first love relationship. But comparing it to the death of an infant??? Even comparing it to a miscarriage would have been outrageous in my opinion. I read that passage over several times and shook my head, marveling over the fact that Ms. Kuffel had the nerve to even think those words, let alone write them out for the world to read. And on top of that, her words presumably had the approval of an editor and a publisher as well. I don't get it.

Imagine my surprise when just 12 pages later, I found another stunningly inappropriate comparison regarding that same failed relationship:

"City Hall. The fountain where the Boy from Connecticut and I had kissed such a long kiss that I could probably find our shadows seared into the concrete like the immolated citizens of Hiroshima."

OMG. I don't even know what to say to that.

I think it's a shame that this memoir contains such glaring drawbacks because Frances Kuffel's story is such a touching one. She conveyed her struggle with compulsive overeating and obesity and the challenges of recovery that face her every with such honesty. I saw myself in so many of the things she did and recognized my own feelings in so many of the feelings she described. It is a comfort to know that there are other people in this world who interact with food in many of the same ways that I do, and that at least some of those people have found a way to manage their addiction.

I'm surprised at the negative reviews I've read regarding this book. It seemed to me that these reviewers disliked the idea that the author really hated being fat and was unable to fully accept herself at that weight. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable. It's WHY she wanted to lose this weight and WHY she finally DID lose this weight. It's why ALL dieting people lose the weight. They dislike fat. Aesthetically, many people find obesity unattractive. Although one may not like this fact of life, it IS indeed a fact of life. Furthermore, for some, obesity epitomizes the idea of indulgence and a lack of caring of themselves.

I found this memoir to be particularly touching. Frances is brutally honest when she recalls how she used to sneak food, and lots of it, as a child. She recalls the pain she felt being fat, how she knew she was considered and judged-- fairly or not.

What I found most interesting of all is how Frances had to learn behaviors that most women take for granted. As preteens and teens, we learn to flirt, to make ourselves attractive to the opposite sex, to talk to others, to dress, to put on makeup, etc. We learn how to attract attention from others, to meet potential dates, mates, etc. All this is natural for most of us.

For Frances, however, none of this was a natural progression. As an obese adolescent who never felt attractive, she never learned how to flirt because she never felt as if she was attractive enough to meet others. One of the negative reviewers stated derisively that Frances referred to herself as a girl. I didn't make that distinction when I read the book, but it's only fitting. She missed a normal girlhood-- the makeup, the hair, the sleepovers with girls where you giggle about boys and sex. All of this was foreign to Frances. And, she was never treated as a cute little girl or "an attractive woman" growing up. So, when she was all of a sudden thrust into the world of being considered attractive, of having people respond to her as if she was an attractive woman, she had to learn all of the behaviors that most of us just learned from living.

I have a family member who is the author's former size. I can see, in her, many of the qualities the author shares with us about being obese. It's really not her weight alone that makes her different from other women I know, it's what that weight caused her to miss out on as a child an adolescent and how it shaped her outlook as an adult.

I completely recommend this book to anyone. Whether weight has been an issue in one's life or not, this author's journey is inspiring and true.

I was excited to read Kuffel's book, as I've been overweight since twelve years of age. I'm now 23 and have been steadily losing pounds for over a month now. While I appreciate Kuffel's attempt to provide a memoir of food addiction and regaining a healthy body, it seems as though too much of the "hard work" was just glossed over. In several early chapters the reader is treated to a play-by-play look at Kuffel's food addiction as a young child, but no mention is made of how her weight affected her teenage life or how she struggled with food during her 20s and 30s. I was equally surprised to read about her sudden decision to "abstain from flour and sugar" after only going to one or two weight management meetings.

What I find most disturbing (and disheartening) is the way in which Kuffel makes losing weight look so easy. It is not an easy thing, by any means. In fact, it's a struggle for the majority of those who attempt it. Only several paragraphs are devoted to Kuffel's mid-stage weight loss and for a self-described "food addict" no mention is made of her battles to control her cravings. While I realize that not all people who lose weight do it in the same way, I found it disappointing that the book leapt from her weight of 338 pounds to 176 rather fast. What happened during that period would have probably been the most profound part of the book; however, it was left out. And as any substantially overweight person knows, the first thirty or forty pounds are often the toughest to lose. Kuffel's decision to gloss over that stage provides readers with the sentiment that the weight came off quite easily and she never battled food addiction or cravings again. To many, that is not the reality.

I was also somewhat saddened that Kuffel constantly referred to herself as being on "planet fat" before her weight loss and then on "planet girl" after she lost weight. Are fat females not of the human race? It's as though she is implying that she wasn't a real person until she lost weight. Sadly, it seemed to me that she placed too much emphasis on morphing from "fat" to "human."

I was disappointed and expected more.

I love stories about facing your dreams, living with your demons, and finding your true self. I wanted Frances to "win", to accept herself, to let go of her pain. I kept reading late into the night to get to the "happily ever after" part -- but alas, this was a memoir, not fiction. Her courage and commitment are real.

Some of the writing, however, was awkward: "My first date was an old work buddy Chris's fault" for exampple, could have easily been changed to "My first date was the fault of my old work buddy, Chris."

Also, she jumps around quite a bit chronologically. I would have preferred a more straight-forward account of things.

Most frustrating was the lack of information about the author's struggle (or lack of? we never find out) with actually sticking to her food plan. What challenges did she face right off the bat? How could she have gone overnight from food obsessed to measuring and weighing every mouthful? And for over 500 days straight?

Aside from that, the author did let us in on extremely person details, especially in the dating arena.

If you're looking for the specific "how-tos" in getting a handle on your eating and emotions, this book is not it. However, if you like inspiring memoirs, you'll be satisfied with Passing for Thin.

I read this book last summer when I was on vacation in Cape Cod. It takes a decent book to keep you glued to your beach chair instead of enjoying the ocean, but I was hooked. Then I got home from vacation and Googled "France Kuffel" only to discover that Frances was fat again. What a disappointment. It sort of negated all her efforts and my time. From what I can tell about her life today, she is walking dogs and obsessing about things, which leads me to conclude that the real root of her problems are mental and the fat is just a symptom. Nonetheless, her willingness to reveal all the personal details of her life is commendable, as many of them are very easy to relate to for those of us carrying extra pounds.

Many accounts of losing weight, particularly those in mass-market magazines, read as fairy tales. You know the ones: "I was miserable at 300 pounds; I lost 150 pounds; and now I live happily ever after." Great, but not realistic.

"Passing for Thin" is not a Cinderella story. It is an honest account of a woman who was fat almost all her life (reaching a top weight of 338 pounds) and lost nearly 200 pounds. At the end, Kuffel's life is not perfect. She is still living in her "Bat Cave" and is not married to any handsome prince. Her life is, however, immeasurably better. Not only can Kuffel buy more attractive clothes, but she can date (apparently for the first time ever) and otherwise participate more fully in life. Other reviewers have criticized the author's focus on her looks and her clothes, but I think Kuffel was just trying to convey the wonder that she felt every day after being very, very heavy for 40 years.

Frances Kuffel is not perfect. She has been marinated in, and has apparently adopted, prejudices against the overweight. She relies too heavily, in my opinion, on her OA sponsors to tell her what to eat. But there are incredible insights in the book. Kuffel describes what it is like to be as heavy as she was and get through a day (or, worse yet, go on an airplane) and provides interesting insights into the "categories" of fat people that she comes across. Like others, I would have cut a little of the "look how pretty I am" parts of the book, but the accurate, honest and unique insights make it worthwhile.