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Manstealing for Fat Girls

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 136 ratings · 28 reviews

This off-kilter novel centers on three girls who are definitely not part of the in crowd: one’s fat, one’s a dyke, and one is missing a breast. Nicknamed "Lezzylard" by her classmates, Angie is seduced by the prettiest girl in school, an anorexic who just wants to make imaginary grocery lists. Inez, the school’s pot dealer, can’t shoplift because security guards are mesmer...more

Paperback, 228 pages

Published November 30th 2005 by Soft Skull Press

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Nov 19, 2008 Ciara rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: disaffected teen feminists, chubby girls, the soft skull editors

Shelves: read-in-2007, feminist-y-books

man! another book that was such a disappointment! i was all set to be really into this book, which i imagined to be about a likeable, chubby, misunderstood protaganist who shows everyone up in the end with her sassy ways & doesn't shed an ounce. & i think that's what the author was going for, but it kind of meandered all over the place, covering all kinds of coming-of-age territory that left me wondering what the hell the point was, & worst of all, it faced the same sad fate as every...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars

this is one of the most honest and painful voices i've read in a long time - the weight-loss self-talk, the flashes of sexual fantasies, the passivity with dudes who aren't good enough. i don't know when i've read a truer account of being a teenage fat girl. constantly funny and ridiculous and heartbreaking. YES.

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Jun 25, 2007 Richard added it

Sixteen year old Angie is called "Lezzylard" by her classmates. Her best friend Shelby is an out dyke--in a working class suburb of St. Louis in the 1980s--while the third member of their trio can't shoplift because security guards always fixate on her one enormous breast. Angie's mother is marrying a man with a sleazy mustache who puts up NASCAR posters in the living room while her friend Inez, the school's pot-dealer and sometime beer whore, stands outside convenience stories, pretending to ta...more

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Sep 24, 2010 Aravis Mcbroom rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 10, 2008 Kelley added it

Dredging the archives of my old YA blog--from back in the day when I was a YA para-librarian. Awesome!

Now this book isn’t really a Young Adult novel, per se, but the characters are high schoolers. And if you want to read a story about some kids with fucked up lives, this is it. The main character and narrator is Angie Neuweather. She’s a fat girl whose weight loss plan is to just stop eating, and her nickname is “Lezzylard.” Her best friend is Shelby, an out dyke. And her other close friend has...more Dredging the archives of my old YA blog--from back in the day when I was a YA para-librarian. Awesome!

Now this book isn’t really a Young Adult novel, per se, but the characters are high schoolers. And if you want to read a story about some kids with fucked up lives, this is it. The main character and narrator is Angie Neuweather. She’s a fat girl whose weight loss plan is to just stop eating, and her nickname is “Lezzylard.” Her best friend is Shelby, an out dyke. And her other close friend has only one developed breast. Every day at school is hell for them.

Angie’s mom drops the bomb that she’s engaged to Rudy, a sleazy, moustache-y loser who moves in immediately and insists on barging in Angie’s bedroom without knocking. At school, the popular crowd hates her guts, except for the prettiest girl in school, Carrie the anorexic, who platonically seduces her behind the cafeteria by making up imaginary grocery lists with her. When Angie tells Mindy, Carrie’s best friend, to “just poke up your lunch and kill yourself already,” an all out war begins between the popular kids and the rejects.

Michelle Embree sets this story in St. Louis, down in south county, and the characters attend Mehlville high school. For this reason alone, the story resonated with me, as I went to the nearest (and rival) high school Lindbergh. Additionally, she weaves in punk rock, hoosier-ways, and bad 80’s style to make a book that speaks to my youth. There’s lots of drug use and sex (especially in Angie’s bizarre and wonderful fantasy life), so I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable recommending this to just any old high schoolers, but Michelle Embree captures the snotty angst of my teens so well, I’m sure it would speak to teens as well as those of us who (just barely) survived our teens.

Manstealing for Fat Girls was published by one of my favorite small presses: Soft Skull Press. There are a fair share of typos, and the dialogue is super-heavy and felt awkward to follow along with in the beginning. I read this book, however, in one day, and fell in love with all the messed up characters within one chapter. My only real complaint is that Angie does eventually lose weight from all the dexatrim she pops, and she only receives positive reinforcement for this. That reason alone is why I would not recommend it to most young adults because of their heightened sensitivity to body image due to existent social/cultural norms that I think are reinforced in the book.

This book reminded me of two other books: Lynda Barry’s Cruddy (adult) and Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Name Me Nobody (YA). With the former book, it’s almost as if Manstealing for Fat Girls is a continuation of the characters’ lives, with more drugs, more violence, and more neuroses. As far as Name Me Nobody, the biggest parallels lie in the plot line: the main character has body issues, her best friend is queer, and she eventually has a forced sexual experience. Both books I highly recommend as well, by the way, although the latter does have the same fault I list above.

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Dec 06, 2008 Robert Beveridge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: cuy-co-pub-lib, finished

Michelle Embree, Manstealing for Fat Girls(Soft Skull, 2005)

It's been a bit of time since I've read this, because I haven't quite been sure what to say about it. I've read both sides of the argument over this book, and I can see the points both sides are making. The one thing I haven't been able to see is the one aspect of the book about which everyone else sees in it: its sense of humor. Both critics and defenders seemed to find the book uproariously funny. I missed the joke.

I'm not even going...more Michelle Embree, Manstealing for Fat Girls (Soft Skull, 2005)

It's been a bit of time since I've read this, because I haven't quite been sure what to say about it. I've read both sides of the argument over this book, and I can see the points both sides are making. The one thing I haven't been able to see is the one aspect of the book about which everyone else sees in it: its sense of humor. Both critics and defenders seemed to find the book uproariously funny. I missed the joke.

I'm not even going to try and summarize this incredibly (and needlessly) complex novel beyond the barest bones. The story involves Angie, who's sixteen, fat, and bi-curious. Her mother is dating a jerk, her best friend is both out of the closet and flamboyant, and the only guy she knows who treats her like a human being is so odd that, until we get some third-party confirmation, the reader may be left wondering if he's actually a figment of Angie's imagination. Angie is obsessed to the point of madness with dieting, which never works, but the attention that a classmate slowly starts paying her leads her to the first tentative steps towards believing that she's pretty the way she is. And that's when things start getting weird.

The central premise there is the book's strong point, to me at least—it's a book that does promote the idea that there's more to attractiveness than the physical, which is an especially important lesson in today's society (though like most other books that have that message, it never seems to take into account the idea that some guys really do actually find fat chicks hot; it takes the same tack of “well, I like you no matter what you look like” that everyone else does, which is highly annoying). Its problem is that while that does seem to be the main thrust of the book, it's sometimes hard to tell, because it gets buried under the weight of its own subplots, seemingly extraneous (if well-drawn) characters, and attempts at—veracity?—that just come off silly. (Maybe that's the humor I missed?)

In any case, as I said at the beginning of this, I can see both sides of the debate. Yes, high school kids actually do these things. (Well, most of them.) And this is nothing new; high school kids did these things when I was in high school, and that's long enough ago that what we did is probably considered very old hat by today's standards. So to contend that high school students should be sheltered from it is purest stupidity. But on the other side of the coin, I do think the book tries too hard and reaches too far into the absurd in its quest to either identify with its target audience or make them laugh (your call). But it's readable enough that the all-out absurdity in the final third of the novel acquires a certain weird charm. Or it may annoy you to death. Depends. Like everything else about this book. ***

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Sep 06, 2007 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, ya-books

I don't know what alternate universe this high school exists in, but DON'T GO THERE. It's awful. Also, this book started out relate-able but got so complex and dramatic that I was like... was high school really like this? For.. anyone? There were like, way too many characters. I couldn't keep track of them all. It had a lot of cool moments, I guess. When the characters involved weren't getting raped or having underage sex and smoking and drinking and doing drugs CONSTANTLY. I know high schoolers...more I don't know what alternate universe this high school exists in, but DON'T GO THERE. It's awful. Also, this book started out relate-able but got so complex and dramatic that I was like... was high school really like this? For.. anyone? There were like, way too many characters. I couldn't keep track of them all. It had a lot of cool moments, I guess. When the characters involved weren't getting raped or having underage sex and smoking and drinking and doing drugs CONSTANTLY. I know high schoolers experiment, but COME ON. Also, what time period is this supposed to take place? And.. where? In what state? I can't even tell. I really liked the character Inez. She rocks. The main character is pretty cool too. The characters were all excellent, I guess, it was just the situations they were put in (the climax of the book, while thrilling, was ridiculous) that didn't exactly work. The ending sucked, it didn't provide closure.. but it also didn't sum everything up with some shitty moral like a lot of YA books do (which i appreciate). Actually, it generally steered pretty clear of obvious DON'T DO THIS things. The main character is fat and hates it and is half anorexic/bulimic, but I don't get a sense that the author is like THIS IS BAD, she's just saying, this is how it is.

Also, I'm fairly positive the title was picked by someone who didn't' read the book. who maybe SKIMMED a summary of the book. But clearly had no idea what it was about. unless the author came up with he title, in which case.... lame. Because that's a horrible, horrible title. And this book is much darker than the silly-ass title makes it out to be.
ALSO, by far the most obnoxious thing about this book that I cannot get over... are the 8,000 typos and grammatical errors. I mean, a typo here and there, fine. But there were too many. Mostly it was lack of commas. Whoever edited this book is fucking fired forever. Or maybe the author sent it off like this, in which case she sucks at grammar and both her AND the editors who failed to fix it are fired forever. Really, the dumb title is one thing, but this is unforgivable. Soft Skull press, you FAIL.

Also, I can't fucking believe I wrote this long of a review on this book, when this book, while amusing enough, has left relatively little impact on my life. I think it's because I stayed up all night starting and finishing this book. I'm not sure why, I just couldn't stop. Damn you, Poorly Titled Book of Teenage Drama!
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Dec 07, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

There were some positive things about this book, but they were mostly overshadowed by the ridiculous lack of proofreading. I don't mean using -in' instead of -ing, because that's a valid stylistic choice even if I don't like it. I mean "its" and "its" mixed up, "were" instead of "we're," misplaced periods, incorrect capitalization.. These things were happening on practically every second page and every time I saw one I wanted to throw the book against the wall. Ugh.

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Sep 20, 2009 Jenn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: quick-reads

wow!!! so good!! i dont normally like realistic fiction, but the title really got me to take a closer look! i didnt really think it would be that good, but i was deffinatly surprised! i could really connect with the main character, Angie. i know how she feels about the whole fat thing, and alot of her rpoblems are really relatable.
overall, a great book i would recomend to anyone, well, anyone who doesnt mind excessive sex, drugs, and swearing!

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Feb 12, 2013 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was an ambitious novel. The main character, a teen girl named Angie, begins participating with a varied, sometimes older, crowd. Angie's teen angst is set against an action-packed climax, including the police and gun-running. The working-class St. Louis suburban setting pits social and ethnic ideals versus reality.

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Jan 18, 2013 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

First of all, lots of typos. Never seen so many in a book! Second, an easy, quick read reminding me I'm happy I'm done with the hell of school. Weird coming-of-age story, the end kinda sucked. Was expecting a better ending. Overall a good read to add to my list.

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Apr 23, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kind of crazy, a little trashy, but really fun. Sometimes you just wanted to shake the main character for getting into terrible situations, but her strength and humor made the book. Plus I liked the dynamics between her family members, very realistic.

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Jun 19, 2009 S rated it 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely love this book. Try to picture yourself, as a teenager (hard, I know) and think of all the things you thought and did then, but replace it with the wisdom, crassness and humour of adulthood. This is Michelle Embree. Must read for anyone.

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Mar 30, 2009 Lindy rated it 3 of 5 stars

What a weird story. And a chilling story. It could all happen. I am thankful that I didn't gorw up in the ghettos of St. Louis, MO. Or anywhere in MO for that matter. Spped freaks, skipping school, Busch Beer. Uhg!

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Jun 15, 2010 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fatties, lgbt, young-adult-teen-tween, sir-skim-a-lot

There were parts I liked and parts I didn't. A lot of sex and violence.

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May 12, 2009 Adam added it

I read this for the same reason they climb mountains

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Jan 21, 2009 Linda marked it as to-read

I could have used this in high school....

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Mar 24, 2011 Emily Wendling added it

Shelves: 2011-read-books

Loved it

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Nov 27, 2010 Joshua added it

Shelves: young-adult-lit

Good book. I really like Michelle Embree's voice.

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Nov 25, 2010 Aaron rated it 3 of 5 stars

While not as cool as the cover looks, this is pretty much what I expected it to be (and pretty much wanted): A story about the fucked up lives of some angst-ridden high school girls who happen to be the definition of outsiders. Aside from the poor editing, this was well written and enjoyable at times, though most of the time totally awkward.

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Aug 25, 2007 Meghan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ya, fiction

Very few YA books are truly edgy - some of them live on the outskirts of suburbia (Rachel Cohn and others), but they never make it to the place that this book goes. Inhabiting the same world as Michelle Tea's Rose of No Man's Land, this book feels immediate, even though it takes place in the 1980s.

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Nov 26, 2008 Jenn rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a very bizarre book. It almost read like a teen book, but was very graphic at times when it talked about genitalia and the actual sex acts. There was a ton of foul language in it, too. Even when it was over, I wondered if there should have been more to it. It ended kinf of abruptly.

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Sep 30, 2009 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This adult novel was a hit with me. The main character is 16, but dealing with just about everything in life. One of her best friends is a lesbian and her other friend has one breast. What conversations they have!

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Sep 16, 2008 Jane added it Recommends it for: if you like the comic strip "Marlys"

I liked this book a lot, but the drugs and violence got worse toward the end, so i stopped laughing so much.
If you went to an American public High School, I think you will like this book.

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May 10, 2010 Nancy rated it 3 of 5 stars

There were parts of this book that rang truer about adolescence than just about anything else I've read. Other parts seemed over the top and not as easy to relate to, kind of painful to get through.

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Dec 08, 2007 Cherie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of "Hairstyles of the Damned"

Shelves: fiction

A- Interesting portrayal of a high school overweight girl and the problems with popularity, revenge, sex, and friendship--similar to Hairstyles….

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Jan 13, 2008 Megan added it

Shelves: teen-fiction

I remember being kind of disturbed by this book. It had some really hilarious parts, though and overall was a pretty decent read.

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Jul 31, 2007 Theresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

teen lit.
but real.
quick read and surprisingly reminiscent of what being a teenager is really like when life is all too imperfect.

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May 15, 2011 Very rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed, ya, 2009, screwy-teenagers, first-person

Totally, totally bizarre. And not in the good way.

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Jun 16, 2007 Snarky's rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: steamy-teen-fiction, non-scary-feminist-stuffs, girlieroadfun

Kind of weird and I wonder about my four star rating.

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About Michelle Embree

Michelle Embree (born April 23, 1972) is an American novelist and dramatist originally from St. Louis, Missouri.

A High School drop-out, she worked a series of low-wage jobs while earning her GED. Embree then attended McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois, graduating in 2000 with a B.A. in Sociology and Psychology.

Her novel, Manstealing for Fat Girls, was nominated for a 2004 Lambda Award for "Deb...more

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