Lisa's review

Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self
by Frances Kuffel

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168550.Passing_for_Thin_Losing_Half_My_Weight_and_Finding_My_Self?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172358805m/168550.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168550.Passing_for_Thin_Losing_Half_My_Weight_and_Finding_My_Self?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/98161.Frances_Kuffel">Frances Kuffel</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33129938?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 2 of 5 stars<br/>I would not describe this nasty manifesto as "darkly comic". This woman is one bitter fritter. The book reminded me of an incident that happened to me in 1999. I know the year because I was in a department store shopping for a bathing suit for a Caribbean vacation. I was very lean at that time, from sheer hard work and sacrifice. There was a woman, about forty years old and fifty pounds overweight, rummaging through bathing suits on the other side of the same rack I was looking through. She had a miserable ten year old girl with her, who would not shut up and stop fussing. The two bickered back and forth. Suddenly, with absolutely no prior words exchanged between us, the woman looks at me and says "Oh, you're so thin. What problems could you possibly have?" WTF? I said nothing. Ms. Kuffel, like many fat women, blanketly assumes thinner women have no problems, and lead mystical lives in tune with their perfect bodies. Yet she never bothers to ask them. She makes judgments about her own acquaintances instead of finding out their true feelings. Several times throughout I wondered if she was a complete sociopath. She also bears a frightening resemblance to a personal fat acquaintance I'll call "E". "E" was the type of person who, when making a brief stop on a long road trip, would order an appetizer and full dinner while everyone else split an order of fries. I could go on and on about personal choice and its consequences. I also, as a New Yorker, wasn't crazy about the way she coldly inserts her problems into the backdrop of 9/11. But the worst thing about this book by far was the corny, hackneyed, eye-rolling prose. And her strange (anti?) gay agenda. For instance: "And I was sober, with nothing to prove except everything. The last time I'd been out dancing I'd weighed three-hundred-some pounds, had been drunk, and had a roomful of gay boys join me in the weird ritual rondo of fags and hags. I had been thrilled by my sip of popularity, while the fags were thrilled to be queer but, by association and comparison to me, not freaks." 
<br/>And this one: "I was startled when I overheard her talking about a boyfriend. I'd assumed she was a biker dyke and that someday she would order me up in front of the Lesbian Tribunal for Failure to Be Gay." Draw your own conclusions from those two outbursts. Kuffel herself admits that she doesn't know a lot about joining "The Planet of Girls". I'll say. This is how Kuffel defines the epitome of cool chic rebelliousness in another woman: "Jennifer wore sunglasses at night." Wow. She also goes on and freaking on about her loose leftover skin. For Christ's sake get some plastic surgery already. And I know this will probably get me into hell that much quicker, but 170 pounds is a lot to lose in one year. That coupled with her mysterious emergency stomach surgery makes me wonder if it isn't just possible she actually has had gastric bypass. While still going to Weight Watchers of course. Which is a wonderful organization. Not like gastric bypass in which about 3 out of 10 people will gain it back. Richard Simmons claims it's more like half. 
<br/>   
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/868018?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Lisa's review
rating:

bookshelves: diet-work-womens-life-culture-self-
status: Read in January, 2008

I would not describe this nasty manifesto as "darkly comic". This woman is one bitter fritter. The book reminded me of an incident that happened to me in 1999. I know the year because I was in a department store shopping for a bathing suit for a Caribbean vacation. I was very lean at that time, from sheer hard work and sacrifice. There was a woman, about forty years old and fifty pounds overweight, rummaging through bathing suits on the other side of the same rack I was looking through. She had a miserable ten year old girl with her, who would not shut up and stop fussing. The two bickered back and forth. Suddenly, with absolutely no prior words exchanged between us, the woman looks at me and says "Oh, you're so thin. What problems could you possibly have?" WTF? I said nothing. Ms. Kuffel, like many fat women, blanketly assumes thinner women have no problems, and lead mystical lives in tune with their perfect bodies. Yet she never bothers to ask them. She makes judg...more I would not describe this nasty manifesto as "darkly comic". This woman is one bitter fritter. The book reminded me of an incident that happened to me in 1999. I know the year because I was in a department store shopping for a bathing suit for a Caribbean vacation. I was very lean at that time, from sheer hard work and sacrifice. There was a woman, about forty years old and fifty pounds overweight, rummaging through bathing suits on the other side of the same rack I was looking through. She had a miserable ten year old girl with her, who would not shut up and stop fussing. The two bickered back and forth. Suddenly, with absolutely no prior words exchanged between us, the woman looks at me and says "Oh, you're so thin. What problems could you possibly have?" WTF? I said nothing. Ms. Kuffel, like many fat women, blanketly assumes thinner women have no problems, and lead mystical lives in tune with their perfect bodies. Yet she never bothers to ask them. She makes judgments about her own acquaintances instead of finding out their true feelings. Several times throughout I wondered if she was a complete sociopath. She also bears a frightening resemblance to a personal fat acquaintance I'll call "E". "E" was the type of person who, when making a brief stop on a long road trip, would order an appetizer and full dinner while everyone else split an order of fries. I could go on and on about personal choice and its consequences. I also, as a New Yorker, wasn't crazy about the way she coldly inserts her problems into the backdrop of 9/11. But the worst thing about this book by far was the corny, hackneyed, eye-rolling prose. And her strange (anti?) gay agenda. For instance: "And I was sober, with nothing to prove except everything. The last time I'd been out dancing I'd weighed three-hundred-some pounds, had been drunk, and had a roomful of gay boys join me in the weird ritual rondo of fags and hags. I had been thrilled by my sip of popularity, while the fags were thrilled to be queer but, by association and comparison to me, not freaks."
And this one: "I was startled when I overheard her talking about a boyfriend. I'd assumed she was a biker dyke and that someday she would order me up in front of the Lesbian Tribunal for Failure to Be Gay." Draw your own conclusions from those two outbursts. Kuffel herself admits that she doesn't know a lot about joining "The Planet of Girls". I'll say. This is how Kuffel defines the epitome of cool chic rebelliousness in another woman: "Jennifer wore sunglasses at night." Wow. She also goes on and freaking on about her loose leftover skin. For Christ's sake get some plastic surgery already. And I know this will probably get me into hell that much quicker, but 170 pounds is a lot to lose in one year. That coupled with her mysterious emergency stomach surgery makes me wonder if it isn't just possible she actually has had gastric bypass. While still going to Weight Watchers of course. Which is a wonderful organization. Not like gastric bypass in which about 3 out of 10 people will gain it back. Richard Simmons claims it's more like half.
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message 1: by Mary

10/12/2008 05:47PM

Just wondering if the jealous shopper said anything else or looked embarassed after her compulsive remark, or if her miserable ten year old daughter looked embarassed about her mother's behavior?