Lisa's review
Fat Girl: A True Story by Judith Moore
Lisa's review
rating:
bookshelves: diet-work-womens-life-culture-self-
recommended for: Parents of fat children.
rating:
bookshelves: diet-work-womens-life-culture-self-
recommended for: Parents of fat children.
This book was so much better than I expected. It isn't as much about being fat as it is about the permanent damage a psychotic, unhappy parent can inflict upon an unwanted child. And a child that has problems to begin with. As Moore herself admits "There was more wrong with me than just being fat". Sadly, Moore died from colon cancer in 2006. I found myself hoping she'd had a happy life as an adult. Having said all that, this book has the same problem all "used to be fat" memoirs have: following the party line of Thin People Have No Heartaches. Not true. Also, if the evidence of my own eyes is correct, this type of memoir is now obsolete. So many people are hugely obese that it has become the norm. Especially outside of urban enclaves. And kids? Holy crap, there used to be maybe one fat kid in a class of thirty when I was growing up. Now it's at least half. Far too many for any one to be singled out. I could go on and on about this subject. If a kid came to school s...more
I once saw a documentary about a 30-ish man who weighed over a thousand pounds. He lay in bed all day, wearing a diaper because he was too fat to heave himself out of bed to use the bathroom. He enjoyed hot, home-cooked meals large enough to last a family of four for a week. Who cooked him his gigantic meals and delivered them to his bed table? Who washed his dishes? Who changed his diaper? Who made absolutely sure that he spent his short and unhappy adult life imprisoned in his bedroom, as helpless as a newborn? Who convinced him that all of this selfless "care" was proof that she "loved" him? You tell me.
His mommy? This is a syndrome no one seems to want to acknowledge with morbidly obese people who can't leave their homes: who the fuck is supplying them with all this food?
You bet it was his mommy! Frankly, I believe that any time someone who is truly morbidly obese is discovered living under the above circumstances, he or she should be removed - forcibly, if necessary - from the bedroom and taken immediately to the nearest hospital; I also believe that the family members who were feeding this person to the point of being literally too large to leave the house should be arrested and charged with unlawful imprisonment, or with reckless endangerment at the very least. I'm absolutely not kidding.
