making use of my best resource! *winning smile*

[such_heights]

Hi all,

Am looking for resources for a couple of friends of mine, and was wondering if any of you have some links/suggestions off the top of your head!

1. I am looking for novels that feature positive portrayals of women who aren't thin.

2. I am looking for resources to help someone who's currently in a pretty bad pit of depression but having trouble articulating that and reaching out. That sounds all too familiar to me, but I don't recommend my own strategy of going and going until you snap. Anything about first reaching out for professional support or recognising that's what happening is an illness and not a moral failing would be most welcome.

♥!

Comments

[pocky_slash]

I can help with some MG/YA books for the second one, but I'm on my way out of work, so I won't be able to get back to you until I get home :)

[such_heights]

That's no problem, whenever you have time would be great!

[sheafrotherdon]

Have you shared the first chapter of Noonday Demon with her? It's not really about reaching out, per se, but it is a great resource for compassionately deconstructing stigma. The third chapter is about treatments - if that would be helpful to have, I could copy it on Monday and scan it for you?

[such_heights]

I've sent that over, yes. And thanks very much for the kind offer, but I do see the book's actually pretty cheap online at the moment so I think I may get myself a copy in any case.

[miss_haitch]

The Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce has a heroine who is big and kicks ass. It's YA coming-of-age fantasy, and can be a bit twee in places but is generally pretty cool. Fire (YA fantasy again) by Kristin Cashore has a big side character who is lovely and schemingly political. However, it has sexual assault as a massive thematic...erm, theme, and is horribly tearjerky, so if your friend is feeling fragile I'd recommend being cautious. It makes me sad that others don't come to mind very easily - I hope you get some more recommendations.

RE: resources for reaching out and getting help, I do know a handful of books designed for children. They might be helpful for your friend (I find kids' stuff often speaks to me more strongly and directly than adults' stuff) but obviously something else may work better. However, Michael Rosen's The Sad Book is one that comes to mind straightaway - it can appeal to any age, and puts things in a very straightforward way. Again, a big tearjerker - anyone should definitely ensure they're in a safe space when reading it.

[such_heights]

Oh awesome, thanks so much for the info! And the first resource is for academic purposes, so anything and everything is great.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, Amy. *squishes you*

Re. number 1, It's kind of obvious and she probably already knows about them, but there's the whole series of Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency books?

Phoebe

[such_heights]

Any time! And yes, those were the only books that sprung to mind, unfortunately.

[netgirl_y2k]

Um, the No. 1 Ladies Dective Agency books are terribly terribly twee, but have a protagonist who's big, sorry, traditionally built, and is still smart and shrewd and competent.

God, it's actually kind of sad that that's the only example that springs to my mind.

[such_heights]

I know, that was my first thought as well! I adore Mma Ramotwse, but dammit we could do with more characters like her.

[filomena]

Ruth Rendell's Adam and Eve and Pinch Me has a deeply sympathetic portrayal of an obese woman with an anorexic husband. In fact, she's the most likeable character in the novel, and probably the one the reader is intended to identify with most. Food concerns play a big role in the story, obviously, but there's also a lot of stuff about intimacy and sex and tenderness that just don't tend to come up in connection with fat characters. (The story as a whole isn't just about them, but this is the part of the book I remember best.)

[such_heights]

Oh cool, that sounds really interesting. Thanks!

[chaila]

Here are two links I have bookmarked about books featuring larger characters, though I have to qualify and say I haven't gotten around to reading the books yet and some of them seem to actually be *about* being larger, so that may not be what you're after. But in case they're helpful:

This post is about YA books, but: http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2011/jan11_nolfi.asp (scroll down about 2/3 for the recs, the rest of the post is a critique of other books).

http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray/essays/fatfiction.html

[such_heights]

Awesome, thanks a lot!

[liseuse]

1.) Hood by Emma Donoghue is totally awesome for this. The main character isn't thin, and it is chockfull of body acceptance and awesomeness.

2.) I think my main thing would be to recommend The Noonday Demon. I love all of it, but I guess the first chapter would be the best starting point. If you go to the website for the book the first chapter is available as a free download.

[such_heights]

Thanks so much! And yes, after sheafrotherdon posted about it the other day I think I'm going to go ahead and order it, I know I'd like to read it as well as possibly lend it out.

[littlebutfierce]

Half World by Hiromi Goto has a protagonist who isn't thin. I nominated this book for YT this year, but alas, no bites!

(This book also gets a lot of praise for having a non-thin protagonist but I really couldn't stand it, mostly for other reasons.)

[such_heights]

Thank you, I'll pass these along!

[pocky_slash]

Okay. Here are three or four books I can remember off the top of my head that fit the first request. They're all YA, I think.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Caroline Mackler (which is one of the books I covered last year for Banned Books Weeks, and also was a Printz Honor, I think.)

This Book Isn't Fat, It's Fabulous by Nina Beck

Pretty Face by Mary Hogan

Food, Girls and Other Things I Can't Have by... someone. Can't remember the name and too lazy to google, but this once is recent-ish.

Oh, I lied! I just thought of a MG book, as well:
Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies by ...I can't remember the first name and I'm too lazy to google. The last name is "Dionne," I believe.

[pocky_slash]

Whoops! Read it again and realized you said women. Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have is about a dude. Sorry!

Also, there's one... I should probably just give up and google it, but there's a teen book about a chubs girl actress that came out recently-ish? I can't remember what it was called. I didn't actually read it, but I read the BookMaster summary of it. She leaves her hometown and goes to LA? I could probably find it with some digging!

[axiom_of_stripe]

the only one i can recommend off the top of my head is fistful of sky by nina kiriki hoffman, warning for abusive mother punishing teen daughter for being fat but not for the character punishing herself as a teen or an adult; there's one scene where she is magicked into being much heavier and enjoys it. hmm: there's also the changewinds series by jack l. chalker, but i remember very, very little of this series -- not enough to recommend it, given the results of a quick google. those are books in which the weight of the protagonist is a plot point, which is probably why i remember them in this context; i would like to think that there must be others....

[such_heights]

Thanks so much for the suggestions!

[ineptshieldmaid]

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, perhaps? Carmen is consistently aware of herself as a little larger and of different proportions to her friends. She's probably of average-curvy size, not significantly fat - and she certainly fits into the same magically-stretchy pants as her friends - but there's a little recurring thread in there about living with her larger butt, and so on.

For that matter, there's Lily in the Princess Diaries series, who is neither thin nor pretty (in Mia's eyes, anyway); and Tina, who is not-thin and very pretty. Both supporting roles (Tina isn't in the first book, I think), but might be useful to your friend as small examples.

Something older - Dianna Barry, best friend to Anne of Green Gables, is 'plump'. Anne sees herself as thin/skinny/undesirable, and envies Dianna's 'plump' physique. As Anne gets older that dichotomy fades a bit, and Anne assumes the place of primary example of beauty (tall, willowy, red-headed etc). But it's an interesting feature of the first book, in that Anne's beauty ideals are the inverse of what you usually find in a modern YA novel.

[such_heights]

Yay, thank you so much for this!

[arch]

The first one that came to mind for me was Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. It was the first romance novel I ever read -- and I read it back when I bought into the stereotype that romance novels were always ridiculous; I totally expected to mock it. But instead I loved it! It's so funny and also poignant. I love the heroine, who is emphatically Not Thin and whose friends and romantic hero love her for it. Also, doughnuts play a surprisingly important role. Also also, it plays with fairy tale tropes. Plus the dialogue is clever and witty without being twee, and the whole book is great.

[bunners]

I was actually coming here to suggest this! It's a really fantastic book and is kind of my go-to place for when I'm feeling bad about my size - I always describe it as the "fatty doesn't have to lose weight,

[wildestranger]

Justina Robson's Silver Screen. It's scifi, takes place in Leeds in the 2050s, and is about a chubby Indian woman who is more worried about her work and her friends than her on/off boyfriend. Wonderful novel and quietly radical in what it chooses to privilege.

[such_heights]

Oooh, why I have not heard of this before, sounds fab!

[avendya]

Guardian of the Dead has a fat main character. Warning: she does feel bad about her weight during parts of the book, but she doesn't diet and also saves New Zealand.

[nixwilliams]

was gonna suggest this one, too!

[theniwokesoftly.livejournal.com]

DO NOT read Size Twelve is Not Fat by Meg Cabot. The main character constantly bemoans not being smaller than a size 12 (UK 14), while constantly eating crap and not making any effort to be smaller. (Not to mention that size 12 is indeed not fat.) It's followed by Size Fourteen Is Not Fat Either and Big Boned. I couldn't get more than a few pages into Size Fourteen, and never tried Big Boned.

[such_heights]

Eesh, thanks for the anti-rec!

[fallingtowers]

I can only echo the warning against Meg Cabot's series. I mean I read them all when I was looking for a trashy chick-lit fix, but as soon as I had switched on my brain again, I dumped them at the nearest charity shop. The protagonist mostly buys into the beauty ideal of thin = pretty, while -- ironically speaking -- thin women are often vilified. It's like the opposite of body acceptance and positive portrayals.

Oh, and while I like The Protector of the Small series (big Tamora Pierce fan here), I'm not quite sure whether they qualify for what you are looking for. Would you like novels about women & girls who are not thin or who are actually fat? (Which is a sort of difference.) The heroine in PotS is more the tall, stocky, kind of brawny type rather than overweight or obese, although she's definitely portrayed in a positive light.

Also: What do you mean by "positive portrayal"? A character with whom we are meant to sympathize and who is likeable or a character for whom size / weight / appearance are not even an issue?

[such_heights]

These are good questions! I'm not entirely sure - my friend is doing some academic research on the topic and wasn't particularly specific when we chatted about it, which is why I phrased the request so broadly. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I'll pass them on!

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

The two books that spring to mind for me are contemporary fantasy novels with fat teenage heroines with magical powers: Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Fistful of Sky and Karen Healey's The Guardian of the Dead. The latter has a fat heroine who struggles some with self-acceptance but is generally awesome; I'm assuming you've seen the LJ discussion about whether the book reinforces the negative body-image ideas it's obviously trying to explode.

The Hoffman novel takes on size, and more generally the body image pressures on a teenage white, wealthy, Californian girl thematically in ways that would be spoilery to discuss in detail, and has some of the most positive size acceptance I've ever seen in a novel. Both are imo exceptionally well-written and original YA fantasies, and I enjoyed them immensely.

I'd also highly recommend the award-winning YA graphic novel Skim; though the focus is elsewhere--it's about a teenage girl in high school coping with suicidal depression and the fact that she's queer--the main character is fat and teased for it (her nickname, the title of the book, is a cruel play on her name and the fact that she's not thin). She's also biracial Asian (Japanese-Canadian) and white, and there are very few books about Asian woman of size.

I would recommend both

[such_heights]

Thanks so much for the recs, much appreciated!

[alwayswondered]

Tall, Thin and Blonde by Dyan Sheldon is a YA novel about Jenny, whose best friend suddenly morphs into the titular popular type in high school while Jenny remains brunette and awkward. Jenny feels pressure (much of it coming from the aforementioned BFF) to lose a few pounds as well as dump her real-but-unpopular friends to hang out with people who'll do more for her cred, etc. It's more about being true to oneself in general than specifically about size but Jenny's definitely not thin and she finds happiness in being an individual.

[such_heights]

Sounds interesting, thanks a lot!

[merrily]

Hi - here via happydork's post. For your 1), my favourite guilty read series is about a 50-something zaftig jewel thief with a double life, who's long since given up any dieting nonsense. It's excellent. The first one is "Brilliant", and they're written by Marne Davis Kellogg.

oh, and just remembered - Precious Ramotswe, the main character of the Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, by Alexander McCall Smith, is a lady of "traditional build", and she kicks a lot of ass.