The Fat Girl Analysis

“Hunger” is an article published in 1989 by social justice activist Maggie Helwig. In this article Helwig discusses the stereotypes behind eating disorders, and gives real life examples of the impacts an eating disorder can have on someone. She is able to incorporate many ideas that smoothly flow together to capture the audience’s attention, while also making the audience consider their thoughts and views on eating disorders. She ends the article by giving insightful information as to what it was like for her to suffer from an eating disorder, and why she chose to starve herself for eight years. Helwig uniquely incorporates logos, pathos, and ethos in her writing to completely gain the audience’s attention and influence their opinions on eating disorders.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is a story that was written by Chris Crutcher. This book was narrated in first person, by the protagonist Eric “Moby” Calhoune. His best friend is Sarah Byrnes, and they have been close since they were younger, due to their flaws. Eric is overweight and Sarah has burn scars covering her entire face. As the two grew older, Eric lost his weight when he joined the school competitive swim team. Meanwhile, Sarah Byrnes still remained as what her classmates called “ugly”. The two were each other’s best friends, and Eric even stayed fat for a whole year for her. Sarah Byrnes believed that if Eric became skinny, then he would have more friends, and eventually forget about her. With the help of others, it is found that Sarah Byrnes was abused by her father, Virgil Byrnes, when she was three, causing the burns on her face. She has been kept in the hospital for thinking about committing suicide for the entirety of the story. Sarah is not talking to anybody, even her best friend, and Eric knows he has to find a way to make her speak.

Her husband labels her as crazy and restricts her to a single room and forbids her to do most activities. Her husband demeans and belittles his wife’s condition by dismissing the severity of her depression. The Narrator has no say or control in her relationship. She has no control over the activities she’s allowed to do while in her room so she takes control of the only thing she can, her mind. She soon begins to imagine images within her room and within her wallpaper. The Narrator says, “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be” because every day she now looks forward to helping the women behind the wallpaper escape. Now that Louise has complete control over her mind, she is beginning to taste freedom, even if she is destroying herself. Because John thinks he’s superior to his wife, he misjudges her condition and ends up making her condition worse by repressing her even

Stick Figure by Lori Gottlieb is a first person account of a young girl and her battle with anorexia nervosa. The book is composed of diary entries from when Lori was a young girl, at age eleven. By seeing her personal thoughts and stories from the time when she was battling this disorder gives us a very close look at what drove her obsession with being thin: mainly her mother and peers, who were also obsessed with looking “perfect”. In Stick Figure, we follow Lori all the way from the first time she begins to think she should diet through her eventual hospitalization for the eating disorder. There are many tell-tale signs of the disorder viewed along the way, which are

In her article, Peggy Orenstein touches on how females develop skewed body standards from the media and others around them at a young age. Parents start to worry about their daughter’s body image even if they fall within “the female body standards” based on how others may view them. Children as young as Kindergarten start to gain a sense of “fat phobia” meaning they are afraid of either becoming fat or fatter people. She also writes about ways parents can help combat the body expectations put on daughters, like stressing what a daughter’s body can do, praising accomplishments, getting her involved in a sports team, and volunteering. She incorporates the idea that to children, physical appearance is becoming more prevalent than ones’ characteristics. On page 3 of “Fear of Fatness,” Orenstein mentions how the phases of life are becoming blurred: girls are trying to look like adult women, and adult women are trying to look more like young girls. One of the last things that Orenstein makes clear in her article is that

As illustrated in this novel, eating disorders are about a lot more than just food. The novel

Celebrities everywhere are cutting out things from their diet that they do not need to in order to lose weight. Thousands of people will also starve themselves because they think that it helps them to lose weight, but it just hurts their body more. The writer exemplifies the problems in today’s pop culture to a new level to allow the reader to see how insane it really is.

Marya Hornbacher’s memoir, Wasted, describes her lifelong battle with eating disturbances with focuses on anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In modern day society, thinness is associated with “wealth, upward mobility, and success” (Hornbacher, 1998, p. 46). Thinness is “an ideal symbolizing self-discipline, control, sexual liberation, assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with a higher socio-economic class.” (p. 46) Not eating also suggests that one have such a full life that food is not a priority. The media influences children to believe that one must be thin in order to be beautiful. To Marya, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she must be perfect in order to be successful. She believed she could only be perfect if she had a perfect body, a perfect career, perfect relationships, and perfect control over her life and herself (p. 231-232).

The pressure to lose weight in today’s society inhibits the personality and health of overweight people while essentially increasing the weight of the people who experience these pressures (Worley 163-167). So reasons Mary Ray Worley in her article, “Fat and Happy: In Defense of Fat Acceptance.” Worley uses her personal experience as well as a small number of facts to dispute why overweight people struggle as they attempt to contribute to society (163-167). In the beginning of her article she references an association of which she is a member, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, to convey the possibilities to advance society when judgement based on size is abandoned (163-164). The association holds a conference every year, and Worley continually refers to the atmosphere at the convention as “another planet,” suggesting that the scarcity of judgment during the convention differed significantly from her everyday experiences (163-164, 167). Applying her encounters to all people of her weight category, she declares that even doctors blame the majority of sicknesses on weight (165). She also proclaims that people should not diet and exercise in order to lose weight, as this triggers loss of motivation without results, but to improve their attitude and mood (166). Referencing Dr. Diane Budd from the convention, she states that attempts to lose weight cause “lasting harmful effects on one’s appetite, metabolism, and self-esteem” (164). While Worley’s unjustifiable

The short story “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus teaches readers about a real life struggle that is commonly faced by others. The main character of the story is Louise, a young teenage girl who deals with the issues of being overweight. Her mother worries about her weight and tries to control it by feeding her on a diet. While Louise is around others she tries to eat salads and healthy food so it does not appear as if she has a problem. When no one is watching, Louise binge eats and sneaks sandwiches, candy, and other unhealthy snacks that her mother would not approve of. One of the main struggles she faces from being overweight is the fact that no boys are interested in her. She starts going to an all-girl college and befriends her roommate, Carrie. Louise and Carrie help get Louise on the right

The beginning of the story sets the theme for the whole story. We are told about the heart condition that inflicts Louise. This is significant throughout the story. The heart condition is a symbolic way of describing her thoughts of oppression she felt about her marriage. She was trapped and isolated by the marriage. She felt the need to hide these feelings. Women of her era were supposed to be home and under their husbands command. The story has her going through this journey privately. That is significant in the fact that now in her husband’s passing, she will be alone. She will need to work through things by herself. She will be able to go through the whole process on her own, without being judged and persuaded to feel differently.

Issues of dieting, fat, and slenderness are hot topics in our culture. Bordo addresses them from a postmodern, but historical, feminist perspective. In this essay, she attempts to explain the appeal of slenderness in our society; and also, how the ideology of normal our society holds can be mentally and physically damaging for many people.

By the repetition of the words as a reader we come to understand the meaning behind the story and how Louise actually felt towards her husband. The theme of the story is mainly the forbidden joy of independence. Due to that the story was written years ago where women were very dependent to their husbands Louise actual feelings of joy and happiness towards her husband death was forbidden by society during this

Employing her essay with key terms like body image, anorexia, and bulimia among other disorders, the essayist has written her piece rife with appeals to pathos to define them; the essay’s introduction carries her readers into a girl’s mind who struggles with her appearance

The book breaks down the stereotype of what an eating disorder really is. In today’s society having an eating disorder means that you have some kind of “psychological frailty or illness” (1). When thinking about those that have eating disorders typically it is “young, middle to upper class, heterosexual white women” comes to mind (1). Their motivation is to take on the unrealistic appearance of models and reach the “standards created by advertisers and clothing designers” (1). The author in no regards is trying to down play women that have eating disorders because of the pressure of the media but is showing that there are other people and reasons for having eating disorders. This image that we currently have leaves out “women of color,