My Problem With "Maggie Goes On A Diet"

I discovered Maggie Goes On A Diet during one of my morning rituals (I tend to start my days with a cup o' joe and a few interesting Yahoo! articles). As the above video explains, the book, aimed at girls as young as 6 or 7, is about an overweight 14-year-old who decides to go on a diet after being teased mercilessly by her classmates.

I probably don't have to tell you that Maggie has sparked a lot of controversy. The media has been raving about so-called "mommy bloggers" who are up in arms over how the book mishandles sensitive body image issues, but what I noticed after sifting through the comments on several news articles is a slightly different attitude:

"There is nothing offensive about this book, unless you're living in denial. Girls do tend to obsess about their weight and image far more than boys, so choosing a girl as the main character makes sense." 

"God forbid she take up an activity that causes her to lose weight. What an awful message." 

"This book is a good thing. The last thing this world needs
is more fat chicks."

I'm not usually a fan of chatspeak, but I think that last statement warrants a big-ass smh.

I have no objection whatsoever to children's books teaching healthy eating habits and the value of exercise, but as a former (and current) Fat Girl this book is offensive. Society has always done a bang-up job of making girls feel like crap about themselves, and this book is the icing on the cake — or should I say, the no-calorie sweetener on the high-fiber oatmeal?

What could have been an uplifting book about a girl eating wholesome foods, having fun playing outside, and ultimately feeling good about herself (without other's approval) turned into a social commentary about the unacceptability of being overweight in our society. Maggie is a loser when she's fat. Nobody likes her. The boys all point and laugh. But then she drops X number of pounds and people are putty in her hands. She becomes the star of the soccer team, people know her by name and want to be her friend, and boys even think she's cute — the ultimate triumph! *gags*

I'm not denying the fact that there's an obesity problem in this country and I'm certainly not knocking the importance of a balanced diet and exercise. But there's a way to deal with these issues without telling little girls that their physical appearance and value as a person are inextricably linked.

I Am an Emotional Creature (Ain't That the Truth)

A couple of weeks ago I checked out Eve Ensler's I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, and dang was it good. I was starting to think I would never be able to read a full book again (because it's been so long and I'm really impatient), but this book was good enough to keep me hooked for a solid two hours - the time it takes to read it from cover to cover.

"Dear Emotional Creature:

I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple, or hike up your short skirt . . . I love your restlessness and your hunger. You possess the energy that, if unleashed, could transform, inspire and heal the world."

The book isn't a novel per se, but a collection of facts, fictional letters, lists, poems and short stories meant to draw attention to issues girls around the world have experienced: child labor, bullying, genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, and human trafficking, to name a few. At some points I was on the verge of tears because I just kept thinking "here I am worrying about a test I have Friday, and girls around the world are experiencing this?" but I actually came away from the book extremely empowered, and I'm recommending it to all of my friends (including you)!

Here's the official summary of the book from its website, V-Girls:



In this daring, provocative, and insightful book, bestselling author and internationally acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. Moving through a world of topics and emotions, these voices are fierce, alive, tender, complicated, imaginative, and smart. Girls today often find themselves in a struggle between remaining strong and true to themselves and conforming to society’s expectations in an attempt to please. They are taught not to be too intense, too passionate, too smart, too caring, too open. They are encouraged to shut down their instincts, their outrage, their desires and their dreams, to be polite, to obey the rules. I Am an Emotional Creature is a celebration of the authentic voice inside every girl and an inspiring call to action for girls everywhere to speak up, follow their dreams, and become the women they were always meant to be.

Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen, a Chinese factory worker making Barbies; an Iranian student who is tricked into a nose job; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby.

Through rants, poetry, questions, and facts, we come to understand the universality of girls everywhere: their resiliency, their wildness, their pain, their fears, their secrets, and their triumphs. I Am an Emotional Creature is a call, a reckoning, an education, an act of empowerment for girls, and an illumination for parents and for us all.

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls will be a vehicle to empower girls and inspire activism. Through the newly created V-Girls program, young girls can participate in the V-Day movement, in the same way The Vagina Monologues has built a movement on college campuses and in communities around the world. The goal of V-Girls will be to engage young women in our “empowerment philanthropy” model, igniting their activism.

V-Day believes that girls are the future of our movement. Women are the primary resource of our planet. It is imperative to educate and nurture future activists so we can see our vision of a world free from violence against women and girls come true.

Book Review: "Out" by Natsuo Kirino

I had the pleasure of visiting a little bookstore a few weeks ago with my grandma. Actually, there was nothing "little" about that place, except for the fact that it wasn't anything like the big-name stores we know and love (I'm talking to you, Borders). But still, this place was amazing, and even though it had the same look and feel as an old, creepy antique store - with dim, flickering lights, creaky floor boards, and a faint smell of death - it was like my own personal Heaven. Books from floor to ceiling, rows and rows (and rows) of every topic imaginable . . . Seriously! I'm not sure how many bookstores can claim an actual section for topics like Jewish History or Fondue. It was that awesome.

I really didn't have a specific book in mind when I went in that day. You know how it is with those family-owned places: you can't walk in and expect to find twenty copies of Twilight, you just have to wander around and hope to stumble on a juicy treasure. Well I did, and it came in the form of Natsuo Kirino's Out.

Now, if you didn't already know this about me, I absolutely adore crime thrillers, horror, basically anything that makes the blood curdle. I'm the nerd next door who watches Criminal Minds until her eyes bleed, the geek who plays Resident Evil religiously, and the girl who'd rather see Saw than a romantic-comedy any day. I'm just weird (i.e. awesome) like that. So it probably doesn't surprise you that my first stop that day was to the "crime" section where Out immediately caught my eye. Something about the lines slashing through the woman's face on the cover made me think of a knife cutting through flesh. Thoroughly creepy. But it wasn't the picture that ultimately persuaded me to buy it; the review on the cover sealed the deal.

The review, written by some "professional" at New York Times, reads: "A nervy thriller . . . Out has the force of a juicy tabloid scandal . . . A potent cocktail of urban blight, perverse feminism and vigilante justice."

I must have read that ten times, just trying to get my head around whatever the heck "perverse feminism" meant. I honestly had no idea. And that is when I decided that I had to have this book.

I'm really picky when it comes to books. If I don't get hooked within the first, say, twenty or thirty pages it's really hard for me to find the willpower to finish it (there are more than a few "rejects" in the dark recesses of my closet). So when I say that Out left me constantly guessing and hungry to read more, you can bet that there's something a little different, a little special, about this book. And yes, I mean special in the worst possible way.

Out follows the lives of four very different Japanese women, their only connection being their nightshift at a local factory making meal boxes. The work is horrible - physically and mentally exhausting - but money serves a huge purpose in this novel, and for some reason or another each of the four women relies on a steady income. Masako, the blunt and sometimes distant leader of the pack, lives with a husband who couldn't care less if she walked out on him, and a teenage shut-in son who hasn't spoken a word to her in years. Yoshie, fondly known as "Skipper" around the factory, must balance working to send her ungrateful daughter through school with caring for her incontinent mother-in-law. Kuniko, a vain, selfish woman, spends all of her money on fake Chanel handbags even though it lands her in hot water with loan sharks. And Yayoi is a beautiful-yet-meak woman who struggles to take care of her two young sons while suffering the abuse of her alcoholic, gambling, ne'r-do-well husband.

If I were to go into detail about all the subtleties of the novel we'd probably be here all night, so I'll have to be painfully brief here: Yayoi murders her husband. Yep, you heard me. He came home after a particularly bad night of drinking and gambling and got a belt to the neck. Never even saw it coming.

The book is basically about how the four women come together after learning about Yayoi's unspeakable act. Masako (and later Yoshie and Kuniko) agree to dispose of the body if they're paid handsomely (like I said, money is a huge theme here). But what's amazing is not only how beautifully (and simply) the book's written, but how it makes you feel. It was honestly blowing my mind. Like I said before, I grew up on CourtTV and watching the cops get the bad guys, and for all intents and purposes these women should be monsters for agreeing to cut up a body and dispersing it throughout town (woops, did I give it away?), but it's written in such a way that you want them to succeed. You want them to get away with it. And your heart starts turning somersaults whenever the police get a tiny step further in figuring out the truth. Isn't that scary?

I guess I've never felt this before. I've never been so emotionally impacted by a book.

Feminist themes were definitely there, but New York got it right: it was perverse, extreme, nothing I'd ever want to be associated with. The book was female-centric in itself, and the women were constantly degraded by the men in their lives. For example: Masako worked in finance for over twenty years but had to sit idly by as her younger male coworkers surpassed her in wealth and prestige; men constantly showed disgust for Kuniko because she was overweight; Yayoi suffered physical abuse, etc.

For lack of a better term, these women had shitty lives and this drove them to their breaking point. Suddenly they were willing to do anything to earn money and get things back in order, even if it meant helping a friend get away with murder. This was probably the type of "perverse feminist revenge" the review was talking about.

I think Out is a despicable book about despicable women, but it's not every day that you come across a novel that can transport you to the other side of justice and make you feel sympathy - even encouragement - for such "monstrous" people. That's pretty powerful stuff.

I guess I would have to recommend this book to anyone who has the stomach for it!

P.S. The ending is going to blow your mind!