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| Tuesday, December 30, 2008 |
| Thin Is the New Happy |
Thin Is the New Happy a memoir by Valerie Frankel
In 1976, Valerie Frankel was 11 years old and in 6th grade. She was five feet tall, approaching puberty, and she weighed 100 pounds. She was a popular, self-confident little girl until the day her mother and her pediatrician compared her to her naturally thinner siblings and decided she was guilty of being chubby. With clip board in hand, her mother walked her to the scale, then her mother cried with disappointment and shame when she weighed her. That was the first day of a diet which would continue for 30 years.
It was the first day of a 30 year cycle which imprisoned her in a “continuous loop of starting a diet, recovering from one, and planning the next.” It was the day her mother taught her that she wasn’t thin enough to be loved, protected, or cherished. It was the last day she remembers feeling young and care-free. Still a child herself, she “vowed that I’d never harass my children about their weight.” Her mother Judy taught her that “love is conditional,” and based upon your appearance. For the next 30 years Valerie struggled through the lessons of “self-loathing” and negative body image which her mother gave her that day. Her search for acceptance and proof that she was worth loving would last for 30 painful years.
Through her story, and in her life, Valerie is, against all odds determinedly funny, upbeat, smart, somehow still confident, and brutally honest. She is also the veteran of “150 distinct diets, every trendy one to come down the pike, as well as scores of her own creation.” She’s made peace with her unrepentant mother, a victim herself of unhappy parenting, and the social and emotional pressures which drove Judy to abuse her.
Valerie Frankel’s memoir is supposed to be a success story, celebrating a decision to give up 30 years of roller coaster dieting in favor of a “not-diet” approach to healthy living. Valerie is determined to free herself, and her young daughters from the legacy of “weight anxiety that had had me in its grip for 30 years.” Valerie wants her daughter “Maggie, a sixth grader, eleven years old, the age when it all began; and Lucy, eight and in second grade” to have what she did not. Her happy childhood was sacrificed for her mothers’ vanity, and 12 pounds. She “mourns for the wasting of my wonder years, the abandon I missed, how lonely I must have been.”
What she now realizes is that “as much as I tried to impart the healthy attitude, the ‘love yourself for who you are’ message, my daughters weren’t fooled. They saw and heard what I put myself through: my dieting cycles, anxiety about food, dread of bathing-suit vacations, rising and falling weight. I was a bad example.”
Her memoir is an account of the events that led her to the decision to give up dieting as a way of life. Her goal, for the first time in 30 years, is to eat when she is hungry, and stop when she feels full. She is determined to reconcile “the two sources of happiness in her childhood …approval and food ...” so they will no longer “be at odds.”
Her “not-diet” approach seems to be working. She is raising her children with the unconditional love and support she was denied. She is letting go of the painful past, while telling a bitter story with understanding, insight, and humor. Her desperate search for proof of love is ending. You have to wish Valerie Frankel good luck and good love. She really deserves it.
- NancyLabels: Book Review, Nancy
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posted by My Sensei @ Tuesday, December 30, 2008   |
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