The Fat Girl by Andre Dubus
"The Fat Girl" by Andre Dubus explores the complex relationship between body image, self-perception, and the quest for love through the life of its protagonist, Louise. Growing up in Louisiana, Louise struggles with her weight from a young age, facing societal pressure and familial expectations regarding her appearance. Despite her mother's attempts to control her diet, Louise secretly indulges in food, reflecting a deeper struggle with identity and acceptance.
As she transitions to a women's college, the themes of isolation and body shame intensify, especially during physical activities that expose her insecurities. A pivotal friendship with her roommate Carrie leads to a drastic weight loss transformation, which temporarily boosts Louise’s confidence and social acceptance. However, this change brings about its own challenges, as Louise grapples with her self-worth and the perception of others, particularly her husband Richard.
The narrative ultimately delves into the psychological turmoil that accompanies her new life, leading to a cycle of food secrecy and body dissatisfaction that resurfaces after the birth of her child. As her relationship with Richard deteriorates, Louise finds herself trapped between her past and present, raising questions about identity and the price of societal acceptance. Dubus's story highlights the emotional complexities surrounding body image, societal expectations, and the pursuit of love, offering a nuanced perspective on the experience of being a fat girl in a world that often prioritizes thinness.
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The Fat Girl by Andre Dubus
First published: 1977
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: 1955-1975
Locale: Louisiana and Massachusetts
Principal Characters:
Louise , an overweight, compulsive eaterCarrie , her college roommateRichard , the young lawyer whom Louise marries
The Story
Louise was kissed for the first time at the age of sixteen, when a drunken young man roughly grabbed her at a barbecue. Her father, a wealthy lawyer in a small city in Louisiana, often kisses her as well, but she can see pity in his eyes along with love. The reason for Louise's lack of affection from young men her own age and for her father's pity is that, since she was nine years old, she has been putting on weight from overeating. Her slim and pretty mother, worried about Louise's attractiveness to boys, feeds her dietetic lunches, but Louise later sneaks into the kitchen and makes peanut butter sandwiches to eat secretly. At school, she makes a show before her friends of refusing fattening foods, emerging from the cafeteria line with only a salad. Later, however, she sneaks sandwiches at home and buys candy bars, storing them in her bedroom closet behind stuffed animals from her earlier childhood. At the movies, she is fascinated by fat actresses, and at home, by fat friends of her mother. Like herself, she rationalizes, they are different, and she believes that she, like them, is fat because God has made her that way. However, she is curious about them. Do they try to lose weight? Do they, too, go around thinking of food all day?
At a women's college in Massachusetts, Louise continues her old ways; however, now she does not need to hide anything from her mother. She stores candy bars in a drawer and eats whatever she wants. She senses her parents' disappointment when she chooses an all-female school, away from boys, and at college she feels out of place, especially in gym class where she must wear shorts. She hates her body. Her only college friend is Carrie, a thin, unhappy girl with thick glasses who becomes Louise's roommate for four years.
In the summer before her senior year, Carrie falls in love with a music student in Boston and experiences both love and sex. Concerned about Louise and wanting her to be loved the way that she feels loved, Carrie offers to help Louise lose weight. She puts her on a strict diet, does all the shopping, serves her small portions of broiled meat, fish, chicken, and lettuce in their room, and nurtures her through each day. Louise suffers enormously, starts to smoke cigarettes, and becomes irritable with Carrie, but sticks to the diet and eventually loses more than seventy pounds. When she goes home, her parents are proud of her, all of her relatives tell her she is beautiful, and for the first time since childhood Louise swims in the country club pool without embarrassment.
After graduation, Louise returns home, takes an inconsequential job just to have something to do, and starts seeing Richard, a young lawyer who has joined her father's firm. He is the first man to kiss her since that first drunken boy. After she gives herself to him, they are married; Carrie flies down from Boston to serve as her maid of honor. With Richard, Louise now seems to have everything: a husband who loves her, a beautiful home by the lake, and vacations in Mexico, Canada, and the Bahamas. While vacationing in Europe during their fifth year of marriage, Louise and Richard conceive a child.
Louise becomes increasingly troubled by her newly found happiness. She thinks that by becoming thin, she has somehow compromised herself, bought into the pleasures of the thin people she has always envied. She believes that she chose her friends merely because they were thin. She believes that even Richard does not see her or love her completely, because he cannot relate to the fat girl who she once was. During her pregnancy, her body is gaining weight, and she starts to develop her earlier craving for sweets. She begins to hide candy bars in the bedroom, waiting for Richard to leave the house. Her mother starts to worry about her again, while Richard becomes increasingly cold and distant after the birth of their son. They quarrel frequently and Richard does not touch Louise anymore because she is letting herself go. At night, Louise eats candy bars in the darkness of the bathroom, she buys loose dresses to hide her body, and she avoids wearing bathing suits and shorts. Richard's anger about her weight seems not to touch her, and Louise remains calm, hidden beneath the layers of her expanding flesh, as she watches his frustration and helplessness.
In the final scene, Richard is raging at Louise, the baby is crying, and Louise is holding the child against the folds of her flesh. Richard offers to help Louise, even to eat the same things that she eats, but she sees in him none of the compassion and love she saw earlier in Carrie, although she remembers nothing of that final college year except the hunger. She is continually hungry now, and when she comes downstairs, after putting her son in his crib, she is eating a candy bar, surprised to see Richard still there, for she is certain that he is about to leave her.