Fat-Girl Romance!

 Holy cow, it has been four months since I posted. That's what I get for having a job, I guess. I am on vacation now and I have decided to review some of the media I consumed this year starting with romance novels!  It has been a weird reading year. 

Covid kind of knocked me for a loop as far as sticking to a book. (To be clear, I did not have the covid, it was just the knowing that it existed.)  If you don't count picture books, I have read fewer than 50 books this year. And by read I mean completed. I started an even 500 or so. Seriously, my ILL list looks like a cry for help! If something was magnificent, I stuck with it, otherwise it was gone. I only have thirteen 4 start books this year and almost all of them are graphic novels or nonfiction and my baseline for those is a lot higher. 

But let me get to the point - this month I found a new sub-genre - the fat girl romance - and clearly the romance aspect has done it's job because I am IN LOVE! 

I have, of course, been a bit of a romance snob. Sure, I read them as a teenager. My "First Love from Silhouette" books were read to shreds. The title of my favorite has completely left my mind. The premise was this slightly pudgy girl gets a job working at a gym and meets a popular boy. She loses enough weight to be cute enough for him to FINALLY notice her. Gosh, it was motivational... If you are hoping to develop body image issues.

It might have been this little gem wherein - "As the new girl in town, Janine Anderson had no way of knowing that she had just flipped over one of the most popular boys in school. Craig Matthews was a public figure, a star athlete already dating a cheerleader." I know I loved this one because I was so often "the new girl". I attended 3 different high schools for heaven's sake. What the heck! I tell my students that is why I am so well adjusted now. But it is a lie!

Anyway, I was just a little too old to have fallen in love with the SWEET VALLEY HIGH books and I also didn't like that Francine Pascal went from writing the amazing HANGING OUT WITH CICI and MY FIRST LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS with the bad ass Victoria Martin and then wrote about pretty blonde twins? Ew... 

But I digress. 

SO back in October I read a review in the New York Times about SPOILER ALERT and noticed the following subtle nod to my favorite type of heroine - the fat girl. The reviewer sets the stage for the meeting of the main characters says, "after pictures of her character cosplay go viral and trolls viciously mock her body size". And my wee ears went up! Body size? Is this a big girl book? Well it sure is! April and Marcus have been best buddies online. She is a geologist and he is the star of a GAME OF THRONES like series about which she writes fan fiction. And they don't know who each other is in real life!! How perfect is that? They end up going on a date after the aforementioned fat-shaming event and hit if off.  

The book is cute as hell. It's funny and quippy and has some very steamy sex scenes that, frankly, were a little off-putting! They were also smokin' hot, but it felt weird to me to be...ahem...knowing all those details about how their parts were working. I felt a little Delores Umbridge-y. "Male and female students must remain 8 inches apart!" I mean, good for them getting it on so thoroughly, but I was reading it in public and I already suffer from unwanted hot flashes!

Marcus, the super hot celebrity, has dyslexia which is handled nicely. And parental relationships are handled in a surprisingly stark and realistic way.  There was is, however, the requisite misunderstanding that had me yelling at the characters for being so stupid about saying what they were really feeling and offering the opportunity for the other person to articulate their feelings thoroughly as well. But hey, without it, how would the action rise and fall, I suppose.

I also just finished GET A LIFE CHLOE BROWN which was equally as adorable, smutty and fun. Talia Hibbert is only 23 or 24 and has already written 17 romance novels! The heroine of Chloe Brown, in addition to being a fat girl, also has fibromyalgia. It is fascinating to me how Hibbert manages to cover all those issues in Chloe's life PLUS add the topic of one of the characters trying to recover from an abusive relationship and have this whole thing NOT feel like an after school special. There is also an interesting twist in that Chloe is a black woman who comes from a wealthy upper-class background and her love interest Red comes from a white working class background and the issue of class plays a significant role. 

This book has some real depth to the struggles of the characters. There is plenty of humpin' and pumpin' as Harry would say. And again, the part where everyone is being stupid about their stupid feelings. Is it realistic? I suppose so. Maybe I have never had to deal with that kind of drama because I refuse to stop talking about my feelings, way past the point when anyone is interested in hearing about them!

So the common denominator, besides a smart, realistic look at disability, is the bigness of our heroines. It is just a piece of their image, not their defining characteristic and I loved that. 

I read an interview with Talia Hibbert and I adored her answer to this question - 

You choose to refer to Chloe specifically as fat. Can you tell me more about the importance of using that word and normalizing it or trying to remove stigma from it?

This is kind of difficult for me to talk about extensively because I have been fat, but I am not the minute, so I never want to overstep. But the fact of the matter is that negative representation of fat women is something that hurts people deeply constantly. It’s so pervasive and it leaves people with lifelong scars, mental health issues, eating disorders, [and] all of that affects their body and their physical health. Because of that, it’s always been really, really important to me that I represent diverse body types in my romance to show that all different kinds of people can be attractive and all different kinds of people deserve happy endings. Chloe is a fat woman and that’s a positive thing. It’s important to me that it’s said explicitly and in a positive way rather than, “Oh you can’t use that word because it’s a bad word and it’s a bad thing to be.” It’s not, so that’s why that was important to me.

I love that she says she doesn't want to overstep but I feel like if you have ever been fat, you get a seat at the table. I just spent 20 minutes googleing "celebrities who used to be fat" and it was interesting. So many - Oprah, Roseanne, Adele - all the one named big girls finally took off that weight once they got enough fame and money. I am not saying it was easy for them, but I think we all know it is easier to lose weight when you can afford healthy food, a personal trainer and have the means to make it a priority. I think that is what I appreciated about these heroines - they didn't make conforming to standard body image norms a priority. And I love them for it!