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!

America 1870-1900 - FAMILY PORTRAIT: God Bless Our Home

This section begins with a quote from Twain, “...when I was a boy, everybody was poor but didn’t know it; and everybody was comfortable, and did know it.” Not everyone, Samuel. 

This section is about family portraits - hence the name - which were a BIG DEAL! My family did one every year from 1965 to the late 80s at least, I even have one from the 2000s after my youngest was born, but before my dad died. We are a handsome bunch! We would dress up and go to Olan Mills or Sears and get shot. I tend to do it myself now, but good grief, it might benefit my family to have a professional do it sometime. I have MANY family portraits of various generations hanging on my walls. This is the one where I look the VERY PRETTIEST!! Look at how cute my sisters are. 

We are Julia, Betsy and Margaret for SURE!

First up is the Brooks family of New Hampshire, circa 1895. There are 28 of them and not a one is smiling.

The Fields of Natchez, Mississippi are pictured in 1895. The young women and kids are mostly smiling. The old women and men do not. There is a middle aged Black woman in the back row. She is not smiling either. 

The King family in Dallas in 1890 is a little blurry faced and seems to live in a shed. But they have glass windows, a cow and a bicycle, so they must have been comfortable at least.

The members of the Walters family of Lurbert County, Georgia all look very serious, down to the baby sitting on the ground in her little white dress. There are several women who could be her mom, but none of them seem to be freaking out about her dress getting ruined. So they’re far more poised than I ever was as a mother!

The Scandinavian family has no name. Perhaps their name is “Scandinavian” but they are actually Irish. I doubt it. They are all dressed up and posed nicely but I don’t know if they are aware they are being photobombed by a shaggy guy in jeans back by the porch. I wonder what the story is there?

The Lugo family from Bell, California circa 1888 has 17 members and the photo composition is quite nice. There’s one blurry baby and six half-smiles on the young adults. But Grandma is PISSED!

Hey, we’re back in Massillon, Ohio - home of the Massillon Museum. The E.B. Leightlys of 1890 seem both classy and loaded. The 3 daughters are definitely smiling a little, but Mama and the men look quite serious. 

Three generations of Norwegian family. Do the nordic folk not have names in the TL universe? These are 13 unsmiling immigrants and a frenzied horse in front of a cute stone house. 

The penultimate family is that of a “Nebraska farmer and his brood, East Custer County 1888.” So we know what he does. He farms and he keeps his pretty but prematurely old and exhausted wife in babies. There are 7 kids who appear to be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 - like clockwork! I think they are in front of a soddy. I like that farmer Dow sprung for this portrait even though he couldn't afford lumber for a house. Of course in Nebraska, perhaps there wasn’t much lumber… Anyway, it means he either [a] is very proud of his family or [b] doing something his wife talked him in to. Either way, it’s nice. I hope the shadow figure riding a horse to the left of the house isn’t a ghost or an enemy from the past hell-bent on revenge. 

Manchester, New Hampshire’s Dow family is celebrating a golden wedding anniversary. Among them are 23 grownups, three kids and a dog.

And I am done - it’s been a fabulous 30 years!

America 1870-1900 - ENTERTAINMENT: Standing Room Only and The Greatest Showman on Earth

The penultimate chapter! A double spread of a Broadway streetcar with tons of advertisements for plays, oats and catsup!

Standing Room Only

After the Civil War, we got soft. Going from 12 hour workdays to 10 hour workdays. Half a day on Saturday - what is this sloth?? All of a sudden there was a little more coin rattling around and people wanted to be amused. 

Baseball broke the seal with the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings going on tour to defeat amateur clubs . In 1888 Mike “King” Kelly, the catcher for the Cubbies went to the White House and made fun of Grover Cleveland’s soft hands. I think, like Curley in OF MICE AND MEN, he kept that hand soft for his beautiful young wife!

John Drew is mentioned as a “star” - a new concept. A hit play TOO MUCH JOHNSON stayed on Broadway for 216 performances. And that’s just too much TOO MUCH JOHNSON. Wow, that sounds dirty.

They define the most popular form of entertainment as the “variety show” with the interesting tidbit - “sometimes the choice between burlesque and vaudeville for a night’s entertainment was made when a stage manager peeked out at the audience and spied a cop.” I had always thought they were very separate entities. They also mention minstrel shows done in blackface with no indication that it was a bad thing. 

The real money was not made by performers, but by promoters. Tony Pastor, Harry Miner, B F Keith and E F Albee all made bank promoting shows. Keith and Albee started in Boston combining the Gaiety and Bijou theaters and spread their empire to 400 theaters coast to coast. 

In the section on P.T. Barnum - who TL clearly adores - it mentions “a negro woman” who Barnum billed as George Washington’s nurse. She was Joice Heth who was purchased by Barnum to display. He later repented of this and became an abolitionist. But TL mentions none of this.

I will not describe baseball or horse racing, because they still exist. But Primrose and West’s Big Minstrel Festival featuring “The Leaders of Modern Minstrelsy and the Genuine Negro Minstrels” bears some mention. The blurb beside it refers to P&W as “one of the boldest, presenting white and black performers on the same stage with equal billing.” I wonder if they were getting equal pay and equal amenities on the road. And the picture is diverse - Black men, White men, White men pretending to be Black men…

I have no interest in the circus. But the stage looks interesting. I have never heard of Ada Rehan, but apparently she was the first lady of the legitimate stage. 

And I have never heard of Henry J. Pain’s GREAT WAR SPECTACLE at Manhattan Beach - but it looks amazing!

Harry Miner’s Comedy 4 Company appears to have a pair of characters called “The Jeromes”, one of whom is either a person of color or in blackface. It is unclear which. 

There is a playbill for Lilly Clay’s Company of Ladies Only “An Adamless Eden” surely that is based on a poem by Sappho - and the 1880s version of Jackass. 

On page 266 a triple spread of “Buffalo Bill’s Western Spectacular” playbill is the precursor to the section. And also an illustration of the excesses of the time. I shan't photograph it because my regular sized photo skills are dreadful. I shudder to think what a triple spread photo would look like in my hands!

The Greatest Showman on Earth

And TL gets into it with Buffalo Bill! He hunted buffalo for railroad crews! He rode in the pony express! He fought Indians, scouted for the US Cavalry and performed for 11 seasons as a professional actor by the age of 37. So Bill was both performer AND promoter whilst Barnum was just the promoter. THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, indeed.

There is a bonkers story about Sitting Bull’s spirit going into a performing horse when he was gunned down. There is also mention of a Mrs. Phoebe Ann Butler who became Annie Oakley. Little Sure Shot is described as “a very comely young woman”. Was she? ANNIE GET YOUR GUN had me thinking otherwise. 

SO the entertainment section ends with a pretty girl and a horse possessed by a great leader of a disenfranchised population. And entertainment has pretty much remained thus. 

All quotes and photographs are from TL unless otherwise noted.

Ada Rehan picture - Burr Publishing Co. - The Burr McIntosh Monthly August, 1908 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Rehan#/media/File:Ada_Rehan_2.jpg

Bijou Theater picture - https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/715137435/boston-bijou-theatre-digital-download-a

Buffalo Bill poster - https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/circus-poster.html

Joice Heth poster - https://www.bethelhistoricalsociety.com/index-joice-heth.htm

Phoebe Ann Butler picture - Underwood Archives/Getty Images - https://www.thoughtco.com/annie-oakley-1779790

Too Much Johnson picture - https://lokkeheiss.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/too-much-johnson-is-never-enough-orson-the-lost-film-of-orson-welles/

America 1870-1900 - THE CITY - in six parts!

The Magic Metropolis

There is a blurry faded photo of some ladies and children in 1877 San Francisco just leaving the theater. The waists on those women look painfully tiny.

Cities exploded in the gilded age as farm-folk and immigrants swelled their ranks. An unnamed  British visitor (Come on, TL, get your head out of your ass on these quotes!) described New York as “a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears, and her toes out at her boots.” In other words, it was filthy, smelly and disgusting while at the same time being glorious.

Walter B. Platt of Charm City, Maryland gives a bit of advice to the city dweller on the need for exercise. I am feeling a little virtuous because I just worked out.

A Giant Stride for Builders

The Brooklyn Bridge was a big deal. Bridges in general changed the face of cities. Because of strides in materials and engineering the sky was, as they say, the limit. TL describes and shows Chicago’s “towering” 10 story Insurance Building. Also pictured are beautifully ornate buildings from the 1890s and Dewey Arch on 5th Avenue. 

Frederick Law Olmsted is mentioned as the creator of Central Park. Good job, Fred! 

The Swan Boats in Boston’s Public Garden are pictured. I have never ridden one - must remedy that when we are once again a Swan Boat riding society. There are ice skaters and zoo-goers enjoying themselves en masse on the pages as well. Cities were awesome for the affluent!

Diversity in the Marketplace

Oh TL, I don’t think you know what diversity even is! Oh my gosh, did ladies love to shop! Well, middle and upper class ladies, anyway. Marshall Field opened up to “give the lady what she wants.” He had high end stores, discount stores and a restaurant for the hungry shopper. I remember restaurants in department stores from when I was a kid. My Grandma would take us for lunch, or Mom would when Grandma was visiting. I distinctly remember eating chicken pot pie that came in a little cardboard house and it was amazing!

There is a neat juxtaposition between a beautifully ornate Cleveland Arcade circa 1890 and on the next page Detroit’s open air Central Market 10 years prior. What a difference!

Getting Around

San Francisco - home of Rice-a-roni - put in the first cable cars in 1873. It was a hit and L.A., Denver, Seattle and Omaha followed suit. I believe this would have been the main mode of transportation for most city dwellers if not for that antisemetic sumbitch Henry Ford. Electric trolleys started up in 1888. 

A New Lifestyle

Oh my gosh, “In 1872 new rows of four story town-houses rise along Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue in the freshly land-filled Back Bay Area.” It looks so sparse! There is talk of new fangled “apartment buildings” and mention is made of the dreaded “elevator sickness.” 

In the following pages Chinatown tenements and an Italian immigrant neighborhood in Philadelphia are shown. They go from the rich and powerful to the scrappiest. 

Nature Against the City

The blizzard of 1888 was far different in New York City than in DeSmet, South Dakota, that’s for sure. The aftermath of the Chicago fire is shown - precursor to the Salem fire which was experienced by my father-in-law’s parents!

Next up - Entertainment. Oh good, how I long to be entertained…

All quotes and photographs are from TL unless otherwise noted.

Higbee's - http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/

America 1870-1900 - NOSTROMS: Cure-Alls with a Kick

Well, it turns out that Nostrums is another word for patent medicines. How funny! A whole section with a new vocabulary word. The double spread is a patent medicine wagon in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. It is the vehicle of the Dr. Krohn Family Medicine Company. It reminds me of Mr Mysterious and Company by Sid Fleischman. 

To draw the line nicely, and fix definitely, where the medicine may end and the alcoholic beverage begins, is a task which has often perplexed and still greatly perplexes revenue officers. - Commissioner of Internal Revenue 1883

Paine's Celery Compound was good for what ails you at 21% alcohol. 

TL tells of how most nostroms were booze and opium. So I guess we are better off now that our medicines actually cure stuff sometimes. The next two pages are advertisements and they do seem to be promising things they can’t possibly deliver. There is an electric toothbrush and an “electric belt for ladies” (I know how that sounds. This is not that “ladies massager” you’ve read about.) Neither of them seems to run on any current. They are just “infused” with electricity.

Ooh! The next two pages are color adverts! So pretty! And still so useless. The companies made trading cards to market their wares. Kids in particular swapped them around like Wacky Packs and Pokémon of old. 

Ponds Extract has a hopped up science frog and his child labor assistant cooking up the stuff.

Lydia Pinkham’s grandchildren are pictured on her card. I wonder what happened to her fortune? So I looked it up and she was actually awesome! She was an abolitionist,  a friend and neighbor of Frederick Douglass in Lynn, Mass., and a proponent of women's health! Her home in Lynn is on the National Register of historic places and her former factory is now the Lydia Pinkham Open Studio. 

Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup has a mom so excited to get 5 minutes peace by drugging her child. 

Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills and Comstock’s Dead Shot Worm Pellets are fighting to the death on the frontier. 

Dr. J.C. Ayer of Lowell, Mass. has all his medicines dancing around the earth in a ballet of world domination!

The Insurance Medicine Company believed so strongly that their medicine wouldn’t actually kill you that they insured each 12-week supply with a $500 policy. I assume they did okay playing those numbers. 

And finally there is a bit about “medical almanacs” which were free books full of ads for the products, but also astrology, long range weather forecasts and jokes. Apparently for some families, those were the only books they owned, other than the Bible. It does make me think about the adage - if you’re getting something for free, you are the product. 

Next up - the city.

All quotes and photographs are from TL

America 1870-1900 - THE VICTORIANS in three parts!

Too Much is Not Enough

The spread is a plant and tea set strewn porch in Oakland, California that looks verdant and busy. E. L. Godkin is quoted as saying, “To be rich properly is indeed a fine art.” Yuck.

Apparently the age of affluent tackiness began when Diamond Jim Brady said, “Hell, I’m rich. It’s time I had some fun.” And in the photos of Victorian homes, inside and outside, there is just SO MUCH STUFF!! Marie Kondo would have a cow.  William Dean Howells describes it scathingly and it sounds dreadful. 

Everyone had a piano and decorated the hell out of it. Lady Char, my friend Choral-lyn and I are the only people I know who have pianos anymore. I should play it more often.

Monarch of His Domain

Hey, we’ve got some basic human rights for women! Men work like dogs to provide wealth and “leisure” for their families. But women get help from servants and now have time to read and start getting ideas about owning their own properly and voting.

Oh man, on the family portrait on page 187 some former library patron drew a mohawk on the baby and wrote something racist about Native Americans. I was able to erase it. 

Basically, being a woman was awful. Be pretty and good so that you can marry and do stuff for your husband. I hope he’s nice - because he is allowed to beat and rape you if he likes. And he owns all your stuff. 

The hairdos on page 190 are BONKERS! Because the Bible said long hair is a woman’s glory, it was rarely, if ever, cut. But because of primness, it wasn’t left “unfettered”. So some wild up-dos were invented. Give me a braid or a ponytail any day! 

There is a bustle picture that looks exhausting. The text says up to 20 yards of fabric could go into a gown. How could you function in that?

Pages 192-3 is a hipster smorgasbord of facial hair. These virile men are an inspiration to us all. 

The next section has three of the most resigned four-year-olds in the history of children. TL calls them “Reluctant Fontleroys” and it couldn’t be more apt. Their outfits are deadly uncomfortable and their moms and nannies should be spanked. There is a section that uses Burnett’s LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY and Twain’s TOM SAWYER and the gap between them to explain toxic masculinity. Without mentioning that toxic masculinity is a thing, because it hasn’t been defined yet. That being said LLF did kind of suck. Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox were both better men than he’ll ever be!

Next up is a double spread of some girls and their dolls and the chilling caption, “The personification of sugar and spice, 19 little girls in California treat their dolls to a tea party on a lawn in 1887. Such frolics were regarded as sound training for an era when most girls married young and spent the rest of their lives managing households that averaged five people.” And what is left unsaid is that there were very different economic, educational and cultural expectations and opportunities. 

Doing the Right Thing

Some ladies are taking tea in Michigan in the first picture. Perhaps this section will give us some of the ins and outs of “paying calls.”

Oh my gosh, this whole section is about etiquette. There is a question about “the propriety of an ‘elderly girl of 35’ visiting an artist’s studio alone.” I’d say go for it you deserving spinster! Go get some...art. It was argued at the time that “the ennobling and purifying” influences of art would protect her virtue. But she should bring a buddy just in case. Also, regarding men paying for theater tickets - if the gentleman pays, he might be expecting...things. So fraught!

There is a funny bit from Twain’s “The Adventures of Colonel Sellers” which is available at Project Gutenberg under the name THE GILDED AGE. There is also a double spread of a proper Atlanta couple about to take a Sunday drive like Laura and Manly. There is the first person of color I have seen in over 60 pages standing on the porch dressed very nattily in a vest and trousers. I believe he is an employee rather than a guest. 

Then there is a birthday party with 17 or 18 kids seated around the table in a “prosperous New York home” waiting for cake. This is from the Byron Collection at the Museum of the City of New York. You can tell by the amount of blurriness in their faces which kids know how to sit still for 3 seconds and which ones just can’t.

There is a men’s camping picture from the Bohemian Grove which takes me back to TALES OF THE CITY. it is juxtaposed with a picture of an “Old Ladies’ Home” - a campsite with some gals sewing and listening to a friend read aloud. Other than the very heavy dresses, it looks like my kind of party!

 Next up - Nostrums. Whatever they are when they’re at home. 

All quotes and photographs are from TL