Book Review: Passing For Thin

I first read Passing For Thin last fall. I saw it in the bookstore one day when I was looking around. It was during one of those times when I was starting another diet. I thought that the story of a woman who had lost 170 pounds sounded rather intriguing.

I wasn't ready for this book when I first read it, but I still couldn't put it down. Even, while I was rooting for Frances to be successful in her quest to lose weight, my heart hurt for her lack of self-esteem. It was too hard to read back in October. I bought the book because I was wrestling with my own weight problems, but I hid from the harsh spotlight it shone on deeper personal insecurities.

I've since been working through some of these issues and picked up the book to read again while sick in the bed this weekend. I was ready.

Frances' story of overcoming her addiction to food as an antidote to her personal insecurities was still hard to read, though. This true story starts with a vivid chapter that describes her early relationships to food as an escape from painful reality. It was almost too much. It hurt to read this first chapter because I both hurt for Frances and I hurt for the child in me who hid from painful reality in a similar fashion, though through means other than food.

Later, as an adult, Frances enters a twelve-step program, much like Alcoholics Anonymous, for people who struggle with food. She begins to follow a very strict diet and loses 150 pounds in 13 months while relying on the newfound family she finds in the program.

This book, though, is not really about her weight loss because it glosses over those 13 months in just a few pages. The bulk of the book is about her finding herself when the fat suit of armor is stripped away. She speaks often of "passing for thin", as if even after she's lost all the weight, she is still a fat girl pretending to be thin for the rest of the world. Her "fat self" is the self that hides from reality and tries to use food as a crutch because she feels trapped into a life she cannot control. Her "thin self" is the self-confident woman she can't quite believe she can be, but who makes her life what she wishes. The two selves are constantly at war, with neither quite claiming victory.

Frances' story is the story of each of us. We all wrestle with our own private addictions and insecurities, our "fat selves". It may not be food or alcohol or drugs, but something less tangible. The good news of the story, though, is that we can choose to change by taking one step- and then the next one- and then the next. If we accidentally step backwards, that's ok, as long as we go ahead and take that next first step, constantly striving to be the "thin self" inside.