Analysis Of “The Fat Girl” By Andre Dubus
In a world caught up with perfection, it is challenging to not conform to what society alleges as acceptable. Society has associated being fat with lazy, unattractive, and weak. “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus (1978) depicts the story of a female struggling with body image and acceptance from society. “The Fat Girl” revolves around the main character, Louise, the protagonist, and her internal battle with self-image and searching for acceptance. Society, the protagonist, will never accept her as long as she is fat. As a child, she learned being overweight made her unworthy and unlovable. “In five years, you’ll be in high school and if you’re fat the boys won’t like you; they won’t ask you out”.
At nine years old, Louise begun hiding food and eating in private. Her father was the only one who accepts Louise for who she is despite the number on the scale. “He told her she was beautiful and, as always, his eyes bathed her with love”. Once in college, Louise form a strong bond with Carrie. Carrie is the one who persuades Louise to go on a diet. “I want you to be loved the way I love you. Louise, if I help you, really help you, will you go on a diet?”.
Although Carrie helps Louise lose weight, it also validates the negative belief that to be worthy of love, she must be thin. Despite losing weight, Louise recognized that she was still unhappy and that she lost herself in the process. “In all her life she had never been afflicted by ill temper and she looked upon it now as a demon which, along with hunger, was taking possession of her soul”.
“She felt that somehow during her dieting she had lost more pounds than fat; that sometime during her dieting she had lot herself too”. After college, Louise met Richard, a lean man who worked alongside her father. Louise eventually marries him. As time goes on, Richard appears unconcerned learning about Louise’s life before she was thin. She longed for him to love and accept her as a whole, fat, or skinny. “He could not see her as she was when she was fat. She felt as though she were trying to tell a foreign lover about her, life in the United States, and if only she could command the language he would know and love all of her and she would feel complete”.
Once Louise became pregnant, she lost the discipline to eat healthily and once again initiated the unhealthy habit of eating in hiding. “She knew quite clearly that she was losing the discipline she had fought so hard to gain during her last year with Carrie”. As the pregnancy went on, and the number on the scale went up, it became clear Richard never truly loved Louise. “She knew better: she knew that beneath the argument lay the question of who Richard was. She thought of him smiling at the wheel of his boat, and long ago courting his slender girl, the daughter of his partner and friend”.
The story ends with Louise coddling her newborn son and realizing that she didn’t have to be thin or unhappy to be loved. He loved her unconditionally, and that’s all she ever wanted. Society has the power to shape people in many ways especially when it comes to body image. People compare themselves to perfect images of others. When a person doesn’t look the same or have the same characteristics as the perfect models on the cover of magazines, one might feel bad about themselves. “The Fat Girl” teaches readers about eating disorders and the negative impact society has on how one might view themselves.
