WHEN GIRLS FEEL FAT

Helping Girls Through Adolescence

2000: HarperCollins, Toronto, ON   ISBN# 0-00-638609-1     270 pages   $19.95
2000: Firefly, Toronto, ON (US edition)   ISBN# 1-55209-459-6     270 pages    $14.95
 

Stacey stands in front of her closet holding up a pair of jeans.
"I'm not going to school today," she wails, "I'm so fat!"
"No, you're not," responds her mother Gina.
"Yes, I am," yells Stacey, grabbing a T-shirt and throwing it on the floor.
"No, you're not," says Gina, trying her best to help.
"Yes, I am! Just look at the size of my thighs!"
"Your thighs look fine," responds Gina, in an attempt to make things better. "Why don't you wear your blue skirt? It's your favorite and it really looks good on you."
"My thighs are so fat. I'm so fat," insists Stacey, as the skirt joins the pile of clothes on the floor.
"You're not fat."
"Yes, I am!"
"No, you're not!"
"You just don't understand," yells Stacey, as she storms angrily out of the room.

For most girls, it's impossible to grow up without feeling fat and measuring their self worth in terms of how they look. How many times have you heard someone like Stacey wail: 'I'm not going to school today. I feel so fat. I'm huge!'? How many times have you been the one who has felt fat, and nothing anyone could say could make it better?

Sandra Friedman's book When Girls Feel Fat: Helping Girls Through Adolescence explains that "feeling fat" has nothing to do with the weight on one's body. It is a code for expressing stressful and negative feelings—a way of repressing real feelings and translating real events into the language of fat.

Adolescence may be a difficult time for many girls. As girls go through puberty, their bodies get bigger and rounder in a culture that values them predominately according to how they look and tells them that they must be thin. Girls also experience changes in their lives as they reinvent themselves in order to fit into the adult world. The once feisty know-it-all is silenced as she begins to keep her feelings and opinions to herself. Instead of meeting others with honesty she focuses on being kind and nice. Instead of directness in her relationships, she holds back because she is afraid of hurting others and overly concerned with pleasing them. Instead of acting on her curiosity, she is preoccupied with being perfect.

During adolescence many girls deal with the changes in their lives by deflecting them onto their bodies. They internalize their distress through the use of a negative voice. They feel ugly, stupid and—most of all—fat. 'Feeling fat' often means a girl is feeling inadequate or disappointed or angry or any of the other feelings that are difficult for them to express.

When Girls Feel Fat helps parents, mentors and girls themselves to understand and cope with the difficult process of adolescence. This friendly guide provides a framework that is based on contemporary theories of brain sex and female development, strategies for decoding the language of fat, and a context for the issues and concerns that lie underneath. It demystifies the relationships girls have with their body image, friends, parents, puberty, sexuality, eating disorders, school and the media. The Time Out for Yourself in many chapters helps you reflect on your own issues. Time for Each Other provides you with skills and ideas for addressing these issues directly with your girls.

When Girls Feel Fat evolved out of Sandra's successful Just For Girls program that is used throughout Canada and the United States. Through case notes from her private practice and feedback from groups that she has facilitated, Friedman draws on a wealth of useful experiences and coping techniques. When Girls Feel Fat gives parents, teachers and other professionals who work with girls empathetic, clear and proven strategies to maintain a connection in the fact of 'tuning out', to deal with conflict, to address bullying, to recognize how worries about weight can lead to serious eating disorders and to cope with the grungies—Friedman's term for the voice of girls' self-deprecating negative feelings.

In the face of today's dieting epidemic among girls as young as seven, When Girls Feel Fat is a practical, timely, easy to read book that will help parents, teachers and others who work with girls guide them into healthy, confident womanhood. It is also a valuable resource for girls who are hungry for information about themselves during this transition.

"When Girls Feel Fat brings together the incredible range of things Sandra Friedman has learned in her groundbreaking, successful efforts to prevent and treat girls' eating disorders. Clearly and convincingly Sandra show how each of us—girls, parents, schools, media, relative, friends and community leaders—can confront and resist the things that damage our daughters. This is a solid and realistic look at girls' adolescence and a very valuable book."

Joe Kelly, Editor
 New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams
and New Moon Network: For Adults Who Care About Girls

"When Girls Feel Fat is more than a book. It is a partnership between the reader and the author and the beginning of a journey to a land where the language of fat is not the only one available to girls."

Margo Maine, Director, Eating Disorders Institute of
Living, Hartford, Connecticut and author of Father
Hunger: Fathers, Daughters and Food and Body
Wars: Making Peace with Women's Bodies (An
Activist Guide)                                                

"Parents will find a wealth of information, spoken in a kind and gentle manner. Most important, Sandra Susan Friedman teaches parents what to do when their daughter says, 'I feel fat'."

Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter

authors of When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies

"The self-reflective woman looking for an enlightening, intimate, unpretentious read should find Friedman's suggestions helpful and easy to integrate both in her own life, and in the life of her daughter."

Quill and Quire

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