Chicago-based
memoirist Jen Lancaster
would
make a shitty
diet
coach. Even if her
mouthwatering
descriptions of
French toast and port-wine
cheese
didn't drive
readers to
the fridge, her refusal
to apologize for being fat in the first place would probably leave her clients
fatter than they were at
the beginning. In her third book, Such
A
Pretty Fat:
One Narcissist's Quest To Discover If Her Life Makes
Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie Is Not The Answer,
she never solves the mystery of how she managed to lose 50 pounds while writing
about the many pitfalls
involved in trying
to lose 50 pounds.
After
milking unemployment and the annoyances of city life for her
books Bitter
Is The New Black and Bright
Lights, Big Ass, Lancaster—one
of the most prolific members of the blog-to-book generation—struggles
with
the first sentence of
a young-adult novel. Then, faced with her husband's
threat to send
her back to temping, she decides to take
a
friend's
suggestion and write
a more realistic book about dieting. A naked
self-portrait
gone wrong also contributes;
she
writes, "How
the fuck
did Jabba The
Hutt get
into my bedroom, and why is he wearing my pearls?" With
the 50 pounds
now
a contractual
obligation, and with absolutely no interest in exploring the psychological ramifications
of her weight gain, Lancaster
enlists
the services of a sadistically cheerful trainer named Barbie (whom
she hopes in vain will be "a dark, homely girl with an overbite")
and
endures
carb withdrawal
and packaged-meal rage to
keep
her promise to her editor.
Lancaster's efforts
may
make her healthier in the end, but it's
just a side effect
of her tremendously
entertaining quest
for superiority
over
everyone.
Lancaster's
self-acknowledged
high self-esteem,
not her methods,
set Such
A Pretty Fat
apart from other dieting books. (In an earlier book, she was rejected at a Biggest
Loser casting call because
of she refused to
cry on
television.)
Although
she's gleefully
prepared to abase herself in the service of a good story, her
turn from fat and unapologetic to thinner and apologetic gives
stories about familiar temptations an often-absurd
turn.
Just
as her
experiences in Bitter
Is The New Black taught her to appreciate
the
free things in life,
like hating
her neighbors, Lancaster
sails out of the book marginally wiser, but
no
less amusing.