13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
[Content warning: disordered eating]
Mona Awad’s darkly funny debut, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (2016), chronicles the life of one particular fat girl as she struggles to conform to the expectations of society, her loved ones and herself.
Awad gained a cult following after the publication of her novel, Bunny (2019), and so you’d be forgiven for thinking (like I did) that 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl was her next piece of work. It certainly doesn’t read like a debut – the voice here is strong, honest and unbearably real – however, this collection of 13 vignettes is exactly that: the work that defined the beginning of Awad’s career, finally published in Australia in 2022.
The book’s protagonist, Lizzie, doesn’t like the way she looks. Having grown up overweight, she remains a fat girl even when there are no longer any kilos to shed. Her journey – from adolescence to the breakdown of her marriage – is overshadowed first by her self-consciousness, and later by her obsessive self-restriction.
Reminiscent of Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed (2021) both in its portrayal of eating disorders and approaching extremes, as well as its provocative, searing writing style, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl exposes a society that is built on approaching people differently based on their weight for being exactly what it denies to be: anti-fat.
This book is meant to divide, and that it does. Awad is characteristically vivid both in her descriptions of those who are overweight in this book, as well as the ways in which outsiders or supporting characters see these overweight people. However, the lens is pointed at the other end of the spectrum too: those who do everything in their power, no matter how unhealthy, to avoid sliding down to the other end.
The result is unsurprisingly shocking, leading to very different opinions.
Those who love this novel praise Awad for her tender and raw portrayal of the ways in which the perception of fat people seeps into someone’s everyday life, while those who hate it seem to detest it for stereotyping both fat and non-fat people. What elevates these seemingly cliché stereotypes is their position in relation to Lizzie – as such, they become an infuriating, and often all-too-real perspective to grapple with not just in this book, but out in the real world too:
“The fat girl is always home. Alphabetising her fairy tale and mythology collection. Giving herself a rune reading by candlelight. Lying on her celestial bedspread, listening to a subgenre of her vampire music with closed eyes. In other words: waiting for your call. And you are right. She is ridiculously happy to hear from you, as usual – another undeniable plus about the fat girl.”
Whichever way you look at it, what makes 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl unforgettable is Awad’s writing. At times visceral, each of these vignettes are gutting in their own way – whether it’s through now-skinny Lizzie’s fascination with fat people (“...I look up and there she is. Spilling out of a zebra-print maxi dress. Grinning crookedly at me between red corkscrew curls. My eye runs worriedly over her frame for any signs of weight loss. Seeing there are non, I breathe out.”) or the disturbing descriptions of depravation (“I watch her bite into the scone with her little bunny teeth. I watch gobs of clotted cream catch in either corner of her lips. She tilts her head back, closes her eyes, starts to make what must be the groaning noises. I pour myself more tea and cup it in both hands like it's warming them even though it's gone cold. Then I pretend to look out the window at the dismal view of the street. I say, ‘Busy in the office this morning,’ and try not to think Cunt. She is, after all, a friend and colleague.”)
Awad’s writing rounds out even the slightest slivers of characters, including Lizzie’s mother, her husband Tom, and her various friends who come to life as real and flawed as if they were standing in front of us. Through their musings and their perception of Lizzie, we get a further insight into the workings of an eating disorder’s effects on people and relationships.
“I did this for you, you know, she always tells him.
Did you? he wants to say.
Because he doesn’t remember ever asking for kumquats or hybrid cardio machines, but who knows? Maybe all this time, all the little ways he looked at her and didn’t look at her, all the things he said or didn’t say or didn’t say enough added up to this awful request without his knowledge or consent, like those ransom notes made from letters cut from different magazines.”
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is smart, tender and brutal all in the same sentence. While it doesn’t encapsulate a universal experience, it paints in vivid colours the heartbreaking yet quietly hopeful life of one skinny woman, who, through it all, cannot help but see herself as a fat girl. As a result, it peels back layers of individual struggles and the stereotypes that might accompany such a life. Whether you have ever struggled with these issues or not, it is worth a thought-provoking read.
Fruzsina Gál is an aspiring writer, born in Hungary but living in Australia. She has been a reader all her life, and her first short story, 'The Turul' was published in Griffith University's 2018 anthology, Talent Implied. Her writing is often focussed on identity and the effects of immigration on the self. You can find her online at www.fruzsinagal.com or @thenovelconversation.