Bad Feminist

Diana Spechler’s Skinny reminds Gay of her stint at “fat camp” the summer after her sophomore year of high school. Gay attended the camp mostly against her will and had a terrible experience there, although she learned how to smoke, how to make herself throw up, and how to fake the number on the scale. Gay understands why body obsession is rampant in society, given that humans cannot escape their bodies and that she herself constantly thinks about her body. Spechler speaks to this obsession and inescapability through the book’s protagonist, Gray, who works at a fat camp for the summer and becomes anorexic and uses sex to avoid her grief.

While Gay enjoyed the book, she also struggled with it for its two significant weaknesses—the relative smallness of Gray and the “Dear Fat People” letters in the book. Gay attributes this to Spechler’s lack of experience in a fat body and her fat prejudice. Spechler is a thin woman, and she relies on the “psychological trope” to explain Gray’s purported fatness—that is, the idea that there must be some emotional explanation for weight gain. Gay sees this same idea in the “Dear Fat People” letters, which also embody the cruel thoughts and assumptions that society has about fat people.