No Fat Chicks: How Big Business Profits Making Women Hate Their Bodies-How to Fight Back
"Never in the history of the whole hapless world," Terry Poulton writes, "has there been a hoax as lucrative as the billion-dollar brainwash. It is the closest thing to alchemy ever discovered--with a formula that turns fat into gold, and prejudice into profit." A former columnist for theToronto Starand frequent contributor to high-profile magazines, Poulton has been there. After losing 65 pounds in an arduous 6-month stint, all the while receiving praise and accolades from fans and readers, Terry Poulton rapidly began "reinflating." Of her ordeal Poulton writes, "There's something only Oprah Winfrey and I know from actual experience: hell is having to show up fat when the whole country knows you're supposed to be thin."No Fat Chicksdistinguishes itself from similar exposés by focusing on the huge profits made from wannabe waifs in their avid consumption of weight-loss services. Accented by her astute critique of cultural assumptions (whose idealisthin, anyway?), Poulton writes with a journalist's investigative prowess, raising the question (inflected with both wit and rage) of why so many women spend their lives chasing the illusion of a "perfect" body, a challenge most of them are biologically predestined to fail. Strengthening her argument are the struggles and fates of people such as Christina Onassis, Jane Fonda, Sally Fields, and Olympic gymnast Christy Henrich, proving that information is indeed power and signaling hope that this scam is perhaps on its way to an end.