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  • STACKED
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      • Debut YA Novels
      • Get Genrefied
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Fat Girls on 2021 YA Book Covers

November 2, 2020 |

Although we’re far from seeing all of the covers of 2021 YA books, it’s been really promising so far. The representation is far more reflective of today’s teens. There is, as always, more room for improvement, but the strides forward are worth pausing to reflect upon.

One area that’s gotten better but is still lacking is the representation of fat teens — and specifically fat girls — on book covers. It shocks me to see casts of characters on a cover, be them illustrated or a photo, and not one of them is not thin. One in five teens is considered obese by CDC guidelines, which are wildly flawed, but that number is a point of reference for how unrepresentative YA book covers and stories about fat teens are.

That all said, what’s positive is how many of the fat teens on YA book covers in 2021 are teens of color. It’s a double win for representation.

Though this roundup focuses on fat female-appearing teens specifically, it was pretty apparent that fat teen boys on YA book covers for next year are even more rare.

I’ve pulled these descriptions from Goodreads, and determination on what makes for a “fat girl” is my own subjective decision. My rule of thumb is that these teens are much curvier than their counterparts or are clearly carrying more fat on their bodies. Of course, if you know of other 2021 covers that have been revealed so far that showcase fat teen girls, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

My fingers are crossed we see more as more covers are finalized.

Fat Girls on 2021 YA Book Covers (So Far!)

 

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega (February 2)

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it’s hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn’t help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there’s one person who’s always in Charlie’s corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing–he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.

A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

 

How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love With The Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (August 10)

When her twin sister reaches social media stardom, Moon Fuentez accepts her fate as the ugly, unwanted sister hidden in the background, destined to be nothing more than her sister’s camerawoman. But this summer, Moon also takes a job as the “merch girl” on a tour bus full of beautiful influencers and her fate begins to shift in the best way possible.

Most notable is her bunkmate and new nemesis, Santiago Phillips, who is grumpy, combative, and also the hottest guy Moon has ever seen.

Moon is certain she hates Santiago and that he hates her back. But as chance and destiny (and maybe, probably, close proximity) bring the two of them in each other’s perpetual paths, Moon starts to wonder if that’s really true. She even starts to question her destiny as the unnoticed, unloved wallflower she always thought she was.

Could this summer change Moon’s life as she knows it?

 

Love Is A Revolution by Renée Watson (February 2)

When Nala Robertson reluctantly agrees to attend an open mic night for her cousin-sister-friend Imani’s birthday, she finds herself falling in instant love with Tye Brown, the MC. He’s perfect, except . . . Tye is an activist and is spending the summer putting on events for the community when Nala would rather watch movies and try out the new seasonal flavors at the local creamery. In order to impress Tye, Nala tells a few tiny lies to have enough in common with him. As they spend more time together, sharing more of themselves, some of those lies get harder to keep up. As Nala falls deeper into keeping up her lies and into love, she’ll learn all the ways love is hard, and how self-love is revolutionary.

In Love Is a Revolution, plus size girls are beautiful and get the attention of the hot guys, the popular girl clique is not shallow but has strong convictions and substance, and the ultimate love story is not only about romance but about how to show radical love to the people in your life, including to yourself.

 

Speak For Yourself by Lana Wood Johnson (June 1)

Girl meets boy. Girl likes boy.
Girl gets friend to help win boy.
Friend ends up with crush on boy…

Skylar’s got ambitious #goals. And if she wants them to come true, she has to get to work now. (At least she thinks so…) Step one in her epic plan is showing everyone that her latest app is brilliant. To do that, she’s going to use it win State at the Scholastic Exposition, the nerdiest academic competition around.

First, she’ll need a team, and Skylar’s not always so good with people. But she’ll do whatever it takes to put one together … even if it means playing Cupid for her teammates Joey and Zane, at Joey’s request. When things get off to an awkward start for them, Skylar finds herself stepping in to help Joey. Anything to keep her on the team. Only, Skylar seems to be making everything more complicated. Especially when she realizes she might be falling for Zane, which was not a #goal. Can Skylar figure out her feelings, prove her app’s potential to the world, and win State without losing her friends–or is her path to greatness over before it begins?

 

Filed Under: book covers, cover designs, fatness, ya fiction, Young Adult, young adult fiction

2019: The Fat Girl Gets Her Cover

February 4, 2019 |

It took way too many years to get to this place. It’s far from perfect, of course, but it’s progress nonetheless. I’ve been writing about the lack of fat girls on YA book covers (or their portrayals vis a vis food) since 2009. We’ve had some progress in the last few years, even if we’re still seeing the portrayal of fatness in YA in less-than-great ways.

One thing I didn’t highlight in those posts — and something absolutely worth making note of — is that not only do we see a lack of fat girls on YA covers. We’ve seen a lack of fat girls of color. What looks like a problem from the top is, of course, “from the top” of racial power. It’s even worse and more insidious for people of color, who’ve so rarely been on the covers, let alone allowed to be anything other than the white ideal of thinness when given the cover treatment.

It is getting better.

Fat Girls on 2019 YA Book Covers | YA books | book lists | YA books about fat girls | YA book covers | Awesome YA book covers | #YALit

Let’s highlight some of the amazing covers featuring fat girls across the range of skin tones who’ll be getting the cover treatment in 2019. I’m making the covers big on this one so we can enjoy them, and I’ve included book descriptions below from Goodreads. I hope we continue to see more of this and it gets to the point where it’s no longer novel and worth highlighting in a round-up and instead, it’s so abundant that it doesn’t need to be a thing to celebrate because it’s simply the norm.

 

Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution by EE Charlton-Trujillo

Sophomore year has just begun, and Angie is miserable. Her girlfriend, KC, has moved away; her good friend, Jake, is keeping his distance; and the resident bully has ramped up an increasingly vicious and targeted campaign to humiliate her. An over-the-top statue dedication planned for her sister, who died in Iraq, is almost too much to bear, and it doesn’t help that her mother has placed a symbolic empty urn on their mantel. At the ceremony, a soldier hands Angie a final letter from her sister, including a list of places she wanted the two of them to visit when she got home from the war. With her mother threatening to send Angie to a “treatment center” and the situation at school becoming violent, Angie enlists the help of her estranged childhood friend, Jamboree. Along with a few other outsiders, they pack into an RV and head across the state on the road trip Angie’s sister did not live to take. It might be just what Angie needs to find a way to let her sister go, and find herself in the process.

 

 

If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann

 

High school finally behind her, Winnie is all set to attend college in the fall. But first she’s spending her summer days working at her granny’s diner and begins spending her midnights with Dallas—the boy she loves to hate and hates that she likes. Winnie lives in Misty Haven, a small town where secrets are impossible to keep—like when Winnie allegedly snaps on Dr. Skinner, which results in everyone feeling compelled to give her weight loss advice for her own good. Because they care that’s she’s “too fat.”

Winnie dreams of someday inheriting the diner—but it’ll go away if they can’t make money, and fast. Winnie has a solution—win a televised cooking competition and make bank. But Granny doesn’t want her to enter—so Winnie has to find a way around her formidable grandmother. Can she come out on top?

 

 

Like A Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

 

It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance…until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen. He’ll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won’t break Judy’s heart–and destroy the most meaningful friendship he’s ever known.

 

 

No Big Deal by Bethany Rutter

 

No Big Deal tells the story of Emily, a fat teenager who is perfectly happy with her body, thank you very much. With a mum signing up to new fad diets every week, and friends who appear to be having grown-up sexual relationships, Emily faces the constant battle to stay strong and not conform to society’s idealistic image of a young woman. Can she remain the strong feminist (with a great sense of style) that she is and retain her identity as a happy fat girl?

 

 

There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon

 

 

Ashish Patel didn’t know love could be so…sucky. After he’s dumped by his ex-girlfriend, his mojo goes AWOL. Even worse, his parents are annoyingly, smugly confident they could find him a better match. So, in a moment of weakness, Ash challenges them to set him up.

The Patels insist that Ashish date an Indian-American girl—under contract. Per subclause 1(a), he’ll be taking his date on “fun” excursions like visiting the Hindu temple and his eccentric Gita Auntie. Kill him now. How is this ever going to work?

Sweetie Nair is many things: a formidable track athlete who can outrun most people in California, a loyal friend, a shower-singing champion. Oh, and she’s also fat. To Sweetie’s traditional parents, this last detail is the kiss of death.

Sweetie loves her parents, but she’s so tired of being told she’s lacking because she’s fat. She decides it’s time to kick off the Sassy Sweetie Project, where she’ll show the world (and herself) what she’s really made of.

Ashish and Sweetie both have something to prove. But with each date they realize there’s an unexpected magic growing between them. Can they find their true selves without losing each other?

 

 

 

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson (paperback)

 

Mila Flores and her best friend Riley have always been inseparable. There’s not much excitement in their small town of Cross Creek, so Mila and Riley make their own fun, devoting most of their time to Riley’s favorite activity: amateur witchcraft.

So when Riley and two Fairmont Academy mean girls die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone’s explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life.

Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders, but they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer…before the killer strikes again.

 

 

Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagen

 

Jasmine and Chelsea are sick of the way women are treated even at their progressive NYC high school, so they decide to start a Women’s Rights Club. They post everything online—poems, essays, videos of Chelsea performing her poetry, and Jasmine’s response to the racial macroaggressions she experiences—and soon they go viral. But with such positive support, the club is also targeted by online trolls. When things escalate, the principal shuts the club down. Jasmine and Chelsea will risk everything for their voices—and those of other young women—to be heard.

 

Filed Under: book covers, fatness, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult, young adult fiction

Guest Post on Fatness and YA at Twinjas Book Reviews

December 13, 2014 |

I have a guest post over at Twinja Book Reviews as part of their month-long series of diversity discussions (which you should be reading because they’re awesome).
My post is about fatness and YA.

Filed Under: body image, fatness, Uncategorized, Young Adult

Weight, Body Image & Body Portrayal in YA Books

September 17, 2012 |

This week, I’m reviewing a few books that tackle a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. I thought before delving into those reviews, I’d talk about why these books are tough for me to read and even harder for me to review without bias. I think it’s fair to say that when I review a book — when anyone reviews a book — there are certain biases that emerge within the review. Certain subjects tend to arouse more feelings or beliefs than others. It would be impossible to be entirely objective in a review. You can get close, but even if you evaluate a book solely on a list of literary standards, your own biases about what makes a standard come into play.

My touchy subjects are weight and body image. More specifically, the portrayal of characters who aren’t thin or of average, non-noteworthy size. In other words, I’m endlessly curious about stories featuring fat or obese characters. If you’ve spent any time here you know this already, as I’ve talked about fat girls on book covers and I talked about how annoying it is that bodies are constantly compared to one another in such a way that even thin bodies are somehow improper or less-than worthy of being a body.

I’m inherently biased against books featuring fat characters because being fat has been a reality of my life since middle school and through high school, college, graduate school, now. Living with a fat body has been my reality. It’s been my reality and my existence for as long as I can remember being body-aware.

Everyone’s experience with their own physical body is different. Everyone’s bodies are as they are for entirely different reasons, and everyone’s level of acceptance of what they look like and how they feel is going to be different. It changes, too: I thought I was huge in high school, thanks in part to what other people would say to me. But when I got to college, I realized I wasn’t that big. Until, of course, I gained a lot of weight in college. I’m talking close to 100 pounds over the course of four years — and why doesn’t really matter. The thing is, I didn’t feel all that different than I did in high school. I was able to do everything I did in high school physically. I still got out of bed. I could still do the stairs. I could still participate in x, y, and z and not feel like my body was holding me back. Was I happy with how I looked? No. But I was still physically capable of doing everything I wanted to do.

What left a mark on me was less about my fat and more about what other people thought about fat and then attached to me.  There are a million assumptions about fat people, about how their bodies hold them back and how their bodies are somehow less-than because they are larger. About how because they carry more fat, then they’re a part of the problem of the obesity epidemic, of health crises, and so on. About how they’re somehow less human because their bodies take up more space. But in my experience, none of these things are true. I’m still as perfectly a valid human as someone who is half or quarter of my size and as perfectly valid as someone who might be three or four or eight times the size of me. Even after shedding a lot of weight and taking better care of myself physically in terms of following a fitness and eating routine, I still consider who I was at my highest weight as essential and important a human as I am now — and if you’re wondering, since likely you are because I think it’s part of the human/societal condition at this point to be so, I’m at the smallest I have been since high school right now, even though I probably weigh more than anyone would believe.

Of course, this is to say that what the scale says means nothing except whatever you believe it says. Do I still find myself excited when I see the number go down? Absolutely. But what matters most to me is how I feel when I get up in the morning and how I’m able to best navigate my world within the body I have. The fat but still absolutely human body.

When I read a book tackling weight then, I bring my own life experience to the table. I bring all the baggage I’ve dealt with and all of my experiences living with my body and the experiences of others living with my body. Is it fair? Maybe, maybe not. But often, books tackling overweight teens tend to fall into a number of problematic tropes and stereotypes:

  • Attachment to eating: In so many of the books tackling weight issues — and I’ll say this about both books about overweight teens and books about teens struggling with eating disorders on the other side of the spectrum — is that food and consumption are inextricably linked to emotion and comfort. Does this happen in real life? Absolutely. We go out and eat to celebrate good news, and sometimes we dive into certain foods for comfort when we’re sad or depressed or anxious. But what many of these books do is continuously attach meaning to eating. The fat character can’t cope with loss or grief or any other big deal issue, their only solution is to eat. There’s not an actual, genuine emotion to ground the reader to the character or to allow the reader to empathize with the character and their situation. Instead, readers are told that the character is just eating again to make themselves feel better about whatever the issue at hand is. The association is that the character is weak and that their bodies are fat because they’re too weak to tackle the issue at hand. They turn to comfort, and then they wear that comfort through their fatness. This feels like cheating to me — it’s too simplistic and far too dehumanizing in terms of explaining why someone is fat. It’s lazy character development and relies upon societal stereotypes of what does and doesn’t make someone fat. Readers are given the explanation they’re given everywhere else, furthering the stereotype and further suggesting the connection between a problem and a fat body. 
  • Choice vs. legitimate issue: Many times, the fat character is fat because, well, she or he chose to be that way. The food for comfort issue above plays into it a bit, but more than that, stories about the fat character tend to make the reader assume that said character could be different — could be thin or of an average size — if they were better/smarter/less lazy/any other quality that is within their own control. In other words, it’s their own fault they’re fat so suck it up and deal. That’s far too simplistic and again, it’s exactly what society says about fat people, isn’t it? That change is entirely within their control and the only reason they aren’t slim is because they’re lazy? The truth is, though, fat people are fat for any number of reasons: genetics, health concerns, and their environment, among other things. Sometimes, very active, athletic people are fat. Sometimes, they’re more fit than thin people, too. Fat isn’t always about choice. Even if there is choice involved in how one’s body appears, making a commitment to change, to start working out or eating “right” or any number of other choices meant to make a fat body less fat doesn’t promise the end of fat. That we continue to suggest it’s a choice is harmful and ignorant.
  • Changing for someone/something else: I don’t think it’s unreasonable or unbelievable that sometimes what spurs a person to change their life is someone or something else. Especially teens. Peer pressure and the desire to fit in are cornerstones of teen development. And here is where my adult sensibilities kick in — it is problematic to me when weight loss, when getting rid of fatness, is the means for a character to suddenly become accepted. When fatness is portrayed as the stumbling block in making a character one worthy of being accepted, of being loved, of capturing the attention of the cute boy or the popular clique. Does it happen in real life? I’d be naive to say no; I also think I’d be naive in suggesting that a book tackling fat issues make itself a happy story where everyone learns to accept one another in whatever shape or size they are. Here’s the thing though. At what point are these books simply playing upon social expectations? It’s the Cinderella scenario. As soon as the fat character overcomes their fatness and becomes what society wants them to be — thin and attractive — they’re suddenly going to be accepted and loved. Fat is bad. It’s ugly. And often in these books, it is the only reason someone can’t get the stud or fit in with a certain crowd. Here’s the truth: the only way you can change and sustain change is through making the commitment to yourself. You have to first accept who you are at that very basic level before you can decide to change. Choosing to change to fit other people’s molds isn’t just unhealthy; it’s unrealistic. In real life, when you lose a significant part of your fatness, it doesn’t make people like you more. It doesn’t get you the star football player. And if it DOES do those things, then that says more about those people than it does about you. So that many of these books showcase weight loss as a means to solve your social problems is in and of itself troubling. 
  • Lack of support: Going along with the changing for other people issue is that in so many of these books, fat characters lack support systems. Even their families lack empathy for their fat compatriots. Mom or dad or brother or sister constantly nag upon the fat character to get on a diet, to lose weight, to make themselves better. Often the characters are portrayed as loners or as people who don’t have many friends to whom they can turn. Or if they do have friends, those friends are either struggling with fatness themselves or aren’t true friends. They’re of the hot and cold variety. It’s never about who the person is on the inside. It’s about what they look like on the outside. Even if it’s explained as coming from a place of concern and love on the part of the family member of friend, it’s still troubling that these fat characters aren’t accepted wholly for who they are until they lose weight.  
  • Fat fear stereotyping: This one’s mileage varies, so understand this is entirely my personal peeve, though I am probably not isolated in this feeling. Many times books tackling fat characters play into horrific stereotypes of what it means to exist in a fat body. What that experience must be like. For starters — and this particular scenario emerges repeatedly in these books — there’s the character’s fear of not fitting into a seat or of a chair breaking beneath them. Is this a legitimate concern? I think so. Except, it’s also not a part of one’s existence with a fat body at every waking moment. If it were, fat people wouldn’t leave their homes. Wouldn’t go to school. Wouldn’t get on an airplane (where fat people are regularly discriminated against anyway). In other words, a lot of times these books look into the experience of fat with speculation and almost a perverse sense of power in terms of a character’s capabilities or lack thereof. These characters live a daily life of fear, to the point it can paralyze them. Fatness is to be feared because by being fat, you might embarrass yourself if you try to sit on the locker room bench. Or in the classroom chair. Or hell, that a fat body can’t participate in physical education class because there’s no way someone who weighs 300 pounds could ever get through 30 minutes of activity. 
  • Non-acceptance of self: The most troubling issue for me in these books, though, is that a character who is fat rarely gets the opportunity to accept themselves as they are. Because of all the issues outlined above, they’re already pinned down AS the fat character and AS the fat character, they’re somehow less-than-human. They lack feelings, they lack drive and ambition for non-body related goals, they lack friends and family, and they lack self-care. If adolescence is about growing up and learning about yourself, who you are, and what you’re capable of, that should translate into your physical experience, too. I mean, it already does with puberty. I don’t quite understand then why these books insist that being fat isn’t okay. That it’s something needing to be changed. I think it goes back to what I’ve repeated over and over: social norms. Social beliefs about what it means to have and live inside a fat body. Because a fat body is somehow less able to do the things a normal or thin body is. Because a fat body represents what’s wrong with everything in society. Because a fat body represents something to someone who isn’t existing within the body that they are judging. 

I feel like we’ve come leaps and bounds in terms of accepting people in our world for their lifestyle choices. By no way are we perfect nor do I think we will ever be, but we are far more willing to look at people who are LGBTQ or who are choosing non-traditional means of careers or education or who have maybe become pregnant at a bad time and need to make life-altering choices impacting themselves and that child and accept the choices they make. These are, of course, a small number of examples. But when it comes to choosing to accept fatness, we continue to drown in these stereotypes. I can count on one hand the books that work against one or all of the problems above, and that makes me sad and frustrated. Aside from being that teen — and now being that adult — I know scads of kids who are exposed to these beliefs and it damages them early on. It tells them they’ll never be good enough. It tells them that their bodies are wrong, are disgusting, are less than capable and that translates into them thinking they aren’t worthy of love or acceptance, either.

We’re much more than our bodies, but we exist within a physical shape for our entire lives. We can choose to accept them or we can choose to change them, but that choice is entirely personal. It’s disheartening when stories of triumph and of change are instead muddied with simplistic renderings of what it means to be a person.

So over the next few days, I’ve scheduled reviews of a few books touching on what it is like to be a fat kid. Some are better than others and some DO absolutely force a character to change — for themselves. What I’ve been trying to point out is that sometimes the story is just that, about a fat character who needs or wants to change themselves. But too often, it comes at the price of falling into easy-to-use stereotypes, easy-to-buy scenarios that devalue the character and their journey to that point. Because even if their fatness is the point of the story, they are so much more than what their bodies look like. 

If you’ve read a book where you think an overweight character has been particularly well rendered, I’d love to hear the title. I’ve got a small list, and I’ve read a handful, but I feel this is an area worth shining more light into. We offer books about the dangers and truths of eating disorders. Why is it we can’t offer that sort of array of fiction to those who are fat without falling into a problematic trope? 

(I’m not the only person thinking about this lately. Funny enough, this is a post I’ve been working on for a month or so now, and in that space, this is a topic that popped up over at Teen Librarian’s Toolbox, and it’s well worth reading. Please also read the fantastic blog post by Rae Carson about weight and what it means to have extra weight as a woman. It’s one of those pieces I return to again and again.) 

Filed Under: big issues, fatness, Uncategorized

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