Essay Questions

Beth and Tom have a really good relationship which makes her feel better about herself. What is ironic about this?

This is a truly ironic relationship; to begin with, Beth has never felt good about herself before. She knows she is fat and she knows she would look and feel better if she wasn't. She feels that her size will make it difficult to date - and along comes Tom, who seems to love her despite her obesity, and this makes her self-esteem rise a little. Now that she feels better about herself, she feels a little more powerful, and so manages to stick to a diet and lose weight. This makes her very proud of herself for the first time in her life.

Here lies the irony; Tom did not love Beth because of her personality; Tom did not love Beth in spite of her weight, but because of it. When she has lost weight she has also lost her allure and her attractiveness to Tom, who turns to porn movies starring obese women to satisfy his fat girl fetish. Beth blamed her weight on her inability to find happiness and a relationship for so long, only to find that it was her obesity and the fact she was fat that had sparked the relationship in the first place.

Elizabeth's life comes full circle in the novel. How?

When we first meet Elizabeth, she is "Lizzy" and she is extremely close with her best friend Mel, another fat girl, but unlike Lizzy, a happy one too. Mel loves her body despite the fact she is overweight, something that Lizzy does not manage to do. The two spend less time together as they grow up, move away, develop relationships, but stay in touch, and at the end of the novel, once she has left Tom, Elizabeth moves in with Mel and the two become room-mates. Once again, Mel, who is still fat and happy, is able to show Elizabeth, who is fat and continually seeking something that she cannot find, a way forward, and it is whilst living with Mel that Elizabeth realizes she has been blaming everything on her weight and that it is up to her to go after whatever she wants regardless of what size she is.