13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is a book divided into thirteen chapters, describing different parts of the main character Elizabeth’s life. “Lizzy” grew up in Mississauga together with her best friend Mel. Mel and Lizzie are both overweight, and though Mel loves her body, Lizzy is self-conscious. She is afraid that she will never find love and that no one will want her because of her weight. When she sees other people, she thinks about how beautiful they are and how beautiful she would be if she was thinner.
As Elizabeth grows, she gets a new nickname; “Beth”. She gets a boyfriend named Tom even though she is still self-conscious. When she lies in bed with him, she is afraid that she will smother him if she turns over. She decides to lose weight and works out feverishly while eating less. Beth succeeds in loosing weight, and proudly presents her boyfriend and her new body to her mom, who is immensely proud of her. She marries Tom.
Beth’s mother’s heath gets worse, as she is heavily obese. She has trouble breathing and doesn’t have feeling in her legs. She dies. This is a change in Beth’s story, as she becomes “Elizabeth”, and struggles with fighting her grief. She regains comfort in food, dieting in between. Tom and Elizabeth’s relationship spirals down, and the final straw is broken when Elizabeth catches Tom watching porn with featuring obese women.
As “Elizabeth” becomes “Liz”, she moves out and starts living with her old friend Mel, in an apartment above a health club. The complex catches fire, and everyone runs out. Elizabeth looks through one of the windows and sees a person still training, despite the fire and the dangers around. She then has an epiphany: Life is worth more than training, and a person should not lose their life because of it. She realizes that she can do anything she puts her mind on.
