The Woman on the Bike
In "Beyond the Sea," the last of the thirteen stories, Liz watches as a woman on an exercise bike in the gym just keeps pedaling even though the building is burning down around her. This woman is a symbol for all the people in the world who value exercise and looking trim almost over their own lives. Life is more than just looking thin, and this scene is symbolic of that fact.
The Name Changes
Throughout the course of the novel, the protagonist changes her name several times to go along with her development. She starts the book in high school as "Lizzie." When she graduates and moves on with her life, she adopts the name "Beth" instead, trying out a new identity. After her mother dies, she changes her name to "Elizabeth" to reflect her newfound seriousness in life. After Elizabeth and her husband break up, she reverts to just "Liz," attempting to emphasize her coolness in her new life as a single woman.
Mel
Elizabeth's best friend, Mel, is overweight and happy with her own body. Whereas Elizabeth is constantly changing things about herself to try to find happiness, Mel is perfectly content in her own skin. Mel, staying constant both for herself and for Elizabeth, thus symbolizes true contentment in one's own body. Her self-confidence is the lesson Elizabeth should have learned a long time ago, avoiding a long history of an inferiority complex.
Makeup
In "Full Body," Lizzie allows her new acquaintance China to do her makeup. This makeup is an attempt to hide herself and her body behind adornments, as is her scheme to take full-body photographs in poses and with props that obscure how large she is. This makeup symbolizes this mindset, a misguided attempt to disguise oneself in order to boost one's self-esteem. This not only won't work, but it further entrenches the person into the negative mindset.
The Salad
In "The Girl I Hate," Beth is going on a diet in order to try to shape her body in the way she wants it to look. She does this by only eating salads at lunch, a habit a smaller coworker points out repeatedly. This tiny salad is a symbolic representation of the lengths she is going to in order to achieve her dream body; its meagerness shows what she is denying herself for this ideal that will not, in reality, make her happy.
