Book Review: Jemima J by Jane Green

(This is a pretty ranty review, I really didn't like this book.)

I'd actually read this book before a couple of years ago; I decided to re-read it because I remembered hating it but not why. What I remembered of it seemed fairly harmless. Well, I re-read it, and I still don't like it. There are several different issues with this book, so I'll try to address them separately.

First, the way this book is written is .... unique. Some of it is written from Jemima's point of view. Some of it is written in third person observing Jemima. And some of it is written in omniscient third person, watching other characters. Sometimes this narrator criticizes, sometimes hints at the future, sometimes empathizes. The entire thing is also in present tense. Having not read anything else by Jane Green, I don't know if this is typical of her writing or not. But it got old and annoying. Especially annoying was the way, when in third person, the characters' full names were used over and over--as if there were another Jemima in the book we might get confused about, or something.

Secondly, Jemima herself has little in the way of personality. She's every fat girl cliche you can list: She hates herself and her body. She's consumed with thoughts of food. She overeats; she eats mindlessly; she eats in secret. She's an emotional eater. She deludes herself into thinking what she eats in healthy when it's not. She's unhealthy--can't even walk up a flight of stairs without taking a rest. She has a "pretty face". She's not a virgin, but has never had good sex or a real relationship. She has no friends and blames it on her weight. She lets people walk all over her. She's always going to start a diet "tomorrow". She's so smart, and so talented, and so funny, and so special ... but nobody knows it because she's fat! Boo hoo! And, naturally, she's in love with the office hunk who's "out of her league"--because she fat. Although there's nothing terribly awful about the character, there's nothing special either--she's sort of your generic fat girl as pictured by someone skinny.

*****SPOILERS*****
Thirdly, the story itself is ... well ... sort of weirdly contrived. Essentially, Jemima becomes friends with her crush, Ben, but he then goes to work somewhere else. She meets someone from California on the Internet and drops a bunch of weight, then goes to meet him. At first it's all fun, until she discovers--gasp!--he likes fat girls! In fact, he has a fat girlfriend, but cooked up this scheme to get a "trophy girlfriend" to show off around LA. And somehow the fat girlfriend is okay with this. Because she "loves" him and he "needs" this. Jemima gets out of the situation, and in LA runs into Ben, who has seen her around, but didn't recognize her and thought she was the most beautiful women ever. She and Ben end up together.

Um, what? I assume this is supposed to be some sort of irony--oh, look at Jemima, she lost a bunch of weight for a chubby chaser! Ha ha! Oh but look, fate conspired to bring her and Ben together in LA, how lovely. And Ben's not a total douchebag for not loving her when she was fat, because she was his friend! So obviously he's not a shallow scum-sucker!

I'll grant this: the idea was cute, and original. It was just too thin a premise. And all the smug third-person narration about fate and how amazing Ben is, yadda yadda, got on my nerves.
*****END SPOILERS****

However, I think my biggest problem with this book is the fact that the author has very, very obviously never been fat. I could try to write a cohesive paragraph about this, but there's too much, so I'm resorting to lists.

1) Jane Green obviously has no idea what 200 pounds looks like:
Jemima supposedly weighs 217 pounds, yet the book is ripe with descriptions like "she rolls over onto her side, and tries to forget her stomach weighing down, sinking into the mattress". Chairs squash her thighs painfully. She can't cross her legs. The most offensive of all comes when describing a "chubby chasers" porn: Jemima says she used to look like these women, who are "not so much a woman, more a mountain of flesh" and who have "acres of flesh that would completely obliterate her genitalia". So 200 pounds is a disgusting pile of asexual flesh, with body parts that are capable all on their own of impacting furniture. Oh really? That'll be a surprise to my friends who weigh 255 or more like me, who still have husbands and boyfriends and one night stands. And can still sit on regular furniture and sleep in regular beds.

2) At one point, the third person narrator asserts that "yes, it is possible for Jemima to put on two or three pounds overnight". This just rubs me the wrong way. Anyone can do that. It's called water retention. But of course, it's weight, and she's a mindless fatty, therefore it must be fat. Ignorance.

3) Along with not knowing what 200 pounds looks like, the author seems to have a general disconnect with weight and clothing sizes. Jemima is 5'7", and yet at 120 pounds supposedly wears a size 8--which, if it's a British sizing, would be an American size 10. To juxtapose, my mother, at 140 and 5'3", wears a size four. At another point, Jemima puts on "26 inch" waist jeans. That would actually be an American size 2!
You could say that's just lack of research on Green's part, and maybe it is. But with 2 being the new 4, and 0 being the new 2, and popular culture vilifying fat, it just plays right in to the "you can never be skinny enough" BS. After all, if a 5'7" women at 120 pounds is a size 8 (horror of horrors!), then what would she have to weigh to be the "perfect" size 0?

4) The rates of weight loss given are completely unhealthy, and are basically a result of anorexia. Jemima is described as eating lettuce for lunch, and lettuce and chicken for dinner, while exercising prodigiously. She skips meals to exercise. She loses 22 pounds in a month, and the author's tone is congratulating. It's even more congratulating when she states that Jemima has lost "almost a whole person" later on. Ninety pounds is a whole person? Are you kidding me?

5) Jane Green apparently thinks that a pound of fat takes up a LOT more room than it does. Jemima at 217 pounds has a "quadruple" chin. She has no visible knees or waist. At 182 pounds, she merely has a "double chin", and miraculously has knees and a waist. And that 22 pound loss makes her "infinitely less huge" than she was before, and makes her face "unrecognizable". And yet, the crush, Ben, doesn't notice her weight loss. Even though he's sooooo wonderful and she's sooooo different.

6) Jemima loses 80 pounds in five months. She's been fat her whole life. And yet, miraculously, she has no stretch marks, no loose skin, nothing to clue in her Internet boyfriend that she used to be overweight. In fact, when she loses weight, she becomes perfect. Beyond perfect, actually. Strangers stare at her and hit on her. Men driving by in cars call their friends and say they just fell in love. The message is clear, and obviously part of the cultural fantasy of being thin: if you lose weight, you will become a traffic stopper. So stop eating, fatty!

7) Jane Green obviously buys into the fact that 1) all fat people overeat and 2) all fat people overeat out of boredom or depression. Because as soon as Jemima becomes interested in the Internet, she magically quits wanting chocolate! And as soon as she stops eating chocolate, or bacon sandwiches, she starts losing weight! And even when she starts eating normally again after acting anorexic for five months, the weight doesn't come back on like it does in the real world of starvation dieting.

8) If a guy likes fat girls, he's obviously a twisted pervert. Oh, and his mommy must have been fat.


Oh, at the end of the book Green makes a token effort at self-acceptance. After an emotional binge-eating episode (WHAT? THIN PEOPLE OVEREAT?!!!!@11! Oh wait, deep down she's a disgusting fatty. I forgot.), Jemima likes how her stomach is rounded (from food? WTF?). She realizes her low weight looks more like a boy than a woman (because she has small breasts. Again, WTF?), and decides--all at once--that "I'm not going to binge anymore, but I'm not going to stay obsessed with being as skinny as I can be." At the very end, she goes up A WHOLE SIZE (oh god) and is suddenly "curvy and feminine" but still eats "whatever, whenever" as long as its "reasonably healthy". Oh, and she gets the guy and the dream job and her life is perfect.

If the book didn't piss me off so much, I could've summed up the entire thing with one word: FAIL.