Teenagers with Eating Disorders in the Novel Fat Chance
Teenagers with Eating Disorders in the Novel "Fat Chance"
“Once upon a time in the land of perfect dreams, I was a beautiful princess and I lived in a castle and could eat anything I wanted.” Quotes Simply Sarah. Teenagers with eating disorders, specifically Bulimia, often desire one thing, perfect body. They believe that being overweight is the cause of all their misfortunes, and if they could only loose the fat, all of their problems would disappear as well. When in fact most of them aren’t overweight, and are around normal size for their age. When they loose the desired weight, they don’t appreciate it and keep going until it becomes an obsession. “Simply Sarah” and “Fat Chance” are two stories that have many similarities and differences, for example, What motivated them to start purging, what encouraged them to continue, and how they overcame their weight conflict. Their both teenagers fighting to loose weight, when it becomes a battle for perfection, and inevitably the struggle between life and death.
In the fictional novel Fat Chance, Judi realizes on the first day of a new year at school that she is the heaviest girl. While analyzing her life, she makes three goals for grade eight: to find out what she wants to be when she’s older, have a boyfriend, and to be the skinniest girl in her grade. In the non-fiction selection SimplySarah, Sarah starts off counting her daily calories and normally just watching what she eats. As the school year proceeds for Judi, one very aggravating boy in her class Tommy Aristo, makes constant fun of her weight and seems to always incorporate it in to every joke. Judi takes charge of her life and starts small diets, which lead to starvation. Though starvation was successful, she couldn’t keep it a secret from her mom, who made sure her growing teenager had three balanced meals a day. The most popular girl Nancy Pratt, Judi’s pencil thin inspiration, teaches her how to make her self throw up. The thought of purging never crossed her mind, but being naive to the consequences, Judi hesitantly follows her idol. Nancy constantly gets the attention of the boys and everything seems to always go her way. Judi believes that if she had “creamy thighs and amazing cheek bones that look like I’m always sipping through a straw” everything would go her way...