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Skinny pulls back the curtains on a teenage girl's secret life, giving the reader a naked picture of what eating disorders, self-harm (cutting), depression, and all around self-destruction look like. It is a compassionate, vulnerable, and transparent account of one girl's struggle with her body and weight, and the surprising way she finally got the body she yearned for and Skinny pulls back the curtains on a teenage girl's secret life, giving the reader a naked picture of what eating disorders, self-harm (cutting), depression, and all around self-destruction look like. It is a compassionate, vulnerable, and transparent account of one girl's struggle with her body and weight, and the surprising way she finally got the body she yearned for and ditched the eating disorder and self-mutilation that had controlled her for years.
After a decade of trying everything: fad diets, diet pills, overexercising, throwing up, starving... the author found herself at a crossroads. Still unhappy with her body and feeling like nothing worked, she had a realization that changed things forever. After that, it was almost like magic. She went from a puffy, slightly overweight, and self-loathing bulimic to having the confidence other girls envy and the kind of body that makes people think she's a model.
One major theme of the book is that it is okay to want to be skinny. Even after crushing her eating disorder, the author still wanted to be thin... but wasn't. Everyone told her to love her body just as it was. But she didn't, not as it was in that moment. That's a typical experience for anyone recovering from an eating disorder.
Getting rid of the eating disorder was not what got the author her ideal body. There was something else, a simple but transformational shift that the author invites readers to try for themselves. Those who do will find that skinny is not as far away (or as impossible) as they might have thought.
Even if you've hated their body for years, and tried a million things that didn't work, this solution can work for you. It can work for anyone.
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If put in front of the right person, in the right situation, this book had the potential to be quite good.
The "right person" being a girl aged between 12-18 who is struggling with body image and/or eating disorders. If you don't fit that demographic, reading this book feels like you're an intruder who should be reading something else. I read it anyway.
It reads sort of like a memoir, in that the author spends much of the book describing her experiences in life. Including sexual assault, self harm If put in front of the right person, in the right situation, this book had the potential to be quite good.
It reads sort of like a memoir, in that the author spends much of the book describing her experiences in life. Including sexual assault, self harm, bulimia and other mental health struggles. This is NOT a book for younger teens or another of those puberty books. It covers serious topics and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone under 16 unless they were struggling with similar issues. Even then, I'm not sure if I would really want to recommend it to people struggling with eating disorders. Many times throughout the book the author makes it sound like there is a *magic* surprise as to how to be skinny, which is essentially sort out your demons and problems and you will *magically* become the weight you want to be. I'm 90% sure that's not entirely accurate. At all.