Episode 18 – Wishes by Jude Deverauz
Y’all I don’t even know, this is about an 80’s lady with fake boobs who dies and gets stuck being a fairy godmother for an 1890’s-era girl in Colorado. I swear this is the god honest plot of this book.
This WOULD be delightful but in fact it’s alarmingly full of some insanely intense fat shaming, plus some shockingly evil family emotional abuse, including hella gaslighting. Seriously, this is supposed to be a light and frothy book! And it is! But if any of that sounds like it’s going to bother you, the light and frothy tone of it is going to make it a lot worse for you. The fat shaming gets to insane and hysterical levels (I don’t mean hysterical like ha-ha.)
I think Jude Deveraux is accidentally letting her own body issues slip out, because she makes the enormous mistake (heh) of telling us exactly what this woman weighs. Please understand that she’s supposed to be so fat that the whole town feels a little sad revulsion when they see her out in public. (Not that any weight would make that okay! Obviously!) But this poor girl is a whopping ONE HUNDRED SIXTY TWO POUNDS.
This lady is 5’7 and ripped wow you go you get it girl
This one is 5’9 and living her best hiking life
This lady is wearing a really complicated outfit
I’m a little nervous that she’s posing by a guard rail please photograph responsibly ma’am
This boat ride looks super fun and is probably in I’m going to guess the Pacific Northwest?
This lady is six feet tall and pretending to be a kangaroo
Now, please don’t think for a minute that what I’m saying is “oh 162 isn’t fat”. I mean, I am totally saying that because it’s totally true, but the number is only the tip of this fucked up iceberg, right? I’m saying that these are amazing and lovely human beings, actual people. For one thing, what the actual fuck Jude Deveraux, did people just used to smoke themselves really skinny in the 80’s? Was it the cocaine? For another thing, no number would make it okay. The tone of this whole thing is sort of “well obviously it’s wrong to think less of Nellie because she’s so heavy but we all think it right?” Nobody but Berni really learns a lesson about treating people like subhuman garbage because of their size in this book. It’s always sort of treated as a “sad but funny” thing, and it’s so not okay that you almost have to read it to get how not okay it is. The whole thing was bizarre and deeply uncomfortable.
So what we’re saying is, we wish we didn’t have to say this but we feel like we do after this book: we love you at any size, and you’re worthy of love and dignity at any size. Your body isn’t gross just because Jude Deveraux thinks it is; she gots problems.
