Wake Up, I'm Fat!
by Camryn Manheim
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Book Summary Information
Author: Camryn ManheimEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-05
ISBN: 0767903633
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Wake Up, I'm Fat!
Book Review: Changed My Life
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm an 18 year old who has been struggling with bulimia since I was thirteen. When I was 16 I read this book - and my life has never been the same since. I'd never considered that I was actually allowed to be fat - it never even crossed my mind that it didn't mean that I was a lazy, stupid, unnattractive, slovenly person. I just inherently believed it due to my environment. This book was my first introduction into the Fat Acceptance world, and I've been high on it ever since! Camryn's stories are ones that any fat girl, or anyone who ever perceived themselves as fat, can easily relate to. I screamed with delight to find that somebody else laid on their stomach to hide their fat, dealt with the small, cruel hints of parents, and generally felt as I did.
As wonderful, as life-changing as the book was, I found that her humor was sort of wry, ironic, sarcastic, and a little sad. In the end I wasn't left feeling good about me, but I was feeling empowered. I don't think the reader finishes this book with the feeling that they can look in the mirror with delight, but you are left with a profound awareness of a terrible injustice, of a sickness in society, a sickness which is not ours. But it sort of felt like being part of a very persecuted minority - take pride in what you are, but it sure would be nice to be something else.
It would also have been nice if she had included some health facts (like in Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann.) It would be more swaying to the reader to have some medical backup dispelling the myth of Fat=Death, and perhaps some advisory that you should excercise and eat your fruits and veges (as much as you want, when you want, whatever you want), but never for the purpose of losing weight since fat has no effect on your health.
Overall, however, I found it moving, heart-wrenching, earth-shaking, and so very, very true.
Summary of Wake Up, I'm Fat!
In this New York Times-bestselling inspirational memoir, Camryn Manheim, Emmy Award-winning costar of The Practice, chronicles her journey from a self-hating, "overweight" teenager, who desperately wanted to fit in, to a self-loving, fat activist who is proud to be a misfit. Wake Up, I'm Fat! shares her intelligent, candid, poignant, and often hilarious stories of being fat in a society obsessed with being thin.Camryn takes us from her days as a motorcycle-riding hippie in Santa Cruz to her enrollment at New York University's prestigious school of drama--where Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner broke the unspoken theater rules of size by casting her in the role of the ingenue--and finally to Hollywood, where she dispelled the fallacy that large women can't be portrayed as sensual, sophisticated, and confident.
Camryn's endearing honesty, sass, and razor-sharp wit will appeal to any reader who has ever felt like an outcast or yearned to make peace with their body.
You already know Camryn Manheim can act. She won the Emmy Award as the don't-mess-with-me attorney Ellenor Frutt on The Practice. Manheim made the ceremony itself entertaining by hoisting her trophy and hollering, "This is for all the fat girls!"
But can she write? Yes. This memoir is by turns funny ("If Barbie were a real woman, she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions") and excruciating. It helps that the material was honed in a one-woman show that sold out at New York's big-deal Public Theater, but the subject matter was strange and interesting in the first place. Manheim could not possibly be a less likely candidate for artistic and commercial success on TV. Born Debi Manheim in Peoria, the very metaphor for mainstream culture, Manheim re-created herself as a dozen-earringed California biker chick, a Renaissance Faire wench, a protester who helped drive the Miss California Pageant out of Santa Cruz, and one of 28 actors in America accepted at NYU's exclusive graduate school. In her book, Manheim gets even with her cruel, fat-bashing teachers; credits the director who gave her her first ingenue lead role (Tony Kushner, who cast her in Fen); and tells how the same temper that got her booted from school and arrested also won her the TV role that made her name.
There's good gossip for drama buffs. Manheim ribs her famous boss David Kelley within an inch of her livelihood; rips into Celeste Holm for cattiness backstage in Clare Boothe Luce's The Women; and opines that Bridget Fonda, whom she got naked next to in a movie, "could use a sandwich." But it's the private-life stuff that sticks with you. Read her touching, hilarious account of a personal-ad date from hell, and how she got even by picking up the hunky model who plays the Marlboro Man. She is not making this up!
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