The Fat Girl

Louise’s mother is the root of Louise’s body image issues, disordered eating, addictive tendencies, and issues with secrecy. The narrator suggests that Louise’s mother does not have healthy eating behaviors of her own. Claiming to have a slow metabolism, she eats very little and smokes excessively in order to remain slim. By insisting that her daughter share meals with her so that she can attract men while allowing her son to eat whatever he wants, Louise’s mother ushers in body image issues for Louise. Louise’s mother is also cold, often speaking in a harsh voice and almost never displaying physical affection. The only time she is happy with Louise is when Louise briefly loses weight as a result of dieting.

Nonetheless, Louise still has affection for her mother and wishes to please her: She enjoys the praise that her mother gives her when she loses weight. However, Louise ultimately recognizes that what her mother was praising was not Louise, but some other person she became while on an extreme diet. When Louise decides to be herself again, she accepts that this self disappoints her mother (as well as her husband and others). Louise moves past this problem by realizing that these other people’s feelings about her weight say more about them than they do about Louise.

Carrie is Louise’s best friend and roommate during their four years of college. Like Louise’s two friends from high school, Carrie is slim, attractive, and interested in romantic relationships with boys. Unlike Louise’s high school friends, Carrie eventually notices Louise hoarding candy and eating it in secret, and she brings the issue up to Louise. The girls’ trusting bond and desire to help one another make Carrie Louise’s truest friend over the course of the story. However, Louise does not have the tools to forge healthy relationships, and her relationship with Carrie becomes toxic when Carrie starts to mimic the behaviors of Louise’s mother, controlling what and how she eats. Unlike Louise’s mother, Carrie does this with enough concern and care to make Louise want to continue with the diet for a while. However, Carrie ultimately shares Louise’s mother’s assumption that only slim women are appealing to men and that only women who appeal to men are happy. Both Carrie and Louise’s mother misunderstand and reject her fundamental self.