Thin Is the New Happy A Memoir [Paperback]

You've heard the phrase the mirror is not your friend. For Valerie Frankel, the mirror was so much more than not a friend. It was the mean girl who stole her lunch money, bitch-slapped her in the ladies' room, and cut the hair off her Barbie.

Like most women, Valerie spent most of her conscious life on a diet, thinking about a diet, ignoring a diet, or failing on a diet. At age eleven, her mother put Val on her first weight-loss program. As a teen, she was enrolled in Weight Watchers (for which she invented creative ditching methods). As a young woman, her world felt right only when she was able to zip a certain pair of jeans. Not wanting to pass this legacy on to her own daughters, Valerie set out to cleanse herself of her obsession.Thin Is the New Happyis the true story of one woman's quest to exorcise her bad body-image demons, to uncover the truths behind what put them there, and to learn how to truly love herself.

1. A show of hands: Is anyone on a diet right now? Who has been on a diet during the past year? What kind of success have you had trying to lose weight?

2.Valerie Frankel begins her book by sharing a series of dieting metaphors.A drug addiction. A gambling addiction. The five stages of grief.Do you have any of your own you'd like to add?

4. Did you find the author's tales of chronic dieting humorous or sad? Empowering or self-defeating? Discuss the issues of beauty, body-image, and self-acceptance that are raised inThin Is the New Happy. Does the book cover these issues in a unique way? How are they typically discussed???and portrayed???in mainstream American culture?

5. Valerie decided to tackle her dieting obsession once and for all around the time her daughters were reaching puberty. In what ways do you think Valerie's attitudes about her own body changed once she became a mother? Do you think weight is different issue for children than it is for adults? How?

6. In her postscript, thl3,