Lindy West, _Shrill_

SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES led to my picking this one up. I was listening to one of those NPR shows with essay-like spoken word contributions--This American Life or Moth or Radiolab--and the essayist (monologuist?), a woman, was describing her success, some years previously, in losing quite a bit of weight. She very shortly after experienced the benefits that are expected to accompany impressive weight losses: better health, more interest from opposite sex, more professional opportunities, and so on. Then, some years later, she read Shrill, and the effect, surprisingly, was  to make her feel almost bad about losing the weight--about caving to social expectations, accepting stereotyped judgements about the fat, not sticking up for herself as West had.

A book that can make you think twice about the rightness of having lost lots of pounds--an accomplishment admired across all sorts of lines, by virtually everybody, and not at all easy to do--must be a heck of a book. So I decided to read it.

It is a heck of a book, actually. I had never read anything by West--her fame as a journalist has a lot to do with social media fora that I am too elderly to frequent--but she is a very effective writer, outrageously funny, but also passionate, intelligent, and original.

She gives herself credit, near the end of the book, for having moved the needle on three particular topics--fat shaming, jokes about rape, and the confronting of internet trolls--and her engagements on those fronts structure the book, lending it a nice momentum independent of the energy provided by the punchlines (which are frequent). It's a swift read, but nonetheless thought-provoking, as the monologuist who inspired me to read the book can attest.

Six years ago, I lost fifty pounds myself, and I'm still glad I did, but West has opened my eyes a bit. Or maybe kept them from rolling. On my first plane trip since reading Shrill, I went down the aisle to find my seat and found that I would be traveling beside a guy who looked to be a bit over three hundred pounds. Thinking of West's book, I did my best to suppress any sign of exasperation, smiled, and told myself everything was going to be fine. And it was.