Dead Weight by Emmeline Clein
Diets are heavy
Have you ever seen a book and wanted to possess it?1 From the moment this title presented itself to me on Blackwell’s (a decent replacement for Book Depository [RIP]), it was meant for me to read. It was meant for many women to read.
Specifically, this is a book of essays, with the subtitle being Essays on Hunger and Harm. Emmeline Clein (EC) writes what she experienced and what she researched on eating disorders (ED), disordered eating (DE), and the general malaise of girlhood/womanhood.
There isn’t an ED/DE memoir I wouldn’t read2, although I find (being a woman) books by women to be my preference3. You don’t need to guess my interest, as I’ll just state for the record I struggled with every variation of the disorder from 2015 to 2022. There were times when reading these books provided commiseration, but there were also times when reading the struggle of others gave me a feeling of relief and (sadly) superiority.4
EC does not distinguish other women from herself. There is no other: it’s a sisterhood, and one speaks for many. Instead of the traditional quotation marks to quote bloggers, comments, authors, and friends, she italicizes. Professionals, journalists, doctors, and other officials are then quoted to distinguish them from us. The concept, which EC explains in the prologue, makes sense to unite author and reader and writer. Aren’t we all in this together? This horrible affliction endured by individuals yet created by society? EC casts a lot of blame on them. There’s little fault in that. We are the monster and they are Frankenstein5.
Truth be told, this was a hard book to read for several reasons, none of which are the subject matter. Turning 13 in the summer of 2007 makes the author about 29, which means she wrote these essays in her twenties, perhaps mid to late twenties. EC establishes her age in the essay Red Virgin, Red Heifer, talking about her Bat Mitzvah and diagnoses of Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS). Unfortunately (for me, being in my early thirties), knowing her age and reading her prose casts a faint shadow on her writing. While I fully believe Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic6, speaking to the power of something good in the present preferable to something perfect never, I wonder if holding off would have made her writing more palatable to older millennials. Her education and resume impress, and her own narrative devastates, and who am I to judge? She has put words to paper, enough words to fill 252 pages.
Some of these words, however, are not her own. As she outlines in the prologue7,
Can I tell you a story that isn’t mine?8 I’m going to be doing that a lot, but it’s because I can’t tell where you stop and I start, or I don’t think it matters, not when we’re locked in the same ward. Besides, so many of our stories are similar, I slipped into yours in my dream last night, and you’re welcome here whenever you want. Let me make you a drink and tell you about someone you might have been.
EC alternates between her own whimsical language, a direct presentation of researched information, the informal chatter and whispers of online communication, and direct quotes from professionals in the ED/DE world. The whimsy irritates me and quoting Tumblr inherently lacks diction, but the information EC provides is gold. It just has to be sifted. Her writing style adorns a tough subject, softening the blow of what is true: we are being harmed; we are hungry.
Voicing these complaints, minor as they are, feels wrong. My persistence in mentioning them is to prepare future readers for EC’s style, which is different from most ED/DE narratives. Were this categorized as a memoir, it would be borderline criminal to criticize her overwriting run on sentences.
EC didn’t write a memoir; she wrote a book of essays. She chose to write more than her own story. Laudable, though she probably didn’t write for the commendation. A reader expects altruism from the writer, even if this is unfair9. We as readers hope the writer writes from the heart rather than the head. Yes, I know the heart is a muscle, but you know what I mean. We hope that what EC wrote came from a place of compassion rather than capitalism.
I have plans to finish this review, but I had to return the book to the library.
“Have you ever seen a girl and wanted to possess her?” page 3 of Dead Weight
“Far more than I wanted people’s bodies next to mine, I wanted them to be mine… I wanted to inhabit them. I wanted to feel what they did. I wanted to feel the way I once had.” Empty by Susan Burton
I’ll get to some of these later, but for starters: Empty by Susan Burton, The Time In Between by Nancy Tucker, The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman, The F*ck It Diet/Tired as F*ck by Caroline Dooner, Wasted by Marya Hornbacher (MH), Hunger by Roxane Gay, Brave Girl Eating by Harriet Brown, Good Girls by Hadley Freeman, It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchell (AM). Note that MH and AM disclose weight in numbers.
Born Round by Frank Bruni is the exception. Please comment with recommendations!
“Sometimes at a meeting, a person will take up practically the whole time telling how she fell off the wagon. And all of us at the edges of our seats, eating it all with her in our imaginations. And also feeling a little bit smug that we didn’t fall off the wagon. This time.” The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg
While the novel is titled Frankenstein, Frankenstein created the monster. Frankenstein is not actually the monster. I learned this from a meme, not reading the book.
“… to paraphrase: A good enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.” Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
The choice of prologue instead of introduction alludes that what follows is more fiction than fact, which is supported by EC’s writing style, not the factual nature of Dead Weight’s content.
I have one legitimate complaint: EC quotes an actual published memoir that I have read multiple times without citing the author (even though this author is quoted on other pages). “At the college she went to, they kept the bathrooms off the rotunda locked, an attempt to stop girls from throwing up, everyone said, in the way this comment was always made: those pathetic, gross, superficial girls.” The words in italics are Susan Burton’s, author of Empty. While it’s acknowledged that these are not EC’s words, I would appreciate credit being given by name. Susan Burton is also not cited in the “Selected Works Cited.” I guess “selected” is very selective.
“But with all due respect and affection, I did not write this book for you; I wrote it for me. I wrote this book for my own pleasure… If what I’ve written here ends up helping you, that’s great and I will be glad. That would be a wonderful side effect. But at the end of the day, I do what I do because I like doing it.” Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert