A Bathing Suit Too Far: Stephanie Klein's Fat Past

What's more American than summer camp? I went to some kind of camp every summer from ages 6 to 17, from two-night overnights with the Girl Scouts to stints on (relatively luxurious) college campuses. But unlike Stephanie Klein, I never went to a fat camp, those institutions that advertised in the back of my teen magazines promising summers of weight loss and (yeah right!) fun. And if I were her, now thin, happily married and author of a bestselling memoir on dating and love after a divorce, I probably wouldn't have written MOOSE: A MEMOIR OF FAT CAMP.

Klein as a girl was predisposed to gain weight and had a weakness for cereal, so her parents packed her off to fat camp one summer. (They also sent her normal-weight sister, who probably should write a memoir of her own.) Dying to be popular by September -- "Moose" was her middle-school-given nickname -- Klein aspires to lose a lot of weight and become one of the camp's "mean girls," now that she's no longer the fattest girl in the room. But losing weight can't fix her problematic body image, and (even less surprising) teenagers are a feral bunch.

MOOSE: A MEMOIR OF FAT CAMP is not the kind of book I would want to read over and over, but for every wince-worthy moment there was one where I could only nod assent to myself. And like her first memoir STRAIGHT UP AND DIRTY, I found myself completely unable to set this book down while I was reading it. I believe I read it standing up at the kitchen counter, even. The emotions it brings up aren't always pleasant, but I believed every word.

Memoir madness has gone too far!

On an otherwise routine trip to the library...

LIBRARY EMPLOYEE scans my copy of Stephanie Klein's MOOSE: A MEMOIR OF FAT CAMP. We're waiting for the receipt with all my books on it to print...

L.E. (pointing to the words "fat camp" on the cover): That's not real, right?
Ellen: What, fat camp?
L.E.: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it is.
L.E. makes a doubtful face.
Ellen: It's where you send your fat child to get skinny. Thinking: Backtrack! Backtrack! I don't know, I'll read the book and let you know when I finish.

From Klein's website:

Stephanie was a seventh-grader with a weight problem. It was a problem at school, where the boys called her “Moose” and her only friends were the nerds and misfits, and it was a problem at home, where her father reminded her, “No one likes fat girls.” After several unsuccessful attempts at dieting and many frustrating sessions with a nutritionist known as the Fat Doctor of Roslyn Heights, Long Island, Stephanie’s parents enrolled her for a summer at fat camp.

I didn't want to go too hard on the librarian on duty considering last week I shoved my gym swiper instead of my library swiper at him when it came time to check out, and he had to verbally tell me, "That's not your library card." Doh.