Book Review: Moira on "This is Big" by Marisa Meltzer
“This is Big” by Marisa Meltzer
Synopsis: Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand.
Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa, also a contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with Marisa's own journey through Weight Watchers, she chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The result is funny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation goes far beyond a number on the scale. - Little Brown
Rating (out of 5): 4.5
Trigger Warnings: eating disorders/disordered eating, drug use
Review: Occasionally here on SFOL, one of us will revisit a book another has reviewed, whether because we had an entirely different opinion, loved it so much we had to weigh (pun intended?) in, or had a different personal perspective that colors their reading of the book. I was so excited to read this one—having read the preview piece in The Cut, I was already hooked. The book alternates between a biography of Jean Nidetch and Meltzer’s own experiences on Weight Watchers.
I’m acquainted with maybe, like, two women that I would say have totally normal relationships with food and their body, so I recognize that some level of food neurosis is sadly to be expected in our culture and environment. My experience is significantly less quotidian, so Elizabeth and Shannon asked that I give my thoughts.
Being from a family where there were food and body expectations of my sisters and myself, and then choosing ballet as a career, with the addition of a few traumatic experiences in childhood, I have a 20+ year experience with disordered eating of every stripe and color. My weight has fluctuated wildly throughout my life. The only reason I feel comfortable writing about my weight at this moment is that I’m about 50 (? My weight is a secret that my doctors/dietitian know, but not me) pounds down from a year ago. Admitting to all of you that the only time I can talk publicly about my weight is when it’s low is probably the hardest part of writing this. I also write this from a place of thin privilege—at my highest weight I was still straight-sized, and no doctor has ever shamed me for my weight, or even suggested I lose weight.
Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, had a moment that spurred her dieting—being mistaken for pregnant at the grocery store. Meltzer talks throughout the book of these experiences—nasty comments while shopping, awful dating experiences. Last year a store clerk wouldn’t let me try on my size at her boutique (“it has no stretch!”). These experiences add up into a sort of death by a thousand cuts, where even when you’re putting in the work to accept yourself, there are people lined up to knock you down.
Nidetch led a fascinating life, and built an empire that still reigns over the diet world today. Meltzer’s writing about her is warmly critical. It was fascinating (if upsetting) to read about the dieting extremes of mid-century America (the only time I’ll eat liver is in pâté, and please give me all the avocados I can handle. I will not eat anything in aspic). The way Nidetch was edged out of her own empire also speaks to the difficulty of being a woman in power—the idea that your own creation can be wrested away from you.
Meltzer’s flirtations with giving up dieting that just end with her heavier and more miserable were so relatable to me. The emphasis, too, that we are stuck in a culture that will remind us of our flaws even when we are doing the hard work, was especially poignant. Her ambivalence was my favorite part of the book: the idea that dieting is something she does that she isn’t sure is a good idea for anyone, let alone herself. In 2020, it’s hard to exist between the wild extremes of diet culture and anti-diet culture, both of which actively ignore science and human nature. I, too, live in the same ambivalence and middle space.
TL;DR: A look at diet culture through both an historical and personal lens. Engaging, quick, and endearing.
If you liked this, try:
“Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud” by Anne Helen Petersen
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