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Life in the Fat Lane
Author Cherie Bennett Tackles The Tough Subject of Kids and Weight By Donna Smith
Thin is in. Ads on television and in magazines are either celebrating the thin physique or telling you how you can achieve thinness by taking a miracle pill. The other evening my daughter looked across the table at me with a disgusted look on her face. "You're eating the chicken skin? That is pure fat." I stopped chewing and stared at her. She's 9. A 9-year-old is already worried about fat? We don't talk about fat or dieting around our house, so I assume she is getting her information from her friends at school. Can you imagine a table full of fourth grade girls discussing fat, calories and dieting?
Teen advice columnist and author Cherie Bennett tackles the tough subject of our obsession with weight in her award-winning novel. Life in the Fat Lane is a realistic look at one teen's struggle with weight and how it affects every aspect of her life. You don't have to be overweight or a teenager to get something out of this book. Everyone can relate in some way to main character Lara Ardeche's story.
Bennett says she chose the subject of weight because of her readers. "I get maybe 50 to 100 letters from girls every week," she says. "And while many of them are the 'I love your books, they're so kewl, where do you get your ideas' variety, many others are quite serious." Because Bennett writes about real issues facing young girls, many of her readers feel they know her. "They confide in me. And, second only to questions/problems about boys and romance, weight and body image problems comes up in my mail again and again and again."
Most of the letters Bennett receives are not from obese, or what society would consider "fat girls," either. "They're from girls who are everything from a size 4 to a size 14, who are obsessing about every bite that goes into their mouths," says Bennett. "They're telling me about the diets they're on, and how they're trying anorexia as if anorexia is a new haircut." After reading so many letters regarding weight, Bennett had enough. "Girls had to see that obsessing over their dress size at age 14 was a colossal waste of time -- that you're not what you weigh. This was an issue I just had to tackle in a novel. Life in the Fat Lane was a result."