The Fat Girl Andre Dubus Analysis

In modern America, women are commonly expected and encouraged to explore career paths that were virtually unthinkable for women in relatively recent history. Much progress has been made in the past 40-50 years toward gender equality, and at the time of this writing, it appears that the first female presidential candidate will run in the 2016 primary election. However, these are relatively recent changes in American culture and sadly, vestiges of old social norms still have a toehold in some parts of the country and the unilluminated parts of many people's psyches. In this story, Dubus reminds us of what it might have been like for a young female in what is likely the 1950's to 1960's era (not that long ago), where the high standards of female
beauty and conduct were still the dominating expectations for women. Published in 1975, "The Fat Girl" is a subtle but critical commentary on the extremely narrow, rigid, and binding expectations of women in the pre-feminist movement era, wherein most women were largely expected only to grow up to be beautiful enough to find a husband in order to have children, which can primarily be expressed in two themes.

A brief summary may be helpful to gain more context.
In "The Fat Girl," Andre Dubus presents the struggles of Louise, a girl who at age nine begins eating secretly in reaction to her mother closely controlling her food intake to manage her weight gain. In high school, this behavior grows into "…a ritual of deceit and pleasure…" (321) In a passive-aggressive rebellion against her mother's control, and even though Louise is aware that the behavior is "…insular and destructive" (322), she continues with it and hides the behavior from everyone, including her friends Joan and Majorie. Towards the end of college, Louise's closest college friend, Carrie, convinces Louise to go on a diet, which results in Louise losing approximately 70 pounds, then meeting and marrying a man, Richard, who works with her father, shortly after graduating. Then, she gets pregnant a few years later, which leads her back to her previous eating habits and weight gain. After her son's birth, Louise does not regain control of her eating habits (or seemingly even attempt to do so) and increasingly reverts to her previous physical and mental state, which frustrates and angers her husband, as illustrated by his comments: "I don't want to touch you. Why should I? Have you looked at yourself?"(328) Also, pleadings such as "I'll help you … I'll eat what you eat"(329). In the end, Louise is reconciled with her body and desires, knowing it will just be a matter of time before her resignation drives her husband
away.

The broadest theme of the story is the small yet intense expectations for women of the era in regard to physical beauty being paramount for women to find their place in society.
This expectation is introduced by her mother when Louise is nine years old and begins to gain weight with comments such as, "You must start watching what you eat.…" and "In five years, you'll be in high school, and if you're fat, the boys won't like you; they won't ask you out" (320). This social expectation is reinforced throughout the story. When Louise returns home from college, those greeting her would "in the first moments of greeting, their eyes would tell her she was still fat Louise, and then their eyes dismissed her…" (323). As Louise and Carrie look forward to leaving college, Carrie is concerned for Louise's future by saying, "I was thinking about when we graduate. What you're going to do. What's to become of you. I want you to be loved the way I love you. Louise, if I help you, really help you, will you go on a diet?" (324). Carrie's pleading, while obviously well-intentioned, only reinforces the atmospheric social pressures under which both girls live. After Louise loses weight and returns home, "for days her relatives and acquaintances congratulated her, and the applause in their eyes lasted the entire summer…" (326). Later on, when she gains weight after her son is born, her husband's anger reinforces this expectation: "Look at you…Lasagna, for God's sake. When are you going to start
[dieting]? … Pretty soon you'll weigh more than I do and I'll be sleeping on a trampoline" (325). The final reinforcing point of this theme is that Dubus, seemingly by design, manages not to mention any of Louise's other interests, attributes, or achievements, which demonstrates how restrictive and monochromatic Louise's world seemingly is. This lack of further detail about her life creates a sense of a void and lost potential throughout the telling of Louise's story.

The second overarching theme is the resulting internal dysfunction Louise experiences regarding her self-image and personal identity as a result of the pressure to be thin and conform to expectations. In her childhood, this was merely a small rebellion where "…she would go to her room and wait for nearly an hour until she knew her mother was no longer thinking of her, then she would creep into the kitchen and… open the bread box, the pantry, the jar of peanut butter" (321). In high school, she continues her secret eating while developing a kind of fantasy about how people viewed her, as illustrated by: "She never eats, Joan and Marjorie said of Louise… Sometimes she got through the cafeteria line with only a salad. That is how they would remember her: a girl whose hapless body was destined to be fat" (322). Despite her hope to have a fresh start: "She brought it with her to college. She thought she would leave it behind" (322). Then, when Carrie understood what she was doing, she asked: "I wish you'd eat in front of me, Louise, whenever you feel like it" (323). Through all of this, Louise seems to have little idea that she has more than a handful of options with regards her life choices. Eating and dieting become an oscillating obsession to fill a larger void. Shortly before the birth of her son, it seems that this awareness finally creeps into her conscious mind by "... how by slimming her body she had bought into the pleasures of the nation... But these moments of triumph were sparse. On most days she went about her routine of leisure with a sense of certainty about herself that came merely from not thinking. But there were times… when she was suddenly assaulted by the feeling that she had taken the wrong train and arrived at a place where no one knew her, and where she ought not to be" (327). After the birth of her son, her weight gain, and her divergence from her relationship with her husband, she seems to find some internal resolve about who she is. Her act of defiance is that "… she will get a candy bar from her room. She will eat it here, in front of Richard. This room will be hers soon" (329).

Dubus manages to center the entire story around Louise's weight and how this one issue affects her throughout her life. It is a sad commentary that the only choice she knows of to change her life at the end is to revert to the passive aggressive behavior she began engaging in as a child. The level of deviance that Louise devolves to is quite tragic because, by today's standards, it seems that it could have been corrected at several points in her journey. Today (thankfully), this story can serve as a reminder that there are many more options and choices available to everyone (including women). Plus, it can act as a reminder to everyone to rise above the fray and shake off any remaining vestiges of this antiquated era in our own psyches and shared culture.