Shrink to Fit
Written by Dona Sarkar
Review
Leah Mandeville's is the star basketball player at her school. she's tall, muscular and bigger than most, kind of like myself. Her best friend is Shazan a size 2 cheerleader who cares all about her appearance. She is also a Muslim so she has to wear burkas in but changes at school. Shazan suggested that Leah loses some weight to become a model and attract cute guys at school. So Shazan started offering her many different diet pills to become skinner.
I thought the characters were really well developed and all very different one from the other. I really liked the fact that there was so much diversity in the book, it looks much more real than the stories plagued by complete uniformity. It was also interesting to read about the various characters' origins and how they lived with their own traditions in the American society. I really felt it is one of the strongest point of the book in the sense that no matter their origin, the idea of being thin to fit a certain canon of beauty is the same. The book reflected that all the girls, no matter how beautiful they are, want to look like someone else to fit in. Leah's confusion resonates in all the other female characters and it makes the issue of eating disorders universal and not just a question of "being thin". Instead of praising individuality and personality, the beauty advertised in magazines and in the media is specific, hence what I call the clone invasion thanks to plastic surgery. You probably have walked in a street in a big city and feared to have entered another dimension because all the girls look the same
Ball Is Life
Skinny is everything
Casting call!!
About the Author
Twitter: @earlsewell