Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs
Author: Cheryl Peck
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2004-01-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759509859

Naughty cats, quirky family members, and experiences as a large gay woman in the heartland of America: Cheryl Peck has a potpourri of poignant -- and laugh-out-loud hilarious -- stories to tell about growing up, love, and loss. With self-deprecating humor and compassionate insight, she remembers the time she hit her baby sister in the head with a rock, how her father taught her to swim by throwing her into deep water, and the day when -- while weighing in at 300 pounds -- she became an inspirational goddess at her local gym. Filled with universal stories about a daughter's love for her parents and the eternal quest for finding meaning in it all, this book reveals many seemingly unremarkable moments that make up a life -- the weighty events that, like fat girls sitting on lawn chairs, just won't let go.

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs
Author: Cheryl Peck
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2004-01-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0759509859

Naughty cats, quirky family members, and experiences as a large gay woman in the heartland of America: Cheryl Peck has a potpourri of poignant -- and laugh-out-loud hilarious -- stories to tell about growing up, love, and loss. With self-deprecating humor and compassionate insight, she remembers the time she hit her baby sister in the head with a rock, how her father taught her to swim by throwing her into deep water, and the day when -- while weighing in at 300 pounds -- she became an inspirational goddess at her local gym. Filled with universal stories about a daughter's love for her parents and the eternal quest for finding meaning in it all, this book reveals many seemingly unremarkable moments that make up a life -- the weighty events that, like fat girls sitting on lawn chairs, just won't let go.

Revenge of the Paste Eaters

Revenge of the Paste Eaters
Author: Cheryl Peck
Publisher: 5 Spot
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2007-07-31
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0446507091

The author of Fat Girls and Lawn Chairsis back with a funny and poignant new collection of personal stories about growing up a misfit. A collection of stories for anyone who shuddered at the idea of senior prom, Revenge of the Paste Eaters is about the way the experiences of childhood stay with us and shape us into adults. Cheryl Peck applies her signature wit to more personal stories and reflections-about hurting people and getting hurt, about discovering who you are and who you want to be, about feeling "not good enough," and about being bigger-physically and mentally-than many of the people surrounding you. This is a wickedly funny view of what it's like to be a middle-aged woman in middle-America, and what really happened to the kids who were different.

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs

Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs
Author: Cheryl Peck
Publisher: Turtleback Books
Total Pages:
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781417713684

Originally self-published for family and friends, this title was singled out in Publishers Weekly who said that customers pick up the book and buy it based on the title alone. There is a large audience for quirky books that feature women with attitude, and this one is no exception.

The Power of Looks

The Power of Looks
Author: Bonnie Berry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2016-02-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317019563

There is a saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, implying that beauty is subjective. But can it be said that 'better looking' people have more social power? This book provides a fascinating insight into the social stratification of people based on looks - the artificial placement of people into greater and lesser power strata based on physical appearance. The author analyzes different aspects of physical appearance such as faces, breasts, eye shapes, height and weight as they are related to social power and inequality. For example, tall people are often associated with power, with tall people being seen publicly as more capable and thus more deserving of power than shorter people. The author moreover assesses how people's physical appearance affects their chances of marriage, employment, education, and other social and economic opportunities. The book contributes to and differentiates itself from current literature by emphasizing sociological theory - including constructionism and critical theory - and research to understand the phenomenon of social aesthetics, a term coined by the author to refer to the social reaction to physical appearance.

Scoot Over, Skinny

Scoot Over, Skinny
Author: Donna Jarrell
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780156030229

In this surprising collection, lively, provocative writers explore the many folds of fat that make up reality. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, often illuminating and always engaging, these stories make a new and compelling case for why more room should be made for bigger behinds.

Locker Room Diaries

Locker Room Diaries
Author: Leslie Goldman
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2007-09-10
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0738211818

I wish my thighs were smaller. "If only I could lose ten pounds." A wake-up call for any woman who has engaged in the "if only" wishing game, Locker Room Diaries uses the unique lens of the locker room to reveal what, exactly, goes into "shaping" not just a woman's body but her body image. The locker room can be a wondrous retreat, a place to toss aside the worries of the day, but it is also where our flaws become most apparent-and where most of us can't help but wonder how we "measure up." Often dressed in no more than a towel, Leslie Goldman spent five years talking with women of all shapes and sizes about their body image, from taut twenty-somethings to heavyset seniors. Why is it, she asks, that almost no one seems satisfied with her physique? From compulsive workouts to daily dates with the scale, from bikini waxes to body fat measurements, American women are swept up in a constant quest for the "perfect" body. Thankfully, more than one woman reveals how she halted her cycle of self-loathing and learned to like her body as is. Blending expert opinion with wonderfully intimate, often laugh-outloud, confidences, Locker Room Diaries will inspire anyone who knows the highs of exercise to leave the lows of self-esteem behind-and, most especially, once and for all, to step off that scale!

Love Sick

Love Sick
Author: Frances Kuffel
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0698156064

Frances Kuffel wasn’t a Victoria’s Secret model, but she wasn’t so bad. Why couldn’t she find her Mr. Right? As Shakespeare said, the course of true love never did run smooth, but for Kuffel, it seemed like one pothole after another… In this sharp and irreverent memoir, Frances Kuffel recalls her quest to replace her on-again, off-again lover with someone new and preferably less unstable. Fifty-three and never married, Frances opens her mind to all possibilities. She goes out with an Orthodox Jew, is almost the victim of a scammer, stays out all night with a man twenty years her junior, encounters feeding fetishes and shoe fetishes, and generally reads a lot of strange emails. Brazenly honest and insightful, Kuffel comes through the experience with a new understanding of love and realizes that what she wants is not necessarily a knight in shining armor. She’d be perfectly happy with someone who’ll spend hours buying antique teacups with her, thinks two dogs are not enough, and wants to be in her life through the good and the bad. And once she finally figures out what she’s looking for, the only challenge left is to find it…

Leap Days

Leap Days
Author: Katherine Lanpher
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2009-06-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0446562890

An inspirational collection of essays about starting over in mid-life by a fresh, original voice who has reported on Minnesota Public Radio and was co-host of "The Al Franken Show." Katherine Lanpher, whose essays have appeared in the New York Times and More magazine, officially moved to Manhattan on a leap day, transferring from a rooted life in the Midwest to a new job, a new city, and a new sense of who she was. But re-invention is a tricky business and starting over in the middle of life isn't for the feint of heart. Katherine Lanpher's short essay on her first six months in New York--"A Manhattan Admonition" was published last August in the New York Times op-ed page and remained on their list of most e-mailed stories for weeks. Now she has written a book chronicling how her past life and loves have prepared her for unexpected discoveries in her new home. Lanpher looks back on her marriage, her early days in newspapers, and her childhood in the Midwest. And, with startling insight, she examines her new world--how beauty is defined in New York, how the landscape differs from the Midwest, and how good food and books have been constants in her life. The tone of her essays mixes the emotional depth of Anna Quindlen with the quirky wit of David Sedaris.