How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love by Ken Baker (review)

Emery is a big girl in a SoCal beach town that only has room for the hyperthin and Botoxed. Her mother is a former LA Lakers cheerleader, her father is a former Laker turned motivational speaker, and her sister is a model hoping for a career in television. In the midst of her appearance-obsessed family, Emery luxuriates in overeating and rejecting all of her mother’s bribes to lose weight. When she finds out that their house is about to go into foreclosure, however, she reluctantly agrees to star in a reality/help show called 50 Pounds to Freedom, which will require her to lose fifty pounds in as many days in order to win $1,000,000. The show also offers her the opportunity to vlog on her own YouTube channel, where she sounds off about the damage wrought by impossible beauty standards, women’s magazines, the f(at)-word, and slut-shaming. Emery’s situation and her diatribes against it will certainly appeal to many readers; she speaks to the concerns of many teens in a voice that is witty and brave, if predictable and clichéd. However, all of her motivations are psychologically simple, traceable, and unsurprising: her problems with her weight are both genetic and a result of teen rebellion against unrealistic expectations, her problems with unsafe sexual activity are a result of her insecurity and longing for fatherly attention, and her struggles to lose weight quickly result in unsafe behaviors that she recognizes as such. If the book itself lacks nuance, so does the environment it portrays, but readers who are fans of the reality and help show genres, especially those who enjoyed Demetrios’ Something Real (BCCB 1/14), may appreciate this insider’s look at how such a show is made, marketed, and critiqued by one of its participants.