Jemima lives with flatmates Sophie and Lisa, who are right out of The Brother's Grimm. Beautiful, stupid and bitchy I am not sure what purpose the two serve to the story other than to try and make us feel sorry for Jemima.
Jemima's eating issues and weight problems are never really explored. She's fat and she eats alot. She has troublesome relatonship with her critical and selfish mother, but then who doesn't have mummy or daddy issues? We never know why Jemima is the way she is, which misses a huge opportunity for Green to explore our issues with food and body image in a sensible way instead of ham-fistedly trying to imagine what it might be like to be fat.
I don't think Green has ever met a fat person - Jemima is about 100Ilbs overweight, or 7 stone. Let's assume that the average healthy weight, 5"7 British female weights what - 9 / 9.5 stone? That would put Jemima at 16 stone. Jemima manages to lose 7 stone in THREE MONTHS. THREE MONTHS. With no 'loose skin' because apparently over excersising to the point of exhaustion means you don't have any loose skin when you loose that much weight that quickly. This is such a fundamentally dangerous and unhealthy message to send to younger readers - that they can easily lose that much weight that quickly with no health consequences whatsoever it made me want to throw this stupid book at a wall. It's hinted ever so slightly that people are worried about Jemima's miraculous weight loss - her PT for example expresses concern but does little to intervene and make sure Jemima isn't headed down the opposite road of her eating disorders. Jemima also manages to achieve a six pack and muscular thighs in this time, which is so fucking laughable I almost cried.
By the time she's lost weight, she's reinvented herself as 'JJ' and has started an internet romance with hot Californian Brad, despite being in love with her handsome colleague, Ben. Sadly Ben only sees Jemima as a friend and nothing more.
JJ works on local paper the Kilburn Herald with bitchy Geraldine and handsome Ben. The three of them form a closeknit friendship in which they never hang out with each other or phone each other. After Ben leaves the Herald for the bright lights of showbiz TV, JJ flies out to LA to meet Brad, even though she's afraid he might have catfished her (though this book was written in the days before the term was invented).
Brad turns out to be as hot as his photos and for a week Brad and JJ fuck, exercise, eat salad, fuck, exercise, eat salad, fuck, exercise, eat salad, fuck, exercise, eat salad. Oh and they go to a coffee shop 'calling itself Starbucks'. Brad of course, is not all he seems and it turns out that he's actually in a relationship with his fat assistant Jenny. He was only using JJ for her looks, because a man of his stature (he owns a gym) needs a hot girlfriend. This is the plot twist. Yes, really. Man fancies fat woman shocker.
It was pretty obvious that Brad was going to have a dark secret, and I should have seen it coming a mile off when Jenny was so openly hostile to JJ, but I didn't. After I'd got to this bit in the book, I read it again to make sure I hadn't hallucinated that bit. Why would a gym owner need a hot girlfriend? Why is it weird that he has a 'fetish' for fat women? (there goes the snark cannon again) it just didn't make any sense.
Round about the time JJ has found out Brad has a fat festish, Ben is flying out to LA to interview a movie star, who of course is goregeous but is into physcobabble bullshit and thus stops being alluring to Ben. While he's in LA, he keeps seeing this beautuful blonde woman and can't stop thinking about her. He finds out that Jemima is in LA and calls her.
When they meet, he doesn't recognise his old friend - he's just sp pleased to have randomly bumped into the hot blonde he kept seeing around town. JJ's heartbroken, but agrees to meet up with Ben again and reveals that she's really his old friend.
The fact that Ben only fancies Jemima now she looks how she does was so, so disappointing. And it made me hate Ben but it made me hate Jemima more for falling for that bullshit. Green tries to salvage this in the epilogue, saying that Jemima is now 'a healthy size 12 and Mrs Ben Williams' but it's too little too late. The message that if YOU change YOU'LL get the man makes me furious, furious, furious. Green also bangs on about the power of never giving up on your dreams and what a small, narrow world it is if by great things you mean losing weight and getting the man of your dreams who wouldn't look twice at you when you were fat.
Fuck you, Jane Green. Fuck you.
