Because Fat Girl

I cannot gush enough about Because Fat Girl (publication Day October 22, 2024), by Lauren Marie Fleming! It was such a delight!!

Diana works at a high-end department store, as a personal shopper, in Los Angeles with her bestie Janelle, and is an out and proud queer fat woman. Since her brother’s death from cancer and her sister’s divorce, she’s lived with her sister and kids in the suburbs, and she keeps trying for her dream of an Oscar. Right as things with her brother got critical, a short film of hers won awards, but she was so depressed then that she couldn’t follow through with the requests for her attention afterwards.

One day, an enigmatic co-worker shares her tickets to a gala at a famous actor’s house, so Diana and Janelle get dressed to the nines and go. Their tradition, since college, is to pump themselves and each other up in the mirror before each outing–I loved their pep talks and think it’s a great idea for real life.

Diana meets famous action star Drew, who seems to be genuine, the opposite of his best friend — the host of the party, who seems to be a stuck-up jerk. Drew shows up at her work the next day asking for Diana’s help with an outfit, after Diana has had a spectacularly terrible day dealing with a homophobic client trying to dress her nonbinary child. Drew is surprisingly sympathetic and much more than he seems . . . and he seems to be interested in Diana. But she hasn’t dated a cis, hetero man in, well, forever, so they become good friends.

And Diana polishes up that screenplay she’s been working on since dealing with her depression, and wonder of wonders, Drew and his friend are in the exact kind of position in Hollywood that they can help her make her dream of writing and directing her film–this film– a reality. Would it be such a bad thing if Diana admits she is attracted to Drew?

I so needed to read Diana’s story of figuring out her exact type of queerness later in life, after she thought her identity was pretty set in stone. I loved her best friend Janelle, and how Diana fought for her. I loved the backstories of some of the famous actors and how they were so much more than you would guess from their outward appearances (aren’t we all?). Diana was not perfect–her relationship with her sister was messy, and she didn’t always make the best choices, but she kept trying and kept working for her vision.

Kudos to Fleming, she even dealt with the effect of Diana on Drew’s career, of what dating a fat girl might do to his standing in Hollywood, and looked at it in an unflinching way. This is the kind of book and the kind of story we all need!