KidLit Forum

After a short meeting with the fictional character of Deborah Blumenthal's Fat Camp, namely Cam Phillips, I found some answers to the questions that I raised after reading about her life. She's from Manhattan, her mother is a famous writer and her father is a lawyer (tough family). She was sent to Camp Calliope, which is a fat camp. Her mother wanted Cam to stop her "self-destructive" cycle, her father wanted to keep the family peace, and Cam... oh, well, Cam didn't seem to have any choice. Let's find out what she has to say about that now.

Q: You seemed to like writing quizzes for the camp's magazine. Share with us your answers to these questions:

1) Is the fat that embarrassing?
2) Was going to this camp so horrible an idea?
3) Was the fat the real issue there (in the camp)?

Cam: 1) Firstly, you are happy. You don't care about your genes because when you’re five, six, or seven you don’t think about how you look or compare yourself to other kids. Mirrors are things that decorate the walls. You don’t spend time studying yourself. You don’t go to department stores and try on whisper-light thongs and then look in the three-way mirrors to see how fat your ass looks from the back and find out that it looks like the back of a bus.... But then you’re thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen and everything changes. Your friends buy bikinis, but you can’t— they don’t fit—and if they do, you hate the repulsive way you look anyway. Other girls hook up with guys or at least get asked to the movies or to hang out, but you don’t. You’re “fat” and unpopular and have thunder thighs. When you hear guys whistle, you never turn around—it’s not for you; in fact, you pray that they don’t yell out something that would make you die of embarrassment.
So how do I deal with it? Sometimes I just sleep to feel better, or hide in the bathroom and cry with the water running so that nobody hears. Other times I eat because it tastes good and makes me feel better and calmer, and screw it, why not just finish the quart of vanilla mint chip that goes down so easy, because it’s all pretty hopeless anyway—I am the way I am—and at least pleasure comes in a carton. So yes, it is nasty and embarrassing...

2) Not the camp, the idea of this camp and its apparently well intented message: improving our health, raise our self-confidence and self-image and teach us healthy life skills.But check this out: a fat camp is supposed to be a place where you not only lose weight but also are with other people who are like you so that you feel comfortable. I don’t buy it. There are a few kids here who are seriously overweight—like over 300 pounds—and whether we admit it or not, none of us wants to look like them and we don’t go out of our way to be their friends. It doesn’t matter who they are inside, we fixate on their size, and first impressions die hard. Even among ourselves, I wouldn’t use the word “comfortable.” We know what we look like and what we weigh, but we’re not okay with it, and being here doesn’t make us comfortable, especially when it’s time to be weighed in.
So tell me what other group that’s discriminated against is asked to change like this? For instance, could we ask African Americans to change the way they dress, act, and even speak? It's not fair! That's the point.

We punish ourselves for being fat. Our families punish us for being fat. Friends punish us for being fat. Strangers punish us for being fat, either by dissing us with clichéd remarks (i.e., “fat pig”) or simply pretending that we don’t exist. This is too much! Going to this camp is nothing but make them believe that they are right and we are pigs and we need to work hard to go straight back to a "normal" sized human being.

3) After being in that camp for some time, the things changed. At first, you feel totally invisible, a complete nerd, an alien from another planet who doesn’t fit in anywhere and you want to end this as soon as possible. Then you ask yourself is it my weight that’s making me feel like a total misfit? No, it can't be. Everybody here has the same issue. Then why don’t I fit in? Is it just me?. Of course it is me. Exactly where should I put the blame for my total misery? Nobody, there's just me. The internalized eye of everyone turned against me. But you feel that way until you find someone who sees you beyond this ugly suit called "appearance." Then you find out that others suffer a lot more than you do. Eating disorders, bulimia, taking pills are not so comfortable. Then you see your friends sent away to a hospital and taken care of. You stop whining about your stupid parent problems and thank God it's just the fat you cry about and not something worse.
Honestly, you feel bad that you don't fall into the "sexy and outgoing" category after you have a quizz. But I would rather be natural than a walking identity crisis who can't seem to make up her mind who she is. I'm not talking about Evie, who showed me that being skinny means a bigger stress. So I decided to eat less, stay in shape, run two or three times a week. I don't feel sad, resigned and hopeless anymore.

Once I was happy because the waiter was a hottie and the bacon avocado Swiss cheeseburger, medium-rare, sweet potato fries, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a cherry Coke were meant to be brought to me by him. Now, thanks to my bunk mates, I learned how to change my hair and wear make-up. And most of all, I spent two months at camp with people who taught me that there are lots of reasons why people gain weight, lots of reasons why they lose it, and lots of reasons why they can or can’t keep it off.

It doesn’t matter who they are inside, we fixate on their size, and first impressions die hard.
The ideal of beauty for women is associated with slenderness and is focused on the body size. Fat individuals are target with discrimination and stigmatization.
“Making the right (healthy) lifestyle choices produces individuals as successful, moral [and] disciplined citizens, who take responsibility for their health and lifestyle, in the knowledge that they owe it not only to themselves to be the best self possible, but also to society generally and their close family and friends in particular”( Irmgard Tischner, Fat Lives: A Feminist Psychological Exploration, New York: Routledge, 2012, page 6)
Is important to eat right, stay moral, and take responsibility for your acts. But if you have the support of those around you have everything. In Cam situation and also in the situation of persons that are discriminated not matter what is their issue, the most important thing is that they have support and encouragement. Many of them spoke about disgust, unattractive bodies, shame and guilt and they hate themselves and only because they are out of same measures and norms that majority made them.
As Cam, many of girls that have weight problems have to face not only the society’s view but themselves. Most of the time is about choices and motivation. First of all you have to know yourself in order to decide who you want to be and not how others want you to be. Cam has to gain trust in her. What will bring her changes will be her decision on who she will want to be. Psychologists say that you have to love yourself a little to keep living. Her decision on losing weight is for a boy. I know, the oldest trick in the world. Honestly, I think is a normal situation at her age, but most important is that she found her motivation.
“If I were different, if I could just eat like everybody else and not have this problem, this stupid ISSUE, but it never goes away.” 98
She knows her problem but she doesn’t know how to fight with it. Being different is a big issue. She needs support and someone to encourage her.
In my opinion, most of the time parents should be blamed for their children’s problems. The environment that they create at home in their family develops an unsecure environment. This cause children isolation and escape in other staff, which brings them same kind of security in a form of pleasure (eating). Sometimes happiness is associated with pleasure, in this case of eating. It is a short pleasure that comforts them and keeps them in a world of struggling with themselves. This pleasure is reliable, it will not leave them when they most need it. Parents knowledge the problem only when is visible and everyone realize it. Sometimes parents do not see the problem and even say that they have a happy family. Maybe, the accumulation of some frustration and anxieties, as psychologist called it, from childhood bust in something that bring instability in their child’ mind and body. Most of the time a visible problem is the correspondent of one that is not visible. I admit that sometimes the blame is on biological factor that creates disorders on the body. But in the book can be found lots of psychological issues that emerge at the surface.
Cam’s parents are always busy with their work and often they do not have time enough for their children. This brings up the unhidden issues that can be the influence on their children looks.
“We’re just so sorry to disappoint you (and ourselves!),
but I hope that you’ll understand how big a career move
this is for me. We’ll call you soon.
All my love,
Mom “ ( Fat Camp,page 102)
Cam needs parents’ encouragement and support.
“Fine. Don’t come. I don’t care if I never see them for the rest of my entire life. If her stupid book is more important to them than coming to see me for one day, six pathetic hours, when everyone else’s parents will be racing up here, then they can fly to L.A. and stay there. I’ll sign up for boarding school and go directly from camp without going home. At least my parents have their priorities straight: My mom’s career comes way before visiting her only child. I run from the bunk, off in the direction of the newspaper office. It’s usually empty—Jesse inevitably shows up late because his softball game always goes into extra innings.” ( Fat Camp,112)

“My father travels for business sometimes, and we don’t always get along, but he’s always there for me”. 105
“To make it worse, I’ll be alone on visiting day when everyone else is with their families, and the following week when everyone is on their own again, I’ll be saddled with my parents, and we’ll be sauntering around the camp together beaming out the message:
D-Y-S-F-U-N-C-T-I-O-N-A-L F-A-M-I-L-Y “( Fat Camp ,118)
Parents have the most influential power on the children. Even Summer suffers from her parent divorce.
“ Summer, the voice of total empathy, “but you know what? At least you have two parents who love you. My parents split up when I was five, and my sister is the only one that they ever loved.” ( Fat Camp ,109)

In FAT CAMP we do not only meet the importance of changing your body, but also the importance of changing your soul. The scene with Cam wanting to buy the dog with three legs is so suggestive. We see in her not only a body/ image changing, but also an interior change, maybe the most important of all. If at the beginning she was a spoilt girl, to the end she proves herself being more than a selfish and spoilt girl. She wants something that others refuse. we keep thinking if it was her camp colleague who abandoned the dog. If so, there was not any evolution in her case. The true beauty can be seen to Cam.