Skinny Bitch

admin — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 15:13:00 +0000

Skinny Bitch is a book that promises to tell the truth about dieting, diets and the reasons for the fat that puts the junk in your trunk. Authors Rory Freedman, a former Ford Model, and Kim Barnouin, a former model with a Masters of Science degree in Holistic Nutrition, use some ugly language to guide readers into a strict vegan diet regime, which promises those who “use their heads will lose their ass.”

Chapters include tirades against sugar, soda, meat (or ‘flesh’) and slaughter practices, as well as some in-depth diet and menu ideas for those who want to get skinny. The book takes no prisoners when it exposes the nasty truth behind some of our favourite food addictions. Mass farming, aspartame, caffeine, drugs in dairy and the conspiracies behind the promotion of the average American diet are shocking. If you read the chapters titled “The Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh Diet” and “You are What You Eat" word-for-word and didn’t retch the next time you bit into a chicken wing, you’re a callous soul.

As a promoter of thoughtful eating and a call-to-arms against blind consumerism, Skinny Bitch is a well-sourced academic paper written in nasty trucker slang. As a diet book, though, Skinny Bitch is troubling. The twist of adding foul language doesn’t go far to mask the promotion of near-anorexic caloric intakes. Worrisome is the chapter that follows the tirades against the average diet titled "Let’s Eat." The chapter title is ironic; it offers the reader the ideal eating pattern of a starving herself on a piece of fruit for breakfast, a green salad for lunch and a veggie dog for dinner. It insists that the reader will “…grow to love that empty feeling in your stomach and know that the initial headaches, nausea and hunger were just your body’s cleaning crew.”

The average person couldn’t keep this kind of diet going for long before they find themselves madly eating through the entire kitchen's contents, including the old box of Jell-O powder at the back of the pantry. It’s a sad situation we’re in when a book needs to add a restrictive menu and promises of “skinny” to sell, and can’t stand alone as a guide to eat thoughtfully and respectfully, of yourself and the earth.

Written by: Sarah Papple, March 4th 2007