I would just like to take a moment now to let it be know my absolute contempt for the useless fucking excuse for a book that is "Skinny Bitch". I don't even know where to start on how this book is full of complete crap about what, as human beings, we should be eating and how we should be treating our bodies.
The authors, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, certainly have an altruistic enough basic motive (well, this is what I convinced myself in a feeble attempt to extract a sense caring from the text): by eating better, you can lose weight and feel better about yourself. Well, apart from the fact that I already knew this, the book just turns itself into a big hypocritical pile of bullshit, about how dairy products are "disease-producing and harmful, and cause suffering. They are the perfect thing to eat if you want a sick an diseased body". Well excuse me, I wanted a sick and diseased body, and so I ate cheese and milk, for say, oh yeah, 19 years, and motherfuckers! I'm still healthy! I want a refund! This dairy product did not make me sick as promised! You will also be interested to know that the source for much of this anti-milk/dairy products babble is "milksucks.com". I know, that's what I thought-a completely unbiased source I imagine.
There is of course, plenty of the book that makes sense. Eating fruit, regular exercise, the basics. Their basic intentions are definitely into encouraging you to have a healthier lifestyle, but they let themselves down completely with a stupid, whitetrash attitude and conveniently ignore the fact, that yes, these things can be bad for us, but everything is bad for you if you had too much of it.
But the most infuriating part of the book were the last couple of chapters. These women recommend giving blood as "you can save a life and lose weight at the same time", and insinuate that you can give yourself cancer through negative thinking. The examples used referenced women who had been in poor marital relations and as a result got cancer. The one who perservered in the relationship, died ("as a result"), yet the one who left, recovered. They say it is "entirely possible to bring the disease on yourself". And of course it is, smoking, alcoholism, and many other detrimental activities (ironically, a poor diet) will raise your chance of getting cancer, and at one point, make it inevitable. And of course, genetics come into play too. But as someone who knows people who have cancer, and had someone die from it in my family, I would feel gutted if someone suggested a loved one "brought it upon themselves" in a manner suggested by this book.
They also make a feeble attempt at realigning their motives ("don't associate your self-worth with your appearance") and mention that they don't care about being skinny. This is ridiculous as both women worked in the modelling industry and for whatever reasons, this was part of their careers. The book obviously is directly aimed at the market share of people who wish to lose weight and become skinny! Anyone who was looking for ways to generally improve their health, with weight-loss being a mere factor, would certainly (well, I would hope not) turn to this book for advice. I had to laugh when they say "Now you're a skinny bitch, don't turn into a skinny bitch. We are not bitches and have no desire to promote bitchiness." Because, despite this declaration, the back cover of the back claims: "They [the authors] may be bitches, but they're skinny bitches. And you'll be one too - after you get with the program and start eating right."
They need to try and sort out what they are trying to say - if they had actually gone ahead and been really tough about it, without the weak attempt to soften their brash attitude at the end, it may have been a bit more impressive. But really, in the end, this book didn't make me want to go out and follow their advice, it made me want to eat all the dairy and meat products I could get my hands on, purely to spite them. These women are obviously smart and shrewd businesswomen, you can't take that away from them, and have tried to do something different. But it's definitely not for me.
