The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image, and Other Hazards of Being Female

by Schoech, Samantha; Taggart, Lisa

• ISBN13: 9781580052108
• ISBN10: 158005210X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-06-22
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

In this outrageous collection of laugh-out-loud essays, nothing is sacred and no horror story goes untold, Brazilian bikini waxes, nursing nightmares, boob jobs, jiggly thighs, overzealous sweat glands, and pure, shameless vanity-it's all here in these brazenly honest tales, from twenty-one hilarious writers who've survived it all and have the stretch marks to prove it. We all know we worry about our looks too much, but who wants to admit it? These women do, and they tell the unflinching uproarious truth about our bodies, and the tragicomic relationships we women have with them. Reading these essays is like having a girls' night out with your best friends-only much, much funnier, and without the hangover the next day. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Lisa Taggart has been a staff travel writer for Sunset Magazine for the past seven years, where she edits a regular travel section. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and Harvard University. She lives with her husband in Santa Clara, CA. Samantha Schoech's fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Seventeen, Gettysburg Review, and Glimmer Train. She is an editor at Marin Magazine and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
The Pencil Test & Other Boob Failures
The Slow Boob Movement	p. 2
My Life As a Mammal	p. 7
Getting from A to B	p. 22
Chair Work	p. 32
Reduced	p. 48
Big Asses, Moon Bellies & Wide Loads
Suburban Hottentot	p. 58
Navel Attire	p. 64
Battleships	p. 70
Beauty Queens & Ugly Ducklings
More Than Pretty	p. 82
Pear Apparent	p. 92
Fine with This	p. 101
The Ugly Prize	p. 113
The Clearasil Years
Feels Like Teen Spirit	p. 130
Around the Bend	p. 148
The Freak in My Pants	p. 162
Stretch Marks: Pregnancy & Other Bum Deals
Bump Doesn't Begin to Describe It	p. 182
Scrambled Eggs	p. 192
Two Things I'm Really Good At	p. 214
The Breakdown: Aging & Illness
Now You're Just Like Flannery O'Connor: A Few Things Not to Tell the Newly Sick	p. 226
The Seven-Month Itch	p. 233
Ain't No Forehead Smooth Enough	p. 240
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