Non-fiction post- February- Stick Figure by Lori Gottlieb

        The book Stick Figure by Lori Gottlieb is about the author, Lori's, struggle with anorexia as an eleven year old child. The book is Lori's diary for the whole year of her being eleven. She writes about her family, how she got into anorexia and her journey through the eating disorder. The main idea of this book was to show the readers what it is like being an anorexic child. Lori Gottlieb does this by giving the actual diary of her childhood anorexia. She also does this by including all of the details about how she felt during her anorexia, what got her into anorexia, and everything that happened during her anorexia. The fact that her story is truthfully coming from the perspective of a child, herself, who actually went through this helps the readers understand the main idea a little better. It allows the readers to step into the shoes of this eleven year old anorexic child, if it was just someone writing a book about anorexia it would not be as plausible.

         In this book Lori Gottlieb includes how much she was influenced by media. Gottlieb wants us to know that things like magazines, books, and TV can really influence children to change the way they are just to be "perfect". Gottlieb wants us to feel like these types of advertising that influence kids to change the way they are, are negative things in society. The authors lets us know that children are easily influenced by media by including the part in her diary, that she wrote at age eleven, about how TV and books led her to be anorexic. For example, Lori says "Drink eight tall glasses of water every day, Thirty Days to Thin says." She is referring to one of the diet books she bought, they say that if you drink a lot of water, you feel full and don't eat. Lori talks about how she follows a lot of the "rules" in the diet book and takes tips from commercials. These are the things that lead her to just completely stop eating. She makes us feel that this is a negative thing by telling us the ridiculous things she did just to follow the "rules" in these diet books. For example, she explains how she refused to lick an envelope because she thought it might have sugar on it and that one book said "sugar is the enemy".

        This book has changed my way of thinking about this societal issue. It has made me look a lot deeper into it, and how it can so negatively affect our society. Lori Gottlieb lived in L.A. as a child and through out the year she was anorexic. Not to be super stereotypical or judgmental, but I have thought before that a lot of people who live in L.A. can be very superficial because of all the show business surrounding them. After reading this it kind of proved my point because all of the parents are always on diets and everything so it influenced the kids a lot. I also thought this book really helped me understand what the mind set is for someone who is anorexic. It's a great book! I recommend it!