The Middle: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

In the middle section of The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things, a lot of huge and somewhat devastating things happen to Virginia. First, she decides to go on a new diet which causes her to basically starve herself and hurt her own body. Then, she finds out that her older brother Byron, the one she has always looked up and adored since she was a kid, was kicked out of his college for date raping a girl named Annie Mills and has to move back home. This incident also caused her to ward off anything sexual or anything to do with boys for that matter which resulted in her telling Froggy to flake off. She was distancing herself from everyone and letting all of these problems affect her more than she should have. If I was in her place, yes I would take it hard but I don't think I would let it affect me as much as she let it affect her. While I was reading I just kept thinking, "Why is she THIS upset over her brother being kicked out of college?" and I know the answer. It made her see Byron for what he really is and what he is isn't perfect like she always thought. However, she should have taken this information and benefited from it instead of letting his faults bring her down. She always felt like she never belonged in her perfect little family but now she's able to see all of the real imperfections shine through. When her family never showed any real emotion about the incident or always referred to Byron date raping a girl as his "ordeal" she could also see that her mother and father, especially her mother, always scraped things like this under the rug so that they could APPEAR to be the perfect little family that they in fact are not.

Virginia's grades started to slip in school and she wasn't able to focus on her school work as much. She kept cutting school and going off and venturing on her own unbeknownst to anyone else. She totally cheated on her new diet because food was the only thing that she knew would keep her sane for the time being. Things for her felt like they were spiraling out of control. She just couldn't snap out of this funk. This was Virginia's breaking point. Her mother's constant comments about Virginia's weight just made her all the more stressed out than her family even knew that she was.

If I was Virginia, I would have handled this a lot differently than she did. She always kept quiet and never let herself speak her mind whenever her mother made an insulting comment about her body or when her mother would always say "How about we try Salon Z instead?" which is a plus sized clothing store for teenage girls instead of letting Virginia shop in the regular teen section. I would have stepped up to my mother and told her that I could handle my weight and my body on my own because it's truly none of her business especially since I'm already healthy. I think that Virginia would feel better if she realized her worth and realized that she deserves to be treated like a real human being and not an object that needs to be "fixed." Has someone in your family ever negatively commented on your body? If so, how did that make you feel and how did you respond? If not, how would you feel and how would you respond?