Jezebel
Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer/reviewer/blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'The Cat Ate My Gymsuit', Paula Danziger's 1974 classic about a sensitive, sardonic teenage girl with a few extra pounds and a whole lotta personality.
I hate my father. I hate school. I hate being fat. I hate the principal because he wanted to fire Ms. Finney, my English teacher.I feel bad for teens today. Their parents listen to them. Teachers are invested in their intellectual development and well-being. Books are published on their optimal care and feeding; violins brandished for their edification; trips abroad marshaled so they may broaden their horizons and spread this wealth to others, eventually spearheading their own microloan organizations and so forth. What the hell! That's no way to throw down.
Marcy Lewis is no rarefied hothouse flower from the Western world, ruthlessly cultivated to within an inch of her stamen. No! She is, by her own admission, a "baby blimp with wire frame glasses and mousy brown hair" who fears impending acne and hands her gym teacher a creative reason every day to not be forced to put on her gymsuit in front of everyone.
She is not the only one on board. Her friend Nancy gives her this practical assessment: "Marcy. Come on. You're not ugly. You are too fat, but you have good points too. It's just that kids think you're stuck up because you won't play and you're smart." Her mother tells her that everything O.K., but that she should really "lose some weight and look like everyone else." Her four-year-old brother, Stuart, wants her to be his best friend "so I can help him put orange pits in the hole in his teddy bear's head." And her father, yet another in the line of apopleptic dads obviated around when Archie Bunker transmuted to Steven Keaton, renders this judicious opinion, not infrequently: "I don't care if you get good grades. You do stupid things. Why do I have to have a daughter who is stupid and fat? I'll never get you married off."
Oh, I know some of you remember these halcyon days! And if you will just allow me to return for one second to why kids today don't even have a shot, I just have to show you Marcy, a la 2008:
What is the issue here, exactly? It's that girls like things that are pink, isn't it? That a quirky illustration can draw them in better than a picture fat girl? Cuz fat girls are gross? Something wonderful and life-changing is going to happen to the girl on this cover, I just know it! Except....NEWSFLASH, DESIGNER!!! There is no actual CAT! This "cat" business is an ironic barb thrown up in a poor defense of a wounded psyche! Children, do not listen to this cover! Life is terribly fat and unquirky! And there are no hearts whatsoever.
Anyway. So, into the world of Cover #1 and very-much-not Cover #2 two enters Diane Finney, un-teachery teacher, wearer of turtleneck, jean skirt, and a macrame necklace. (Please forgive me for one second while I descend into a reverie of all the mothers downstairs wearing these, smoking Bushmills and drinking, while the fathers prepare to come home apopleptic and we are upstairs, reading Wifey.) Ms. Finney, in her 1970s way, reins in the unruly students by some psych 101 method of staring at them unnervingly, then exposes them to an eye-opening battery of novel teaching methods while actually teaching them English, including but not limited to making a commercial to "sell" a book, using monopoly to learn vocabulary, and the works of Marshall McLuhan.
Drunk on this actual engagement, both with their intellect and with their psyches, the students ask if they can form an after-school club to "do more about how we felt inside". That is where Marcy finally meets Joel Anderson, unconventional love interest, when they are paired off to learn about each other:
I didn't know. Was I supposed to tell him I was a blimp trying to disguise myself as a real person; or that I probably had a horrible case of contagious impending pimples; or that I had this weird brother with a teddy bear filled with orange pits; or that I thought that he was cute and brave and probably thinking about how suicide would be better than talking to me?Illustrate that with a cat, motherfucker! But anyway, this is what Joel (who answers, in my favorite answer ever, "Joel Anderson" to the question of what he wants to be when he grows up) actually tells the class: "This is Marcy Lewis. She says she doesn't like lots of things, but I bet she really does....and she has a nice smile."
All this, of course, cannot stand. Despite Ms. — Ms! — Finney's demonstrable skill as a teacher, her refusal to say the pledge while she salutes the flag provides a ready hook for the ire of Principal Stone, who we are meant to understand is not interested in the teachings of Marshall McLuhan. Ms. Finney, who is really only guilty of occasionally forgetting she's holding a piece of chalk and trying to smoke it, is suspended, and the only good thing about this is that it provides Marcy with the opportunity to come into her own, both in love, life, and her family. After sticking it to the man by telling Principal Stone "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him," she shocks herself by spearheading the movement to save Ms. Finney, joined along the way, surprisingly, not only by the quietly supportive Joel, but by her mother, who graduates from capitulating to her husband's abject bitchazzness to defending Ms. Finney at the school board meeting to decide her fate.
But it doesn't work. It doesn't work! (I remain fascinated by how these books stubbornly refuse to have happy endings.) Instead, we have a semi-progression into sort-of-slightly better circumstances. Ms. Finney wins the case but declines to return, because she knows she'd be too divisive. (Huh.) Joel and Marcy remain close friends. ("You have to start somewhere.") Marcy's mother registers for night courses at the local university and stops plying her with ice cream, but her father "hardly ever says anything to me anymore. He and my mother talk a lot, but he just looks at me and shakes his head." As the book ends, Marcy informs us: "Yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw a pimple. It's name is Agnes."
Maybe what makes the book genuinely honest, genuinely un-cloyingly quirky, and genuinely interesting, is how it is not only a snapshot of Marcy's own psyche but of a family and a country in transition during the war in Vietnam and the feminist movement, neither of which is explicitly mentioned but are the subtext of why Mr. Stone, Mr. Lewis and all the other old-guard think her teachings are divesting their children of a crucial conformity. Ms. Finney, who will salute the flag but won't say the pledge because "I am sorry to have to say that I don't believe this country offers liberty and justice for all" signals peacenik touchy-feelyness to the powers that be. But she is actually far more: a harbinger of a real change to come. Not mindless hand-holding, not saccharine rhetoric, but — in an atmosphere of divorce, unrest and uncertainty — an understanding of how engagement with the new and unfamiliar makes us people worth holding hands with.
Well, that worked out well. Oh country my country, we still have a Mr. Stone! I believe we even recovered the macrame necklace. But where's our brave Ms. Finney to wear it?
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]
Earlier: The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
Comments
the new cover sux. original cover FTW.
Love Paula D.
@Dodai: She's not even fat!
I was a Henry Huggins girl myself.
did I read this? oh, god. the teddy bear full of orange pits just sounds soo familiar. I wasn't a kid that long ago! but I do drink a lot. hmm.
Agree that the new cover is horrible. And I read this when I was so naive that "plant grass on Mr. Stone" made me wonder 1) how one would do that--sod? and 2) why he could be busted for it.
I don't remember exactly what I thought of Ms. Finney leaving at the end, but I probably didn't think it was as cowardly then as I do now. Then again, the adult world was different in those days, and the other faculty members might have made life much harder for her than the kids or the community would have.
I lurve her books. I always wondered what happened to Marcy after Bunk Five.
@Dodai: For reals. The new cover looks like Lisa Loeb in a fucked up fun house mirror. And why is the Fancy Feast cat staring at her? The scale is all wrong! The color is wrong! Everything is wrong!
I always liked this book. But what is with new cover making it all happy and hearts and flowers?
LOL, I totally read this book as a kid and just a few days ago was trying to remember the title. Thanks, Jezebel! You're more service-y than the service publications you mock! ;)
The new cover is an abomination. The fake cat is almost as offensive as the stick-arms.
Paula Danziger rocked my world when I was eleven. There was this book, and then one about pistachios? Love her.
This book is wonderful. One of my absolute favorites from my middle school years. The new cover doesn't really match the story inside though.
I was just thinking about this book about a week ago, especially the line where she gives up her bowl of ice cream after dinner, then looks in the mirror to see if doing so made her skinny.
That thought process always resonated with me as a child, and as a woman now, I still think that way. Everything about this book was fantastic. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of lots of people who've never heard about it before.
Oh, and the new cover is a complete abomination.
...by the way, lina_lamont, I wrote that last line without knowing you said the EXACT SAME THING. Great minds, etc. I'll try something else: it's an atrocity exhibition.
i still have all of the Paula Danziger books with the original covers somewhere in my mother's house.
I should try and retrieve them ASAP.
This one one of my all-time faves.
@lina_lamont: Oh! That's the book about the girl named Cassandra who is jealous of her 'pretty" sisters and then turns out to be pretty herself (and more book-smart or something). What was that book called?
my life was very similar to marcy except without the love interest and the magical paula danziger-created plotline when marcy gets thinner in the later books. but i did participate in gym class.
@golddigger: And there's this one book about a girl who is a comedienne// mans the school radio station and has a secret crush on the other DJ, I think? But he likes some pretty girl? But then they end up together in the end? Or is that even by Paula Danziger?
OK now I'm confusing myself.
I love all her books. And the original cover is fabulous! And, she totally had a crush on Ms. Finney.
I still have this book! Its under my bed somewhere.
I loathe the new cover.
Cassandra was the girl in 'The Pistachio Precription'
I loved that book so much.
@BAngieB: Lesbian undertones for the win! Try submitting Harriet the Spy
@lina_lamont: The Pistachio Prescription. I love all of her stuff.
Jeez, I can see myself looking at the cover as a preteen and thinking "If this is the character that's fat and geeky and not pretty, I must be a troglodyte." Good going, book publishers!
@golddigger: *to a lesbian reading. Ugh, comment system = weird on my browser.
ALSO ALSO ALSO did anyone read the matthew martin series by her? OR the one where the girl goes to live on the moon? it's so fun and dated!
Most of my old books mysteriously disappeared from my parents' house while I was away at college. I've been slowly replacing what I can by scouring the used book stores in town, but it's taking a long time because I refuse to buy the updated covers. Refuse!!
[en.wikipedia.org]
Sadness.
@golddigger: ::hangs head:: Cassandra was the one who got shit from people at school for being a ninth-grade girl dating an eighth-grade boy. She had a pretty older sister who moved in with her boyfriend and their father freaked right the fuck out. That one was Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice?
There's a second book where she's a camp counselor at some arts camp with Ms. Finney called There's a Bat In Bunk Five. She's thin in the second book and has a boyfriend.
Oh, wait, who was the one in Malpractice, then? Damn. You're right; Cassandra was in Pistachio Prescription. She had a beautiful mom and a beautiful older sister, and she plucked out her eyebrows.
I think this book is why I drew a feminist cartoon for my mom to display on her desk at work. I want to be Ms. Finney!
@golddigger: This Place Has No Atmosphere. I was just mentioning it today on my journal because of a similarity in plot to the ideas about urban redensification in this Atlantic article.
See, everytime I read Fine Lines, I go to a 2nd hand book store and buy my teen nieces all these books, and they think I am insane. I cannot get these girls to read them, and me and my sisters end up talking about them for hours. I don't know how to get them to put down the Ipods and Jonas Brothers and actually GET THEM TO READ!!!
One more thing - I love Fine Lines. My thirties are coming to a close and I find myself becoming very nostalgic for the "good old days". This column reminds me of those days and makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Thank you ever so much. :)
That new cover makes me want to scream. Marcy doesn't have highlights or hipster glasses or wear pink. Marcy has pimples and bad hair and is fat. The entire book is about how Marcy feels about herself and her appearance--don't pretty up the cover just to sell more books. I'm sure it makes young girls even more paranoid about their bodies if Cutsie McPinky is their example of a blimp.
I'm only going to say that those fuckers at Puffin should have hired me when they had the chance. What the fuck is this new cover all about?
I love this book. Paula Danzinger will always be my #1.
I loved this, and think Joel is just dying to bone Marcy.
@FrostyTempleton: yeah, I want to fill my Amazon wish list with all the Judy Blume/Paula D/etc books I used to read, but I hate the new covers. Ebay/Half, I guess.
To quote the snotty maitre d in Ferris Bueller's Day Off: "I weep for the future" when I see the new cover. Hate to think what MY prepubescent self would have thought when reading a book about a fat girl who is illustrated on the cover to look flat-out skinny, but I am sure it would be along the lines of "if THAT is fat, I must be grotesquely obese"
Blech.
I fondly remember this book and the sequel, There is a Bat in Bunk Five, where Marcy is a camp counselor. Wish I'd held on to my copies of both of these gems, though I do still have The Pistachio Prescription and The Divorce Express on my bookshelves....
i need to go back to my parents house and reclaim all the books i bought when i was a kid. i had an impressive library, and i don't think i've ever enjoyed books as much as i did when i was 11. i totally ordered a cynthia voight book over the internet last week. love her.
As soon as I saw the old cover I thought, "They would never release this cover these days, because they wouldn't dare to put an actual fat girl on it." Then I scrolled down and actually saw the new cover. Horrors! I was so sad that I was right.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: I loved "This Place Has No Atmosphere." I remember the cover of that one showed the main character with bobbed hair and bangs. I got my mom to cut my bangs like the girl on the cover.
I remember all these books! And they were GOOD. Is anyone writing good kids books anymore, I wonder? Or is it all the dreaded Harry Potter?
@mcgeorge: I remember There's a Bat in Bunk Five, too!
I had forgotten about this book until reading this. I'd read this in the 3rd or 4th grade. Now it's all coming back to me. What's weird is that every time I see or hear "Ms." I think of Ms. Finney. I'd just forgotten about the rest of the book. I think that was the first time I'd ever heard of anyone using Ms.
My favorite detail about this book is the purple pantsuit. REMEMBER THE PURPLE PANTSUIT? And how it boosts Marcy's self-esteem? I remember wishing I had a purple pantsuit even as it sounded horrifying to my 80s fashion sensibilties.
@FrostyTempleton: Yes, my 35 year old self loves it as well. I echo everyone who says they want to go out and buy or borrow these books.
I never bought books as a kid--I only ever borrowed them from the library. Now I'm going through this phase of buying up all the books I cherished when I was younger. I'm terrified that by the time I have kids, none of the great ones will be left on the library shelves. Though I can't stand the new covers either.
Reading this great review/lookback/whatever, I am struck by how much of Donnie Darko, is, apparently ripped straight from this book. Anyone else?
Second Dodai.