Overweight issues cum female empowerment ala Ani DiFranco and I actually enjoyed it? Shh, don't tell anyone!
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Fat Girl Code of Conduct says:
1. All sexual activity must be kept a secrect.
2. Never discuss your weight with the boy you’re seeing.
3. Go further than all the skinny girls.
4. Never push for a relationship.
Virginia Shreves plays by the rules. Mondays after school she makes out with Froggy Welsh the 4th in the privacy of her bedroom, but never lets it be known at school. She knows that fat girls are like mopeds: fine to ride as long as your friends never find out.
Virginia comes from a seemingly perfect family and goes to Brewster High, a seemingly perfect school. But her WASPy psychologist mom is woefully out of touch with her children, and her dad is always gone on business trips. Lately, her older brother, Byron, is distant, and her older sister Anais has joined the Peace Corps and is away in Burkina Faso. To make matters worse, her best friend Shannon just moved to Walla Walla Washington, hometown of the Walla Walla Onion.
Virginia’s on a diet and her parents take her to Dr. Love, a specialist in adolescent nutrition. Her mom forces her to take French, though she would much rather learn to tell people off in Chinese. One day she overhears skinny Brie in the bathroom one day say that if she were as fat as Virginia she’d kill herself. Virginia wonders if she should go the route of her namesake, Virginia Woolf, and fill her pockets with rocks and drown herself in a river.
But then a phone call shakes up the Shreve image of family perfection, Virginia decides she’s sick of downing Poland Spring and eating lettuce, and decides to take her life into her own hands. Suddenly, anything is possible.

I loved this book, I'd read it again. It is about Virgina Shreeves who belongs to a wealthy successful family but she is unlike them. They are all slim and beautiful and she is heavy. Her best friend has moved away to Washington so she is by herself for the school year. Every week she fools around with a boy who has the ridiculous name of Froggy the Fourth before his trombone lessons.

I see what other people are saying by it's typical to have a fat girl with issues but I personally felt it wasn't too bad and not cliche. The book shows that her family isn't as perfect as they seem to be and Virgina goes through event and motions which ultimately lead her to change herself and start seeing herself in a positive light. I really do recommend this book. But can someone please explain to me the joke of "riding the mope in public"? I never understood it!

Saw an article that Mackler is re-writing some of this and then a sequel so decided I would read the original. Good book looking forward to the sequel.

just all around great characters that made you laugh and cry!

I read the second Virginia Shreves book before the first, and loved it more. The first one is good for being written in 2003 - I didn’t check the date at first, and thought some of the references were a bit dated, but it works. I like the character growth a lot and was rooting for Virginia, even though I knew what happened to her in book 2!

Greatly enjoyed this book. Funny,true, and empowering. Definitely one I would recommend to girls.

I miss books like this. I loved how the main character was on the outside of the book's major conflict, so you get to see how hard times can affect even people on the outside of the issue.

Quietly optimistic, unabashedly honest, but a little quick to end.

Not really into books that focus on a female protagonist who pushes the idea that are fat-girls only there for guys to have sex with in secret with no chance at public attention or affection simply because they're fat. Not really into this book at all.