I'm Not the New Me: A Memoir by Wendy McClure

From the Publisher

A hilarious and sometimes poignant look at the absurdities of weight-loss culture from an appealing and original new voice.

From the creator of the immensely popular websites Pound and Candyboots, this is the memoir of Wendy McClure's odyssey-on-line and off-through the Valley of The Shadow of Her Really Big Ass. It's about the universe she created for herself when she couldn't see herself as a kicky Weight Loss Success Story, only she put it all on a website and became sort of an inspiration anyway.

I'm Not The New Me is about coming to terms with a family heritage of fat and drastic surgeries, and about self-esteem issues that are nobody's business but your own. It's wondering what's left of yourself after you lose weight-and just who the hell you are if you gain it back. It's about the absurdities of online identities and fat girl clichés, and the sheer terror of appearing live and in person in your very own life.

Author Biography: Wendy McClure holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the creator of the online journal Pound, as well as the humor site Candyboots. She is a columnist for Bust and a regular contributor to the web site Television Without Pity.

Publishers Weekly

When McClure, a 33-year-old children's book editor from Chicago, creates a Web site to chronicle losing weight, she contemplates possible names for it. She rejects My Weight Loss Journey, Soon To Be Slender, My Body Journal and Funky Flesh, which she decides has bad B.O. connotations, before choosing Pound (its Web address is www.poundy.com because www.pound.com wasn't available). In this funny, likable memoir, McClure offers sardonic commentary on both projects her struggle to shed pounds and the creation and growth of Pound from confessing how much she wants a special Weight Watchers magnet (the token the program gives to members when they lose their first 25 pounds) to describing a shopping trip to Lane Bryant. For some reason, plus size designers love the mutant conjoined twinset, she writes. I think they're under the impression that fat women get so out of breath putting their arms through sleeves that they're doing us a favor. McClure's narrative also includes selections of e-mails from appreciative, devoted Pound readers, accounts of online dating woes and some recollections of her childhood. The narrative drags in spots, but, just as Pound fans found McClure's words inspiring, those who read this work are likely to applaud its author for writing such an encouraging, spirited book. Agent, Erin Hosier at the Gernert Company. (Apr. 26) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The premise: Every reader has a fat-girl story. Narrator and newcomer McClure (and children's-book editor), with her corny fat-girl anecdotes, recognizes she's just about as heavy as she can get when she steps on a scale at a "lesbian garage sale" and tests its accuracy. The scale hits 230 pounds and Wendy decides to buy it: "I liked that it was a lesbian scale and that it wouldn't make patriarchal judgments about my weight." She's just gotten back from a junket to Las Vegas as a part-time writer for the Web site Television Without Pity, and her colleagues send her pictures of herself at karaoke night at Tong's Palace: "I'm showing quarters I didn't even really know I had." It's time to check in to Weight Watchers ("Dieting fat girls are always kind of like superheroes"). Indeed, she starts her own Web site, poundy.com, chronicling her herculean bout with losing and regaining weight, and she does become a hero for many obese women who write her in despair and relief. Most touching are glimpses of her mother, a sympathetic presence at over 300 pounds, who had her stomach stapled during Wendy's childhood years, leading to frequent vomiting when she overate. Between Wendy's day job (reading princess-story manuscripts), visiting the gym and tallying her dwindling weight, Wendy also begins to meet men, such as the nutty guy at the bar who tells her he would really go for her if she lost 30 pounds (why 30 pounds? "He says it so often I begin to wonder if he has a secret knowledge"), and the formerly overweight Nathan who delights in wearing her size 20 Lane Bryant jeans. Wendy and her chums are all in the same boat, rooting each other on with slogans: strength, power, confidence, joy. Landing abook agent seems an incongruous denouement to Wendy's saga, since in the end she craves acceptance, not change. Bridget Jones-style endearing self-deprecation.

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