Wintergirls

=Wintergirls=

//Wintergirls// Overview
//Wintergirls// (2009) divulges the ugliness of eating disorders and how difficult they are to defeat. The protagonist, Lia Marrigan Overbrook, began coping with her problems by controlling her caloric intake. This gave her a sense of control and achievement even if she failed at other areas of life. The anorexia seed was first planted in Lia's life when she met Cassandra (Cassie) Jane Parrish, who moved into the house across the street.

Dark Themes
Lia's struggle with anorexia and dealing with her friend's death cause her to spiral out of control into dangerous territory. Three main dark strands in this novel twist around anorexia, familial problems, and the demise of a friendship. Lia's dissatisfaction with her body, family, and Cassie dominate her thoughts and actions. She is hungry for the past, her once-happy family, and closure with Cassie.

The relationship Lia has with food is reflected through her disgust with being full, which symbolizes her lack of ful//fill//ment in life. For example, she refers to eating as "polluting [her] insides" and "yesterday's dirt and mistakes" and being hungry makes her feel "shiny and pink inside, clean" (Anderson, 2009, p. 7). After starving herself and driving to the SATs, Lia and Cassie get into a car accident. One of her worst nightmares comes true: "They stuck [her] with a needle, inflated [her] like a state-fair balloon, and shipped [her] off to a hospital with steel-eyed nurses who wrote down every bad number" (Anderson, 2009, p. 9). Because of the accident, her family discovers her malnutrition and severely low body weight.

While in the hospital, Lia's parents, Doctor Marrigan and Professor Overbrook, argue about her health status, saying she is "stressed/overscheduled/manic/no--depressed/no--in need of attention/no--in need of discipline/in need of rest/in need/your fault/your fault/fault/fault" (Anderson, 2009, p. 9). This blame and shame they have over their daughter, Lia, thrusts her deeper into depression and isolation. Lia knows she needs to gain weight to escape from the rehabilitation center, New Seasons, so she pretends she is on the road to recovery so that the doctors and her parents will buy into it and let her come home. When she is home, she returns to giving in to her distorted disease and only eats enough calories to survive. She shoves quarters in the pockets of her robe to increase her weight when her stepmother, Jennifer, weighs her daily. Deceiving loved ones is a common behavior of those who suffer from eating disorders.

In the first chapter, Lia replays the news her stepmother gave her about Cassie: "...body found in a motel room, alone..." (Anderson, 2009, p. 4). This compounds the guilt Lia feels for the collapse of her friendship with Cassie. Now that her enemy/friend is dead she feels partially responsible because Cassie called 33 times before she died, crying for help and friendship. When she was alive, Cassie felt that Lia "was the root of all evil...a negative influence, a toxic shadow" because after //Lia's// eating disorder was discovered, //Cassie's// parents realized their own daughter had bulimia and tried to address it (Anderson, 2009, p. 11). Cassie did not want help though until it was too late. Similarly, Lia has to hit rock bottom before she realizes that //she// is the one destroying her own family and her own life. Her mind is constantly racing with negative thoughts about herself: "Stupid/ugly/bitch/stupid/fat/stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost" (Anderson, 2009, p. 221). While standing in the bathroom, Lia gruesomely cuts herself:
 * The first incision runs from [her] neck to just below [her] heart, deep enough so that [she] can finally feel something, not deep enough to flay [her] open. The pain flows like lava and takes [her] breath away. The knife carves a path in the flesh between two ribs, then, between the two ribs below that. Fat drops of blood splash on the counter, ripe red seeds. (Anderson, 2009, p. 223).

Emma, Lia's ten-year old stepsister is horrified when she opens the bathroom door and finds Lia, a bag of skin and bones dripping with blood. This is Lia's wake-up call because now she has been caught nearly committing suicide and her innocent, young sister whom she loves dearly had to bear witness.

Overcoming Obstacles
The two major battles Lia is fighting are her eating disorder and getting over the death of Cassie. Anderson decided to write about anorexia "because of the countless readers who wrote and talked to [her] about their struggles with eating disorders, cutting, and feeling lost" (Anderson, 2009, Acknowledgements section). Lia's inner conflict with herself is revealed through Anderson's strikethroughs of the text. For instance, when referring to Emma she says, "(my stepsister) Emma" or when she wants to eat muffins, oranges, toast, or waffles for breakfast she thinks, "(Because I can't let myself want them) because I don't need a muffin (410), I don't want an orange (75) or toast (87), and waffles (180) make me gag" (Note: parentheses have been substituted for strikethroughs) (Anderson, 2009, p. 3; p. 5). The way in which Lia censors her own thoughts shows that she is aware of her eating disorder but is not ready to confront it.

Competitiveness
Lia and Cassie competed to be the skinniest, but their parents also divulged competitive sides in showing off their "perfect lives" to fit the suburban cookie cutter mold. In a flashback Lia said to Cassie, “I swear to be the skinniest girl in school, skinnier than you” and Cassie retorted, “I bet I’ll be skinnier than you,” so Lia concluded that she would not win this battle and decided that they should just “be skinniest together,” but Cassie had to "win" and added, "Okay, but I'll be skinnier" (Anderson, 2009, p. 179). In the end, Cassie's win cost her her life while Lia finally succumbed to recovery. Lia's parents were even competitive with Cassie's parents. When Jennifer breaks the news of Cassie's death to Lia, she says, "Thank God you're stronger than she was," showing her comparative nature. Jennifer also wants to be viewed as "supermom" and takes store bought cookies out of the package, puts them in a plastic container, and crumbles the edges so they look homemade (Anderson, 2009). Similarly, Dr. Marrigan wants her daughter to be the perfect trophy child when she "feeds her glass dreams one spoonful at a time. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Duke. Undergrad. Med school. Internship, residency" (Anderson, 2009, pp. 16-17). The controlled household in which Lia was raised propelled her to find a way to gain control over her own life. For her anorexia was the answer: "Empty is good. Empty is strong" (Anderson, 2009, p. 7).