Wake Up, I'm Fat!

"It's all I ever thought about. I'm too fat. I've got to lose some weight. I'll never get a professional acting job if I'm that fat. And even though there were times when they'd actually say nice things about my acting, like: 'Camryn, that was great, really nice job,' I, of course, interpreted it as, 'Camryn, your acting in that scene was much less fat, that's the kind of slender acting we like to see.' That was my goal. To be a fat-free actor."—Camryn Manheim

Thankfully, Camryn Manheim has never played by the rules. Her fierce determination to defy the beauty myth, the naysayers, and casting stereotypes has resulted in one of today's most remarkable and unique Hollywood success stories.

"This is for all the fat girls!" Manheim proudly proclaimed to the world in 1998 when she won the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the popular ABC-TV drama "The Practice." But it took her decades to let go of the self-loathing and make peace with her body. Wake Up, I'm Fat! is Manheim's defiant, frank, poignant, and wildly funny account of growing up fat in a thin-obsessed culture...and thriving. "This is my journey," says Manheim, "from victim to victor."

Born in New Jersey and raised in the Midwest, Manheim grew up in the late 1960s in a family of suburban Jewish activists who placed a premium on education. Her life changed at the age of 11, when her family moved to southern California. In this sun-soaked mecca, Manheim experienced culture shock: People shopped for groceries in bikinis! Soon she met a "friend," a dependable source of protection and comfort: her fat. And "he" stuck with her. (Manheim always thinks ofher fat as male. "I know it says something about me that I consider the personification of my fat to be male," she confides, "but over the years I've realized that its tyranny is quintessentially masculine.") Through the summer of her 16th year, when she happily worked as a buxom wench at the Renaissance Faire; her undergraduate days at UC Santa Cruz, when she rode a motorcycle and discovered that she wasn't a lesbian; her years as a tortured drama student at New York University, when a professor named Dick asked, "What are you doing about your body?" Manheim's fat remained constant. "I view my fat as Mussolini," she says. "It is a terrible oppressor that makes the shame run on time."

Pulsing with outrage and humor, Wake Up, I'm Fat! captures the battle for both self- and social acceptance fought by women with less than model-thin bodies. Throughout, Manheim candidly shares her own personal moments of shock and anger, shame and despair. Yet she also reveals her triumphs and revelations—including the joy of connecting with other wonderful big women.

Recalling the sting of society's judgmental scorn—especially when embodied by would-be employers and would-be lovers—Manheim ponders, "It's against all odds that I've managed to arrive in my mid-thirties with any self-respect and self-worth. It's a miracle that I laugh every day and walk through my life with pride and confidence, because our culture is unrelenting when it comes to large people." But she's a survivor and a woman with a mission: "I have chosen to spend all of my positive energy on changing the world's perception of fat people. I am proud to carry a torch in the battle for fat acceptance. But it's just one of a million torches that need to be lit and held high."

A heartfelt and spirited personal memoir, and a wake-up call to the fat and "unfat" alike, Wake Up, I'm Fat! will make readers laugh, think, and perhaps light a torch of their own.