Excerpt from Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs by Cheryl Peck, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I have determined that I don't particularly mind being the queen of my gym. There may indeed be women who wake up in the morning and sit on the edges of their beds and think to themselves, "There is that fat woman at my gym who goes almost every day, and if she can do it..." I am proud to be an inspirational goddess. It has taken me most of my life to understand that what we see, when we look at another person, may reflect absolutely nothing about how they see themselves. Always having been a woman of size, I have always believed that it must be just a wonderful experience to be thin. What I am learning is that the reverse of the old truism is equally true: inside every thin woman there is a fat woman just waiting to jump out.

We give that woman entirely too much power over our lives. We all do.

Copyright © 2002, 2004 by Cheryl Peck.