Dumplin'

First things first: Go I'm ahead and put on the Pentatonics version of "Jolene". No, it's not a dumb cover; Dolly is actually singing along with them.

Alright, now we can continue.

I have had Dumplin' on my To-Be-Read shelf since it came out. I ended up meeting Julie, the other night, and it immediately jumped to her top of the list because she's just so darn cool.

The basic synopsis for the book goes something like this:

Willowdean (or "Dumplin'" according to her former literal beauty queen mama), owns her title as "the fat girl" at her small town high school. She's always been self-assured about this and carries on confidently until an otherwise relationship with a co-worker begins to sow seeds of doubt in her head.

As a way to attempt to show more put her confidence back on track, she and a few friends decide to enter their town's beauty pageant, turning heads and upending paradigms at every turn.

Nothing too deep or earth shattering from the outside.

I thought I knew what it was about.

Small town Texas.

Reclaiming the word "fat"

High school drama.

Beauty Pageants.

And sure, all of those things play a part but it is so much more than that.

We tend to think everyone else is so confident and comfortable in their own skin but the reality, we have NO idea what's going on inside someone else's head.

Even though Will outwardly smiles and snarks at teasing from her peers, even though she has close friends, even though she has multiple boys trying to get attention, life is far from perfect.

As you can imagine, being a heavy daughter of a pageant winner, in a town obsessed with beauty competitions, is a lot of emotional labor.

She describes the town's obsession as some creeping vine of a cultural phenomenon, strangling out all other options of focus.

"Sometimes I think the pageant is like Christmas, and we just keep trying to celebrate it earlier and earlier until it turns into a year-round event."

Even (or especially) at home, she gets no relief. Her mom is a fan of "thing transformation" stories (think Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover) which has always driven a wedge between the two women. One of the hardest lines to read in the whole book came up after her mom's discussions about Will going to the gym.

"Have you ever walked into a building that is dedicated to being everything you're not?"

That line, I think is so important in terms of building empathy for myriad bodies. And it's something people who are comfortable in their bodies don't think of, often.

Her saving grace had been her mother's sister, Lucy. Until Lucy passed, she had been closer to Will's body type than her mother's, shared Willowdean's love of Dolly Parton, and showed "Dumplin'" nothing but fierce, loyal, unconditional love. Without her, the tension between mother and daughter rises and Willowdean is completely adrift.

At some points, I got frustrated because Will is incredibly hard on herself. As the reader, through her eyes, you can see two things: 1. that she is pretty dang cool and 2. She can't see it at all.

She has a habit of pushing people (her best friend, her partners, and her mother) away from her in vicious self-hatred.

I realized that the reason I was getting so frustrated with her was largely due to the fact that I could see myself in those feelings. Self-hatred feels so real inside our heads but seems so irrational when we see it on others.

I could probably go through way more analysis but it's better to probably just read the book. Though I got a little bored in the middle, it eventually turned into one of the sweetest, most impactful books I've read in a while. show less

Willowdean, I love you. I just wish you loved me back.

This is really middling for me. For one, what it did well, it did incredibly well. I think Murphy nailed actual teen drama and friendship problems, more honestly and accurately than I've ever seen. (And I love a book that can do accurate teen-speak.) Willowdean was complicated and endearing. She doesn't loathe her weight, nor is she some strutting, self-love parody - her insecurity was startlingly nuanced and I really connected with it. Her thoughts about relationships and her body in those relationships came at an important time for me. Also, she's judgmental and dry in the ways we also might not super love about ourselves... Her thinking about how Millie was worse than her and show more therefore is the better bigger target was too real.

My biggest issue was how boy-crazy this was, when the strength was so obviously with Willowdean and her (girl)friends. I was desperate to learn more about Hannah and Millie and couldn't give a good goddamn about Mitch and Bo. (Especially Mitch. Neat how the film completely erased him and it changed literally nothing...) I came from the film, which I was pleased with because it didn't focus on boys, and then I get to the book which is just overflowing with bland testosterone and bland interactions. Jeez, her conversations with their respective moms were more interesting than her romantic nonsense.

I honestly felt betrayed that things like the pageant (and Millie's win! and all her friends' performances!) were skimmed through while I had to sit around with frickin' Bo as they studied for ages. It's ridiculous to think that the girls in this book deserved better, but they did. Every moment with them was perfect. There just wasn't enough. We lost Ellen so soon and we barely scraped the surface of everyone else. BUT NOOOOOO I WANNA LEARN EVERYTHING ABOUT BLAND-ASS MITCH -

Groan. That's where all the stars vanished off to. Boy-land. I'd expected something smarter, is all, because when it was smart and heartfelt and good, it really, really was. But this wasn't about the pageant and it was hardly about these other misfit girls. show less

Originally seen on
Emily Reads Everything

I had heard a lot about this book before I finally got the chance to pick it up. If anything, it surpassed all of my expectations. Body positive is an understatement. Willowdean is proudly, unapologetically, beautifully herself. In a world where women always have to think about how they act, how they look, how they present themselves, Willowdean is a breath of fresh air.

My favorite part of this book was probably how Willowdean felt when she went into Sweet 16, where her friend Ellie works. Willowdean is uncomfortable. She didn’t apply for a job at Sweet 16 because she didn’t want to work where she can’t wear the clothes. She also doesn’t really want to bring it up or make a big deal out show more of it if Ellie hasn’t thought of it herself. This hit so close to home for me. This was every shopping trip I took in college with my college friends. This was my life. Willowdean, though, she doesn’t feel bad about it. I love that about her.

This is the book that I wish I read in high school. If I had, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me so long to grown into my skin. I had to learn to like myself. I’ve always been stubborn and I definitely took the long, hard way around when it came to learning this lesson. If I had Dumplin’ to read, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so many years to learn to love myself. I can’t say enough how grateful I am to Julie Murphy for writing this book. There are girls who need to read it. I know because I am one. show less

I really wanted to love this book. I was a huge fan of the setting. I loved the plot. The writing style was excellent. However, the main character was absolutely insufferable. I know that the author was simply trying to create a character with flaws who was relatable. But Willow Dean was a terrible person. Not only did she judge EVERYONE around her, but she was incredibly rude about it. And that would be fine if there was any sort of character development at all, but by the end of the book, she was stil lthe exact same irritating brat she started off as. I don't mind a flawed character. I love a flawed character, in fact. I don't even mind a mean, hateful, or evil character, as long as they know where they stand. But to create a show more character like Willow Dean and put her in a position where we're supposed to feel sympothy for her and root for her as the main character just grates on my nerves. The second book was much better. show less

Recommended by Lauren B.

Willowdean is fat, and she's okay with that - even if her mother, who runs the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet beauty pageant, isn't. At least, Willowdean has been okay with her size, but when she starts to get involved with "Private School Bo" at work, other feelings emerge. At the same time, distance is growing between Willowdean and her longtime best friend Ellen. What with one thing and another, Willowdean decides to enter the pageant that she has long scorned, and a few other girls - not your typical pageant entrants - join her.

Dumplin' reminded me of the movie Whip It: Texas, beauty pageants, and jobs in food service feature in both. Dumplin' doesn't have roller derby but it does have wonderfully real relationships show more of all kinds, from friendships to romance to parent/child. Every character is multifaceted and there's a Dolly Parton drag show...what more could you ask from a book?

Quotes

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose." -Dolly Parton (epigraph)

I understand that life after high school is probably something I should be thinking about, but I can't picture me in college and I don't know how to plan for something I can't imagine. (24)

All my life I've had a body worth commenting on and if living in my skin has taught me anything it's that if it's not your body, it's not yours to comment on. (33)

...When you're friends because of who you were and not who you are, it's hard not to find the common thread that stitches you together. (120)

I think maybe it's the things we don't want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear. (182)

"And I guess that's when I decided being good at something didn't mean you had to do it. Just 'cause something's easy doesn't make it right." (Mitch, 183)

Maybe you only ever notice the distance when it's you who's being left behind. (199)

"I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you're trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can." (Mitch, 239)

When your options are limited to being miserable in private or being mortified in public, there is no choice. (291)

But I don't want it to be brave. I want it to be normal. (294)

"I know you want to protect me. I know that. But--but sometimes I just need you to support me." (Millie, 348)

I may be uncomfortable, but I refuse to be ashamed. (359) show less

2/5 A couple years ago this book was floating around everywhere and honestly, I'm not exactly sure why. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this book, I did. I had a lot of fun. But everyone talks about this book like it's monumentally impactful and looking at it from that perspective it's just lacking. (Yet another example of why you shouldn't read too many reviews before going into a book.) This book is good but if you're trying to choose between two books or feel like you have to read this book (I sometimes feel this way about certain books), don't sweat it.

Dumplin' is picketed as an inspirational book about accepting your body, all good there. The problem is that Willowdean is a flat character. She starts the book being fine with show more her body and ends that way too. Willowdean really isn't the inspirational figure everyone expects her to be. She is mean to people and often disregards their feelings. If you take out all the internal stuff going on in her head, you're just left with a girl who let on not one, but two guys, was awful to her best friend, and made nasty assumptions about people because they were skinny.

For a book that is supposed to be centered around body image, it really wasn't focused on enough. If you're going to write a whole book with a theme related to body positivity, I feel like you should actually talk about it more than just saying that it sucks being judged. Talk about the way you feel wondering if you actually are unhealthy, make it so that a parent's concerns sound less jerky and more legitimate.

Speaking of parents, Willowdean's mom had next to no character. She was just mean parent who judges child and won a beauty pageant. I do understand that there was a bit more to her character, but honestly it wasn't much more. Her character could have been developed much more and I would have loved to see the mother-daughter relationship heal instead of just staying exactly the same.

The ending didn't feel like an ending. There was no nice wrap up that I was expecting. Part of that could be due to the previously mentioned lack of change on any front. If the message wasn't force fed to me and body positivity messages in books didn't stick out like a sore thumb, it would have been hard to find any message. Everything goes back to the way it was at the start of the book. If these characters were real people, I don't feel as though the events in this book would matter too much to them either. Just another page in their lives.

Now that I've bashed this book, I do want to say that subjectively I enjoyed it and found it to be entertaining. If your looking for a fun book and want to read this book go for it. I also definitely appreciate that this book has opened a door for other books with the same theme because unfortunately, body positivity isn't a very talked about topic in media. show less

Recommended to me by Erin, thanks a bunch! ^.^

Pretty cute and I appreciated that it didn't fall to clichés or overly sappy feel good crap. Just felt realistic and honest, and really funny too! Still annoyed by the usual trap of people just refusing to talk/listen and letting that ruin their relationship, but eh.