Skinny Bitch

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Skinny Bitch

Author	Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Diet
Publisher	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date	December 30, 2005
Preceded by	N/A
Followed by	Skinny Bitch in the Kitch: Kick-Ass Recipes for Hungry Girls Who Want to Stop Cooking Crap (and Start Looking Hot!)

Skinny Bitch is a sleeper hit diet book written by Rory Freedman, a former modelling agent and Kim Barnouin, a former model.

Known for its irreverant tone, the book gained attention in 2007 when British celebrity Victoria Beckham was photographed holding a copy while shopping in Los Angeles.^[1]^[2] According to a New York Times article, the book's sales have defied "conventional publishing wisdom, which says that a book must break into the best-seller lists in its first weeks on sale or risk sinking into oblivion."^[1] Skinny Bitch had become a best-seller in the United Kingdom by May of 2007 and in the United States by July, more than eighteen months after its initial 2005 press run of 10,000 copies.

1 Content
2 Reaction
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Content

The book advocates a purely vegan diet and even includes sections on factory farming and animal cruelty. In addition to advocating a vegan diet, the authors also say that one should avoid alcohol, caffeine, chemical additives like aspartame and refined sugar. After finishing the manuscript, the authors had Amy Joy Lanou, senior nutrition scientist for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, vet their work.

[edit] Reaction

Since the book advocates a strictly vegan diet, reactions were mixed. The New York Times [1] called the book "hard-core vegan, with a good helping of animal rights rhetoric that might be more familiar to the Birkenstock brigade than your average diet-seeking book buyer." They reported that "some readers have been put out by what they see as a disconnect between message and medium" and one woman they interviewed "was so fed up that she didn’t even finish the book." In response to this, author Freedman said “They’re mad that they spent $14 on a book that was not what they thought, but they’re not mad that chickens are having beaks chopped off their faces?”

A review by Ursula Hirschkorn in the Daily Mail [2] was decidedly less favorable. She criticizes the authors' "simplistic theory, that the secret of weight loss is just to eat healthy food. Oh if it were that easy, we'd all be size eight." Like the New York Times piece, she stresses the "extreme" nature of the proposed diet, saying that "The book spouts an extensive list of no-nos that you must avoid… In a nutshell, everything that makes our short, brutish lives that bit more bearable." She complains that the book is marketed as a diet book when that is not its sole focus: "This isn't so much a diet book as a propaganda pamphlet for veganism… it moves effortlessly from being potty-mouthed advice on how to adopt a fat-busting healthy diet, into a diatribe against eating meat." But her chief complaint seems to be what she perceives as the book's accusatory or condescending tone: "These pampered LA princesses work hard to make us feel guilty for trying to make our lives a bit easier... They sanctimoniously lecture us on the cancercausing chemicals in wine, and the nasties lurking in diet sodas… Skinny Bitch is just the same-old diet rules repackaged in an obnoxious and bullying tone."

The Sun [3] was not quite so dismissive, calling it "a vegan diet with a bit of attitude thrown in." They also said “if you follow it to the letter then you will lose weight but for your average woman it’s not particularly easy to follow."

In February 2008, Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder took up vegetarianism after being given the book by his wife Chanel.^[3]^[4] When his early 2008 statistical performance began to disappoint fans, some critics suggested that his diet may have contributed to his struggles.^[5]