Book of the week
This is Big By Marisa Meltzer (Chatto & Windus, $40)
It was 1961 and 38-year-old Jean Nidetch was on her way to her local grocery store to buy, primarily, but among other things, three boxes of Mallomars. These gooey marshmallow treats would soon be stashed under the sink in the bathroom of her home, where, once the door was locked and the children distracted, Nidetch, who at 15 stone (95kg) was lighter than her husband and happy about it, would consume all three boxes in one sitting.
She was thinking about this when an acquaintance walked past her in the aisle and, marvelling at her physique, asked Nidetch when she was due. Stricken, Nidetch went home, took a bracing look at herself in the mirror, and signed on to a New York obesity clinic. By 1962, she had lost 70lbs (almost 32kg) and, crucially, kept the weight off.
A naturally charismatic and glamorous extrovert who never left the house without an immaculately coiffed bouffant hairdo, Nidetch soon became a household name in her neighbourhood for weight loss tips and motivational pick-me-ups, which she dispensed to anyone who dropped by her home. Her
motto: ‘‘It’s choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.’’ These drop-ins soon became regular weekly salons, and on May 15, 1963, Nidetch had launched Weight Watchers with her first public meeting. She was so confident of her future success that she called it Weight Watchers International.
‘‘Most fat people need to be hurt in some way into taking action and doing something for themselves. Something has got to happen to demoralise you suddenly and completely before you see the light,’’ writes 44-year-old American journalist Marisa Meltzer in the opening pages of This Is Big, as she describes the moment that turned
Nidetch from an unknown housewife into one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs almost overnight.
The first Weight Watchers meeting had 50 chairs set out – 400 people turned up. By 1966, 297 classes were operating every week in New York City alone; by 1968 the company reported a gross revenue of US$5.5 million; and in 1969, the company had 102 franchises and 1.5 million members. In 1978, Weight Watchers was sold to Heinz for $7m.
Meltzer, who first visited a dietitian as a toddler and was sent to ‘‘fat camp’’ aged 10, became fascinated with the businesswoman after reading her obituary in April
2015. Details in Nidetch’s life mirrored her own – the women were both blonde, both five-footseven, both lived in Brooklyn and were Jewish. Meltzer, a selfdescribed ‘‘chronic, yo-yo dieter’’ who has received her fair share of misguided pregnancy inquiries, decided to join Weight Watchers on the spot. She then wrote down a list of questions she wished she could have asked Nidetch, who had died aged 91 of natural causes and with little of her fortune left. The answers, and the fascinating meanderings of Meltzer’s research, provide the backbone of her book.
Nuggets from Nidetch’s autobiography and the Weight
Watchers archives are served alongside chunks of feminist theory and juicy asides – who knew Ivana Trump once said ‘‘it makes me feel powerful to be hungry’’ or that Cinderella was Disney’s first ‘‘thin’’ animated heroine?
Every now and again, Meltzer takes a moment to fill us in on her own experience of Weight Watchers: going to meetings, trying the recipes, even attempting a cruise.
‘‘Eating, for me, is really about transgression, a rebellion against myself,’’ writes Meltzer. But what rebellion? I finished the book still nibbling hungrily at all the things left unsaid.
– Eleanor Halls, Daily Telegraph