Embracing Your Big Fat Ass

What's in a Word? LB: Co-Founding Member Confessional If the name of this book offends you in any way, Janette and I are not sorry. We are writing this book to make friends, to meet many of you, and have some great tailgate parties on the road, but there is simply no other title that would work for this book. "Embracing Your Big Fat Behind?" "Embracing Your Big Fat Bottom?" Maybe in reviews of this book in magazines and on TV our title will look like this:Embracing Your Big Fat A**.Maybe they'll try to bleep us when we use the word on the local news in Tallahassee. Janette loves the word ass, among other more descriptive terms. By using a profanity -- granted, on the lower end of the profanity spectrum, in our opinion -- we give the book the "bite" it needs. That's why the word works. It has a bit of snarl to it. There was an actual event that led to this title. It came about in the summer of 2002. A friend of mine, Carol, came storming into my apartment, slammed my front door, and walked into my kitchen. Carol is a beautiful woman, very turned out with gorgeous designer clothes, a luxury sports car, and a fancy Fifth Avenue job in New York City as an executive secretary. She even has a secretary. She's a secretary with a secretary. Anyway, Carol goes to the gym at least five days per week and has a great body to show for it. Her apartment overlooks the Hudson River with mirrors on the entire wall in the living room reflecting magnificent water views. It's breathtakingly gorgeous. Bottom line: she's a perfectionist in many areas of her life so it couldn't have been easy for her when she finally broke down, looked me square in the eyes, and after a brilliantly crafted pause said, "I give up. I just have to accept the fact that I have a fat ass." I laughed so hard I thought I would pass out. I felt like I had been hit in the ass by a bolt of lightning. Another factor in the equation was that when Carol zapped me with this declaration of resignation and acceptance of her ass, I was reading the bookEmbraced by the Light,by Betty Eadie. The book is about Betty almost dying and what she experienced while moving toward "the light," being lifted above mortal concerns into a safe place of peace, understanding, and acceptance. That's when I got it; having a fat ass is like having a near-death experience. You just have to keep breathing and move toward the light, only in this case it's the light coming from the refrigerator. Fast-forward to 2006 and I still hadn't done anything with this title. I finally worked up the courage to call Janette, fearful that she would think I was crazy to want to write an entire book about my rear end. But she was perfect for the project because she's a hysterically funny writer, and I also knew she had wrestled with her ass in the past. No one would be more capable than Janette to wax poetic on this very weighty subject. When I called her on the phone and told her the title, I had never heard her laugh so hard in my life. I thought that was a good sign. We're attacking one of life's biggest jokes, one of its deepest injustices -- that constant pain in our hearts about not being pretty enough on the outside to find love for ourselves on the inside. Janette and I are not anthropologists. We hold no degrees in science or nutrition. We hold our own self-proclaimed Doctorate in Self-Loathing with a Minor in Using Food for Emotional Control. We've graduated. This is our thesis. It's more than jokes. This is the story of our asses. We've included our real-life confessionals so that you can see how we became who we are. It's our mission to spread the word: Love your asses. Love yourself. There is no reason to be unhappy anymore. Life should be lived as if it were a near-death experience every day, 'cause if it were, would you really be that concerned about your ass? Copyright 2008 by Laura Banks and Janette BarberBanks, Laura is the author of 'Embracing Your Big Fat Ass' with ISBN 9781416542797 and ISBN 1416542795.