54 pages • 1 hour read
Jarrett LernerA Work in Progress
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Individual and Systemic Anti-Fat Bias
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses anti-fat bias, bullying, body dysmorphia, and disordered eating.
The novel begins with an individual statement that uses the descriptor “fat” as an insult. This comment wakes Will up to the extent of anti-fat bias around him at both the individual and systemic levels.
Nick’s comment makes Will realize that his “size mattered” to those around him and that many people would have a bias against him because he is fat. He realizes that he is in a school “full of skinny kids / and thin teachers” (41). There are no fat people around him, so Will begins to think of being fat as being a personal flaw, internalizing anti-fat bias. He thinks about how, for him, an innocuous and forgettable moment for Nick was like
an atom bomb
going off
and wrecking everything
in its path (52).
Far from being a forgettable comment from an individual, the comment indicates more widely held societal beliefs stigmatizing fat people, which continue to affect Nick.
Will notices anti-fat designs all around him. He reflects that whoever made the school desks is thin. He recounts how he has to
suck in my stomach
and hunch my shoulders
and collapse my chest
just to fit […]
feeling squeezed
and pressed
and unable
to forget
for even
a second
how fat
and out of place
and unwelcome
I am (46).
Will must contort his body to simply exist at school. This systemic inaccessibility reminds him that the world is largely designed for thin people. This becomes another message telling him that he is aberrant and “less than.” He also receives this message in popular culture and media. He writes that he sees “proof” that fat people are looked down upon “every day,” as they are never portrayed as “love interests” or “heroes” in media but as “stupid sidekicks” and “clumsy / ridiculous / clowns” (62). This type of anti-fat bias in the media reinforces the message that Will, as a fat person, is “less than” his thin peers. The novel, however, subverts media tropes of the “fat best friend” and “fat comic relief” by making Will a complex and three-dimensional character, while the thinner side characters are there to enhance his traits. By providing an antidote to many of these tropes about fat people—they are not protagonists, not complex characters, they are to be laughed at, they are not potential love interests—A Work in Progress provides a more realistic fat representation and subverts the types of stereotypical anti-fat tropes that convince Will he is “less than.”
Body Image, Self-Critique, and Self-Acceptance
After Will realizes the extent of Individual and Systemic Anti-Fat Bias, he develops a dysmorphic body image. He begins to heavily critique himself. He struggles with accepting himself as he is and realizing that there is nothing wrong with him or his body. In moments where Will perceives people looking at him and having a bias toward him due to his size, he experiences body dysmorphia. This is when someone has “negative and persistent thoughts” about perceived flaws in their body, which are hard to control and “ge[t] in the way of your ability to live normally” (“Body Dysmorphic Disorder.” Johns Hopkins Medicine). One symptom includes avoiding social situations or encountering other people: Will walks to school slowly so the halls are empty when he arrives and he won’t “have to see / a single / person,” so that no one “will have / to see / me” (45). Another symptom is comparison: Over Pages 42 and 43, Will draws a line up of people, and while his peers are thin and human, he is fat and depicted as a “monster.” This shows how he sees himself in comparison to his peers.
Another symptom is either avoiding or hyper-criticizing oneself in the mirror. After he hears the girls playing “would you rather,” Will goes home, takes off his clothes, and goes to the mirror to “look” at himself; the word “look” in repeated eight times in the passage (114). This repetition of the word “look” conveys Will’s hypercriticism, and the looking ushers in a “stronger / darker” feeling than Will has ever felt before. This shows how the dysmorphia he experiences over his body image increasingly affects his self-perception and self-critique.
The anti-fat bias around Will becomes fully internalized into his self-criticism. Will writes that though his realization began with Nick’s words, he starts inwardly criticizing himself:
[T]hinking
just like they do
[…] hurling
the insults
at [himself] (11).
At the beginning of the novel, Will doesn’t have any strategies for coping with the bias that surrounds him, so the messages he receives from the world become the messages he tells himself.
This process shows just how dangerous it can be to have biased messages about identity circulating in the media or society at large. Will does not hear these messages and wonder why people are being biased; instead, he takes them as truth and sees himself as an “animal” who deserves peoples’ hate and disgust. This is shown visually on Page 151. Will has drawn a picture of his face, but a large mass of dark-inked scribbles obscures the top left fourth of his head. These scribbles are often used throughout the novel to symbolize doubt, self-criticism, and negative thoughts. The image shows how the messages about fatness manifest in a disruptive cloud of negative self-criticism in Will’s mind.
While anti-fat bias in his surroundings initially negatively affects Will’s self-image, he eventually realizes some people have a good perception of him. He tries to adopt their view of him to move toward self-acceptance. He looks at himself in the mirror again but tries to see what “Markus saw / when he looked / at [him]” (327). Though these attempts are not initially successful, and Will still sees himself through his old lens, he pledges to keep trying. This emphasizes that the journey toward self-acceptance is not instantaneous but a continual process.
Authenticity, Friendship, and What It Means to Be Seen
As Will struggles with accepting himself and navigating the anti-fat bias around him, he protects himself by being less authentically himself. Becoming “fake” and not letting people see who he truly is ends up negatively affecting his friendships until Markus gives him a new perspective on authenticity and presents the truest version of himself.
The anti-fat bias surrounding Will negatively judges an inherent part of his identity: that he is fat. After being made aware of this bias, Will starts trying to “hide” himself physically and emotionally. He buys baggy clothes and feigns happiness in inverse proportion to his internal negative feelings: “The worse I felt […] the better I pretended / everything was” (31). This “fakeness that [Will] was putting out” is immediately noticed by his friends like Dave (31). Authenticity and being seen are tied to friendship. Will’s friends wanted him to be his regular self, and when he turned into an inauthentic version of himself, the friendship dissolved as well. At the same time, Will’s friends refused to truly see how badly Nick’s comments affected Will. His old friends wanted to “get back / to our regularly scheduled lives” without reckoning with the severity of how anti-fat bias affects Will differently as a fat person (16). Will does not blame them, as they were also children, but this instance underscores what it means to truly be seen by one’s friends. Will’s friends missed out on his authentic personality, and they did not truly “see” the lasting impact of Nick’s words.
Will has a physical and emotional fear “of being out / and about— / of being seen” (65). He doesn’t want to run into any social situations at school or in town. He also does not want people to perceive his true emotions and personality. Both of these scenarios invite the vulnerability of being rejected and insulted, which he perceives as more likely because of his size. His mother urges him to be authentic, saying, “Just give kids a chance / to see you” (93). When she says this, Will says that she doesn’t understand because she is “thin.” As a fat person in a world animated by anti-fat bias, Will feels a unique vulnerability about being authentic and opening up to people.
He tries to shut down a friendship with Markus “to keep him from seeing / too much / of ME” (198). However, since Markus witnesses Will and his struggles without judgment, Will begins to open up and become more authentic. By the end of the novel, Will actively tries to see himself the way Markus sees him as someone different in a “cool” way, who loves and is talented at art, and who is worth going through trouble to remain friends with. Being “seen” by Markus in this way helps Will realize the value of his authentic self.
