In Dumplin’, a teen rebels against pageant culture by joining it, but what starts as protest slowly becomes a story of self-doubt, friendship, and unexpected growth.
“Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.
“Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.
“With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine—Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.”
Ah, man, this book. I had such high hopes for it.
There was a lot of hype for this book last year, with a lot of people hailing it for exploring a fat girl in an environment that tends to be rather skinny-person oriented. The novel is meant to show body-positivity and how everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin and be able to do whatever they want to do without feeling ashamed of themselves or that they don’t belong in that situation. The body-positivity movement has certainly grown a lot in the last few years, the last few months especially, with more people standing up for themselves and criticising the media for the way they comment on people’s bodies as if they have more of a say over how someone looks than the individual themselves. As someone who has struggled with body confidence in the past (and still has their moments every now and then), I thought this book would be great in showing how one can overcome their doubts and truly appreciate their differences. I’m not convinced this book managed that.
The book started off quite cute, what with how confident Willowdean was in herself, and the way that she was flirting with Bo and the seeming start of their relationship. However, things quickly took a downturn when I realised how frustrating I found Willowdean to be. It’s fantastic that a character like this gets to have a voice, a fat girl who is not ashamed of her body and who is willing to put herself out there to the world. However, she was very self-centered and seemed to be unable to see that other people had their own motivations that extended beyond her. What was also frustrating was that she didn't seem to consider how other people would feel, such as the whole love triangle that wasn't quite a love triangle, and it just made Willowdean a rather unlikable character to me. Despite being a relatable character in terms of body image, I didn’t want to identify with her opinions of others or the way she interacted with people. Instead, a far better example of a body-positive character in this book would be Millie, one that I would have gladly followed throughout the story.
There were points where Willowdean seemed to be missing the point of a situation or ignoring some fundamental problems with her behaviour, which left me feeling frustrated to have only been confined in her point of view. I was interested in other characters and what they were doing, but Willowdean was so focussed on herself and Bo that you never really got to see the characters grow and develop that much. Certainly, new information was revealed and more became clear about the characters, but aside from that their seemed to be no journey that the characters went on, and no real changes in their attitudes or their motivations as the novel progressed. This was disappointing, as the characters of Ellen and Willowdean had great potential, not to mention Hannah and Millie.
Furthermore, there seemed to be a lot of ideas or events that were brought up as being seemingly very significant, or something that would come up again later, that were never referenced again and the significance never revealed. Take the references to the mums that people make for each other; being British, I had (and still have) no idea what they are and what they are for, and I don’t think they were explained very well. Whilst they were addressed twice, unlike the boot camp that is literally only mentioned once as an event and then once more as a reference to where Willowdean had seen the character already, they were never developed and the cultural instance is not explored or explained particularly well. They are just left unresolved.
The pacing of the novel was very odd, with the chapters being rather short. I feel as though if they had been made a little longer, then some more development could have been included to make things easier to understand and to follow, as well as to make it more entertaining. The two-dimensional characters were flat and hard to relate to or understand because of this.
Despite all my criticisms, however, I don’t think this book only deserves one star. I did like the side characters, even if they were flat, and I think they had potential to be fleshed out and to take more control of the story. The variety of characters created all had this potential, it was just not fulfilled. Perhaps in the sequel (which is said to be more about the side characters) or the movie, things will be a little bit more fleshed out, and a bit less disappointing. This book was over-hyped, in my opinion, and whilst it started off great I did not really enjoy what I read. At least it went quite quickly.
