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A review by katjacatbeans
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
This is awful. The main character is a stereotype of the worst characteristics of autistic people, and absolutely feeds into the idea that autistic people (especially men) don't need to take accountability for being rude or inappropriate, because it's "just their autism". There's some nuance there, but him calling on a woman in the lecture by addressing her as "the obese woman....err, the overweight woman" is beyond the pale. Additionally, he talks about how a colleague touched him on the shoulder and he didn't want or like it, and noted that nothing would happen to her but if he did the same it would result in disciplinary action. That's probably true, but that doesn't refute the fact that if he doesn't want to be touched, he could ask her not to touch him. Then, per every single sexual harassment training I've encountered in professional and academic settings, repeated instances of unwanted touch are reportable. Men especially like to rail against how women can report them for every damn thing but women still get away with the same stuff - partly because they refuse to use the tools at their disposal to advocate for themselves. I'll be honest, because of the patriarchal nature of "Western" society, it's likely that not much (if anything) would follow from such a report but the tools for Don to advocate for himself are there. He's just not using them, and blaming it on women. There are countless other examples of sexism & misogyny in the first hour alone. The author is really showing his ass.
Furthermore, his obsession with BMI as an indicator of health is easily refuted by a cursory internet search - even in 2013, when the book was published, it was easy to find data that BMI was never intended to be used for individual health metrics (rather, at a population level) and that it simply does not work for many ethnic groups (aka, anyone other than the European population it was based on decades ago). I think the author is just unquestioningly propping up his own fatphobia and shielding it with commonly accepted knowledge rather than scientific fact - which quite honestly undermines the data-driven nature of the MC.
Furthermore, it's ableist. The first iterations of the questionnaire make it clear that he's using someone's BMI and exercise habits as a proxy for lifelong health. Able-bodiedness is a temporary condition. We all succumb to accident, illness, genetic predisposition, and aging. Additionally, his comment about a woman's low BMI being desirable, since she shows no sign of anorexia, is complete trash. First, no one can tell if a person has an eating disorder simply by looking at them. In severe cases of anorexia it may be obvious, but I've known several people who fall into the overweight or obese bmi ranges (just saying, so we can compare apples to apples) who have or have had anorexia without becoming "too thin". That's just not how bodies work - another truth that is pretty easily understood with fairly cursory research.
The author's biases are punching holes in character development, showing a lot of shoddy background research, and doing more to uphold gross societal expectations than I think he realizes.
Furthermore, his obsession with BMI as an indicator of health is easily refuted by a cursory internet search - even in 2013, when the book was published, it was easy to find data that BMI was never intended to be used for individual health metrics (rather, at a population level) and that it simply does not work for many ethnic groups (aka, anyone other than the European population it was based on decades ago). I think the author is just unquestioningly propping up his own fatphobia and shielding it with commonly accepted knowledge rather than scientific fact - which quite honestly undermines the data-driven nature of the MC.
Furthermore, it's ableist. The first iterations of the questionnaire make it clear that he's using someone's BMI and exercise habits as a proxy for lifelong health. Able-bodiedness is a temporary condition. We all succumb to accident, illness, genetic predisposition, and aging. Additionally, his comment about a woman's low BMI being desirable, since she shows no sign of anorexia, is complete trash. First, no one can tell if a person has an eating disorder simply by looking at them. In severe cases of anorexia it may be obvious, but I've known several people who fall into the overweight or obese bmi ranges (just saying, so we can compare apples to apples) who have or have had anorexia without becoming "too thin". That's just not how bodies work - another truth that is pretty easily understood with fairly cursory research.
The author's biases are punching holes in character development, showing a lot of shoddy background research, and doing more to uphold gross societal expectations than I think he realizes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Sexism, and Misogyny