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This book was...problematic.
Butter by Erin Jade Lange is a young adult contemporary novel about a young, obese boy nicknamed Butter who decides he is going to eat himself to death (why did I think that meant cannibalism? It doesn't. He means keep eating until he dies.)
There are many issues I had with this book but the main one was with Butter himself. I got the impression Lange intended the reader to sympathize with the protagonist but the only emotion I felt was pure rage.
Butter is the most insufferable person I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading about. A subplot of the story is that he has a secret online identity in which he is speaking to Anna, a pretty, popular girl he goes to school with, but Anna doesn’t know who he is on accounts he’s been weaving a web of lies for months, feeding her the wrong name (J.P.) and manipulating her to believe he’s a star athlete at a private school thirty minutes away from the one they both actually attend. I’ll get onto the dangers of the internet and how this can negatively influence impressionable readers soon, but this action alone made my blood boil. This girl is trusting this boy and he doesn’t even have the decency to shed an ounce of truth. He continues to lie to her over and over, having her fall in love with a person who doesn’t exist and if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s dishonesty.
Speaking of Anna, for a girl he has never physically talked to (only online) his behavior towards her is disgusting. Not only is he extremely possessive, referring to her as ‘My Anna’ and screaming at a boy to stop him simply touching her arm, but there was also an instance in which he feels a surge of extreme anger to realize Anna wasn’t in the lunch hall. Allow me to reiterate, he doesn’t personally know this girl. She doesn’t know him. Yet, he feels fury when she isn’t around him. If that wasn’t bad enough, he is so creepy around her, his entire inner monologue is sexualising this girl. Daydreaming about what her bra looks like in the middle of class and wanting to take it off, hoping her skirt will hitch up, staring at her legs, calling her sexy. It’s gross. I understand, he’s a 16 year old boy with raging hormones but also making it his goal to touch her by the end of the year while he’s behind the scenes, lying and manipulating her, calling her his like she’s property is disturbing.
Moving on from Anna and to Butter’s personality, it’s also vile. He is incredibly rude: laughing at service workers, ignoring his teacher when they come out of their way to check if he’s okay, playing music to drown out their parents when they’re trying to speak to him. Quite frankly, if I exhibited the same amount of disrespect to my parents as he does to his, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale, I’d be digging my own grave before they bury me in it. He is nasty to others ‘’Don’t you have something to do?’ I pointed to their cases. ‘Go blow your instruments. Or go blow each other. I don’t care. Just get out of my way.’’ and disgusted when others call him out on it ‘who was he to psychoanalyze me?’. I haven’t even gotten to the worst bit yet when he overeats to the point of sickness and then says ‘I fought the urge to puke. That’s right, I fought it. I was a binge eater, not a bulimic. That shit’s for girls.’ If that’s not already extremely offensive to people who struggle with bulimia who aren’t girls and also contributing to the societal stigma of eating disorders which is killing thousands, but he goes on to explain ‘lots of guys at FitFab were purgers. But if there’s a fat-camp hierarchy, let’s just say those guys are at the bottom.’ Speechless. Utterly speechless. If a man is struggling with a life-threatening mental illness, he’s weak? Wow.
In addition to this, he’s incredibly self-pitying. His entire narrative is feeling sorry for himself because he doesn’t have any friends (maybe it’s because of your personality? Or the fact you trash-talk them whenever you get the chance, as Anna calls you out on it?) How he says ‘but it’s not my fault! Everything is disappointing! How am I supposed to stop everything from sucking?’ which Tucker bluntly replies ‘the only thing that sucks is your attitude’ but instead of making changes, continues to relish his own sadness. As well as the incessant moaning about how fat he is, constantly reminding the reader of the number of the scale. I’m not going to feel bad because he’s overweight? Living in a larger body isn’t inherently tragic or a horrific thing, so why would I pity him? It’s fatphobic that I’m expected to do so.
Furthermore, he’s ridiculously selfish. Not only for lying to Anna and hurting her just because he gets something out of it, for making his doctor a guilty part in his suicide plan without permission (in which he also calls Butter out on that) as well as lying about Tucker about his suicide plans, first denying it completely then coming up with a false story about it, but because of how he hurts his friends. Aforementioned, the Anna Situation as well as trash-talking his pals, but also how he behaves around Tucker, his best friend from Fat Camp. Not only does he make no effort to stay in contact with him outside of this but how he is enraged that when he bumps into Tucker at the doctor’s office to see he has lost an astonishing amount of weight and is visibly happier because of how he has made his health a priority, Butter is mad that he didn’t stay fat. He is livid that Tucker made the steps to take care of himself and left Butter wallowing in his bigger body and Butter is offended that he had the audacity? Moreover, when Tucker announces he’s going to move away to attend an institution he’s very excited about, will help him with his goal to wellness and allow him to work towards his dream job, the only thing Butter can focus on is how he’ll be left behind (even though he hasn’t had anything to do with Tucker during the school year.)
This feeds into how self-absorbed he is, for not only do we have all of these scenes as evidence but on the morning after he decides to kill himself, he’s annoyed that it’s sunny, that he lacks the pathetic fallacy to exacerbate his self-pity. Sorry that the universe didn’t adjust the weather system to fit your own emotions, Butter.
Finally moving away from Butter’s personality and onto his relationship with Anna, I’m astounded at their stupidity regarding their internet correspondence. Did they completely miss their online safety class? Butter refuses to send any sort of picture to confirm he’s real, won’t video call or even show his face at all, in which Anna blindly accepts. This person isn’t who they say they are but thank goodness it was just a stupid teenage boy on the other end and not something worse. Not only is this incredibly foolish for Anna but what about the message the author is sending to the impressionable readers? It’s okay to talk to people who you don’t know online? Even when they don’t show you who they are? Then it’s perfectly fine to go and meet them? How reckless and irresponsible that this could be included in a novel with a young target audience.
The final character to discuss is Butter’s mother. I had mixed feelings about her. Clearly, she cares for her son more than words can ever express but this love was often suffocating. She only ever refers to him as ‘baby’ (he’s sixteen) and I get it, it’s a cute pet name, I call my sister that, my mum calls me it and I’m nineteen but not always? It’s just bizarre to constantly refer to your teen son as that? Also, her persistent actions of giving him food, enabling his unhealthy habits, doubling and tripling portions, packing his lunch with multiple meals, even though Butter has consequently developed type two diabetes and his doctor has expressed the dire need for him to make healthier choices, his mother seems determined to fill him with sugar instead of teaching him about the importance of health and nutrition. She allows him to be rude and disrespectful towards her and his father, has no rules or curfew, doesn’t check in with him and what he’s doing on the internet. Anything. Is this why Butter replicates similar actions elsewhere? He’s so used to being able to exhibit impertinence at home and towards his parents that he does it with everybody?
Another discussion worth having is the rampant fatphobia through the entirety of the novel. I understand it reflects the realistic perception society has of larger bodies, their systemic oppression and overall disgust and intolerance, but the fact it’s perpetuated throughout a novel aimed at teen readers is awful. Nobody respects Butter because he’s fat, they assume things about him based on his appearance alone, his nickname evidence of this. They treat him badly, and when he loses almost forty pounds within three weeks, he’s congratulated on it, which I cannot even BEGIN to explain why that is INCREDIBLY dangerous. They say it’s for his health but if anyone really cared about that, they would send him to therapy, not fat-camp. This boy has an extremely toxic relationship with food, relying on it to fill his emptiness, a bandage for emotion, and it’s worth exploring why that is with a professional, not giving him a rigorous workout routine and sending him away to a degrading camp or shaming him every time he eats.
The plot of the novel is essentially Butter announcing on the internet that he will live-stream himself eating himself to death, binging on so much food that he will die. Gruesome, yes, but my problem is with the response to such a horrific threat. He goes from invisible at school to admired overnight, being kindly welcomed into the popular kid’s group. His suicide elevates his status, suddenly regarded as cool and interesting, suicide used as a revenge for what he went through and to be informal: what in the thirteen reasons why is this? Suicide is a tragedy. Heartbreaking. To use if to gain fame? Disgusting.
In conclusion, I despised this book with every fiber of my being. I think it was poorly executed, offensive, fatphobic and features the most intolerable characters I’ve ever read about.
Butter by Erin Jade Lange is a young adult contemporary novel about a young, obese boy nicknamed Butter who decides he is going to eat himself to death (why did I think that meant cannibalism? It doesn't. He means keep eating until he dies.)
There are many issues I had with this book but the main one was with Butter himself. I got the impression Lange intended the reader to sympathize with the protagonist but the only emotion I felt was pure rage.
Butter is the most insufferable person I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading about. A subplot of the story is that he has a secret online identity in which he is speaking to Anna, a pretty, popular girl he goes to school with, but Anna doesn’t know who he is on accounts he’s been weaving a web of lies for months, feeding her the wrong name (J.P.) and manipulating her to believe he’s a star athlete at a private school thirty minutes away from the one they both actually attend. I’ll get onto the dangers of the internet and how this can negatively influence impressionable readers soon, but this action alone made my blood boil. This girl is trusting this boy and he doesn’t even have the decency to shed an ounce of truth. He continues to lie to her over and over, having her fall in love with a person who doesn’t exist and if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s dishonesty.
Speaking of Anna, for a girl he has never physically talked to (only online) his behavior towards her is disgusting. Not only is he extremely possessive, referring to her as ‘My Anna’ and screaming at a boy to stop him simply touching her arm, but there was also an instance in which he feels a surge of extreme anger to realize Anna wasn’t in the lunch hall. Allow me to reiterate, he doesn’t personally know this girl. She doesn’t know him. Yet, he feels fury when she isn’t around him. If that wasn’t bad enough, he is so creepy around her, his entire inner monologue is sexualising this girl. Daydreaming about what her bra looks like in the middle of class and wanting to take it off, hoping her skirt will hitch up, staring at her legs, calling her sexy. It’s gross. I understand, he’s a 16 year old boy with raging hormones but also making it his goal to touch her by the end of the year while he’s behind the scenes, lying and manipulating her, calling her his like she’s property is disturbing.
Moving on from Anna and to Butter’s personality, it’s also vile. He is incredibly rude: laughing at service workers, ignoring his teacher when they come out of their way to check if he’s okay, playing music to drown out their parents when they’re trying to speak to him. Quite frankly, if I exhibited the same amount of disrespect to my parents as he does to his, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale, I’d be digging my own grave before they bury me in it. He is nasty to others ‘’Don’t you have something to do?’ I pointed to their cases. ‘Go blow your instruments. Or go blow each other. I don’t care. Just get out of my way.’’ and disgusted when others call him out on it ‘who was he to psychoanalyze me?’. I haven’t even gotten to the worst bit yet when he overeats to the point of sickness and then says ‘I fought the urge to puke. That’s right, I fought it. I was a binge eater, not a bulimic. That shit’s for girls.’ If that’s not already extremely offensive to people who struggle with bulimia who aren’t girls and also contributing to the societal stigma of eating disorders which is killing thousands, but he goes on to explain ‘lots of guys at FitFab were purgers. But if there’s a fat-camp hierarchy, let’s just say those guys are at the bottom.’ Speechless. Utterly speechless. If a man is struggling with a life-threatening mental illness, he’s weak? Wow.
In addition to this, he’s incredibly self-pitying. His entire narrative is feeling sorry for himself because he doesn’t have any friends (maybe it’s because of your personality? Or the fact you trash-talk them whenever you get the chance, as Anna calls you out on it?) How he says ‘but it’s not my fault! Everything is disappointing! How am I supposed to stop everything from sucking?’ which Tucker bluntly replies ‘the only thing that sucks is your attitude’ but instead of making changes, continues to relish his own sadness. As well as the incessant moaning about how fat he is, constantly reminding the reader of the number of the scale. I’m not going to feel bad because he’s overweight? Living in a larger body isn’t inherently tragic or a horrific thing, so why would I pity him? It’s fatphobic that I’m expected to do so.
Furthermore, he’s ridiculously selfish. Not only for lying to Anna and hurting her just because he gets something out of it, for making his doctor a guilty part in his suicide plan without permission (in which he also calls Butter out on that) as well as lying about Tucker about his suicide plans, first denying it completely then coming up with a false story about it, but because of how he hurts his friends. Aforementioned, the Anna Situation as well as trash-talking his pals, but also how he behaves around Tucker, his best friend from Fat Camp. Not only does he make no effort to stay in contact with him outside of this but how he is enraged that when he bumps into Tucker at the doctor’s office to see he has lost an astonishing amount of weight and is visibly happier because of how he has made his health a priority, Butter is mad that he didn’t stay fat. He is livid that Tucker made the steps to take care of himself and left Butter wallowing in his bigger body and Butter is offended that he had the audacity? Moreover, when Tucker announces he’s going to move away to attend an institution he’s very excited about, will help him with his goal to wellness and allow him to work towards his dream job, the only thing Butter can focus on is how he’ll be left behind (even though he hasn’t had anything to do with Tucker during the school year.)
This feeds into how self-absorbed he is, for not only do we have all of these scenes as evidence but on the morning after he decides to kill himself, he’s annoyed that it’s sunny, that he lacks the pathetic fallacy to exacerbate his self-pity. Sorry that the universe didn’t adjust the weather system to fit your own emotions, Butter.
Finally moving away from Butter’s personality and onto his relationship with Anna, I’m astounded at their stupidity regarding their internet correspondence. Did they completely miss their online safety class? Butter refuses to send any sort of picture to confirm he’s real, won’t video call or even show his face at all, in which Anna blindly accepts. This person isn’t who they say they are but thank goodness it was just a stupid teenage boy on the other end and not something worse. Not only is this incredibly foolish for Anna but what about the message the author is sending to the impressionable readers? It’s okay to talk to people who you don’t know online? Even when they don’t show you who they are? Then it’s perfectly fine to go and meet them? How reckless and irresponsible that this could be included in a novel with a young target audience.
The final character to discuss is Butter’s mother. I had mixed feelings about her. Clearly, she cares for her son more than words can ever express but this love was often suffocating. She only ever refers to him as ‘baby’ (he’s sixteen) and I get it, it’s a cute pet name, I call my sister that, my mum calls me it and I’m nineteen but not always? It’s just bizarre to constantly refer to your teen son as that? Also, her persistent actions of giving him food, enabling his unhealthy habits, doubling and tripling portions, packing his lunch with multiple meals, even though Butter has consequently developed type two diabetes and his doctor has expressed the dire need for him to make healthier choices, his mother seems determined to fill him with sugar instead of teaching him about the importance of health and nutrition. She allows him to be rude and disrespectful towards her and his father, has no rules or curfew, doesn’t check in with him and what he’s doing on the internet. Anything. Is this why Butter replicates similar actions elsewhere? He’s so used to being able to exhibit impertinence at home and towards his parents that he does it with everybody?
Another discussion worth having is the rampant fatphobia through the entirety of the novel. I understand it reflects the realistic perception society has of larger bodies, their systemic oppression and overall disgust and intolerance, but the fact it’s perpetuated throughout a novel aimed at teen readers is awful. Nobody respects Butter because he’s fat, they assume things about him based on his appearance alone, his nickname evidence of this. They treat him badly, and when he loses almost forty pounds within three weeks, he’s congratulated on it, which I cannot even BEGIN to explain why that is INCREDIBLY dangerous. They say it’s for his health but if anyone really cared about that, they would send him to therapy, not fat-camp. This boy has an extremely toxic relationship with food, relying on it to fill his emptiness, a bandage for emotion, and it’s worth exploring why that is with a professional, not giving him a rigorous workout routine and sending him away to a degrading camp or shaming him every time he eats.
The plot of the novel is essentially Butter announcing on the internet that he will live-stream himself eating himself to death, binging on so much food that he will die. Gruesome, yes, but my problem is with the response to such a horrific threat. He goes from invisible at school to admired overnight, being kindly welcomed into the popular kid’s group. His suicide elevates his status, suddenly regarded as cool and interesting, suicide used as a revenge for what he went through and to be informal: what in the thirteen reasons why is this? Suicide is a tragedy. Heartbreaking. To use if to gain fame? Disgusting.
In conclusion, I despised this book with every fiber of my being. I think it was poorly executed, offensive, fatphobic and features the most intolerable characters I’ve ever read about.