I hate to give 'Dumplin'' a low score. It has a great, much needed premise, and it contains good concepts for YA. It's not horribly written, either.
It's just a pity that its protagonist is so unlikeable and infuriating.
There's that damn love triangle, too, but we'll get to that.
Other negative reviews of 'Dumplin'' have already mentioned this, but I feel that it cannot be overstated: Willowdean Dickson is one of the most hypocritical, judgemental, passive-aggressive and annoying protagonists ever encountered in popular YA fiction. Nearly everything she says and does is hypocritical, everything she says to other people and accuses them of being can easily apply to herself, and every thought she has when compared to her words and actions a blatant contradiction. She is mean and hateful to people she barely knows, and to people she does know, while she laments over how people are mean and hateful to her when they barely know her. She is outright nasty, not merely sarcastic, in her first person narration more times than not.
The whole marketing and blurb of 'Dumplin'' promises a fat main character whose life doesn't revolve around her being fat. At least, she's comfortable in her own skin, and will bravely lord it over everyone else and their ignorance and meanness by entering a beauty pageant. She will attempt to break down the shallow conventional western beauty standards, and will show the world, along with her friends who are also "misfits", that she is worthy. That she is beautiful. That she is a person, not a punchline.
Willowdean is not beautiful, and it has nothing to do with her weight.
The blurb is a lie. Will is always self-conscious about her weight. Which is understandable, living in a small Texas town, Clover City, full of snobs, where its beauty pageants are its only claim to fame. Her mother Rosie is a former beauty queen and organiser of said pageants. And she is only sixteen, and not caring what other people think is a lot easier said than done. One of the problems is that Will has such low self-esteem that she won't give even people who are nice to her a chance. She thinks they are only being nice because they pity her (ignoring that she mainly hangs out with outcast girls later on because she pities them, and thinks they're delusional and oblivious because, unlike her, they dare to be happy with who they are and not care what arseholes think. God, everything about Willowdean is hypocritical and pathetic).
Like with her first love interest Bo (yes, first, a warning sign of an impending love triangle), who is clearly into her, but as soon as he hugs her when they make out she freezes and breaks it off because she thinks he won't like her body fat. Again, an understandable and relatable reaction for any fat girl who has been an object of ridicule for most of her life (I've never considered myself to be fat, so I am in no place to judge, but I know about bullying happening for other reasons, and how it affects you), but it's not exactly a confidence booster or comfort for fat girls who are reading the book. Will hardly changes throughout, either. She and Bo break up also because of something about him not telling her about going to her school next term, but whatever, it's a stupid contrivance typical of rom coms.
An even worse thing about Will is that her motivation for entering her mother's beauty pageant is, seemingly at first, to do what her late fat aunt Lucy couldn't do. But that's forgotten about quickly, and her motivation becomes part revenge against her equally passive-aggressive mum, and part starting a revolution... which she won't let other girls who are not conventional attractive join initially. Hell, even when she does let them she's still annoyed and thinking terrible things about them. She won't let her best friend, the thin, pretty Ellen, join either, to help and support her, because Will is afraid Ellen might actually win and ruin the cause. But as El points out, "You cannot pick and choose who joins the revolution", and says what a shitty friend Will is. Not that this goes anywhere meaningful.
Anyway, Will also claims to not want the deemed "ugly" girls to enter because she wants to save them from embarrassment, but really it's because she's embarrassed by them, and to be seen hanging out with them, when she is already a social outcast due to her appearance. Ever heard of strength in numbers, Will? Ever heard of group support? Of friends who understand what you are going through and so won't leave you to suffer alone in silence?
In truth, everything that the reader needs to know about Willowdean's character, and what to expect from 'Dumplin'', is on page five. Yes, here it is, the infamous paragraph:
'Millie is that girl, the one I am ashamed to admit that I've spent my whole life looking at and thinking, Things could be worse. I'm fat, but Millie's the type of fat that requires elastic waist pants because they don't make pants with buttons and zippers in her size. Her eyes are too close together and her nose pinches up at the end. She wears shirts with puppies and kittens and not in an ironic way.'
THE FIRST FIVE PAGES.
ALL THE BOOK'S PROBLEMS ARE SUMMED UP IN A SINGLE PARAGRAPH ON THE FIRST FEW PAGES.
Sorry, but I have to ask, WHAT THE HELL WAS THE AUTHOR THINKING WHEN SHE WROTE THAT?!
So our brilliant, brave, unconventional heroine's source of comfort and self-confidence is silently judging, making fun of and pitying other girls who are "worse off" than her. What she's really saying in this paragraph is: "No, I'm nothing like that fat pig over there, the one worthy of ridicule. I'm the good fatty. I'm Acceptable Fat. Snigger at her and shun her socially instead of me." THAT MAKES HER NO DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BULLY HER! SHE'S EMULATING THE NARROW MINDED PEOPLE WHO MAKE HER LIFE HELL! What a nasty, passive-aggressive hypocrite. I know I've been saying that about Will a lot, but it is the best way to describe her.
AND IT'S NONE OF YOUR CONCERN WHAT SHE CHOOSES TO WEAR, YOU SHALLOW, JUDGEY PRAT!
It doesn't matter that Will comes to Millie's rescue from horrible boys on the same page, or that they become "friends". Will continues to be judgemental and pitying towards Millie in her head - she thinks she's "weird"; why, because she's both fat and happy? You're the worst, Will.
They should have been fast, supportive girl-friends from day one. The only reason they weren't is because Will thinks herself superior to the other fat girl in town, and she worries that extra fatness is catching, or something. What a wonderful protagonist for YA.
The terrible paragraph, nay the whole book, also brings to light that Millie should have been the protagonist of 'Dumplin''. She's a total sweetheart, and does whatever she wants, genuinely not caring what others think of her, or at least she tries not to, because she knows they're not worth it, and she's naturally nice, kind, friendly and considerate. She's her full, unapologetic self, and sees the best in things. Doesn't that sound like a more suitable main character for a book like this than what we got? It is realistic, and ideal. Millicent Michalchuk is the bravest person in 'Dumplin'', and she deserves better than having a sham of a friend like the insecure Willowdean Dickson. We all do.
There's another outcast girl-friend that Will makes when competing in the pageant (I can't remember the others), Hannah Perez, who is bullied at school because of her skin colour (she's half Dominican) (the town is largely white and conservative, unsurprisingly), and she has one leg shorter than the other, a limp, and big teeth. At first, Will stands up for her when the bullying goes too far, and mentions how she hates it when people ask why she doesn't get her teeth fixed. But then, near the end of the book, as the pageant looms nearer, on a night when Hannah inexplicably comes out to Will (they haven't been that close, and she hadn't told anyone else), guess what Miss Dickson does? Out of nowhere she asks Hannah why she doesn't get her teeth fixed.
Oh, fuck you, Will. Why is that any of your business? I thought you didn't care either way. Clearly you do. Care about appearances, I mean, when you've been made to feel like an outcast your whole life because you're not considered pretty yourself. And why does Hannah, snarky, funny, no-bullshit badass that she is, bother to answer her? She's another contender for a better protagonist than Will.
Next, I want to talk about Will's mother, the thin beauty queen and pageant legend Rosie Dickson, also a conservative Texas church lady. Naturally someone like Will would be self-conscious and insecure growing up with a mother like that. But Rosie herself doesn't help matters. I know many people like her, but I think she's awful. It is she who gives Will the rather cruel nickname of "Dumplin'". Instead of outright asking or delicately suggesting that her daughter lose weight (which would be very wrong, as she should love her for who she is and Will isn't hurting anyone - not intentionally, anyway - but I am speaking for a character who could be realistic, flawed yet still likeable), she does the next best thing: passive-aggressive tactics.
Rosie keeps leaving salads in the fridge, with no other choice foods for Will, and she makes Will watch those godawful reality TV shows where so-called health gurus and experts shame and humiliate innocent young fat girls and force them to lose weight. She weeps at these shows and calls them "inspirational", right in front of her daughter. Isn't this abuse? It is certainly emotional manipulation, and guilt-tripping and perpetuating the fatshaming that those kinds of shows endorse. These are appropriate times for Will to stand up for herself and say what she is thinking, that she knows this treatment is unfair and unjust, but she doesn't. She suffers in silence.
When it comes to Will's recently deceased aunt Lucy, Rosie not-so-subtly insinuates that her sister died simply because she was fat. She was thirty-six, weighed four hundred and ninety-eight pounds, and died of a heart attack on her couch, alone and miserable in her fatness. The image, the message, is all too clear. Never mind that you cannot die of too fat. Death by fat is not a thing; it's yet another shaming and fear tactic created by "well-meaning" thin people. People like Rosie.
So much for a fat-positive book.
I'm just saying, Rosie, that if your daughter becomes suicidal, you have no one to blame but yourself.
I'll be brief with the damn love triangle:
Fuck it.
Well, okay, a little more than that, then:
Immediately after Will breaks up with Bo for stupid reasons I can't even be bothered to remember properly, another boy approaches her, the muscly jock Mitch, who is very nice and sweet to her. She repays him by stringing him along and using him as a rebound boyfriend in order to try to get over Bo, a bit tricky when she is constantly thinking about Bo when she makes out with Mitch.
'Dumplin'' is already unnecessarily long and similar to a meandering and messy soap opera; why is the love triangle even there? What's the point? Why does Will use Mitch for so long when we know she will end up back with Bo? Why is she so self-conscious about her body when she has not one but two hot guys (because it's YA, of course they have to be hot, regardless of the appearances-don't-matter message, which is continuously botched) vying for her attention at the same time?
Not helping the romance is that when they are together Bo keeps interrupting Will whenever she tries to stand up for herself to arseholes, including a time when she is dismissed as having PMS.
Moving right along.
There is also a theme throughout 'Dumplin'' where Will, El and Aunt Lucy are huge Dolly Parton fans. They would listen to her songs, and bond over them. Not that each chapter begins with a quote from one of her songs, oh no, that would show commitment and effort. Apart from the too-brief drag queen show moments in the book (the best in the whole thing, in my opinion), it seems that the Dolly Parton connection only comes from this quote of hers: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose", plus her songs teaching people to be themselves and all that country jazz. It reads as a mostly arbitrary feature.
The definitive example of why I think that this book that fangirls over Dolly might not like her that much is when Will talks about her with one of her love interests (because her hetero love life is all that matters in 'Dumplin'', make no mistake; pageant, what pageant? What revolution?). When Mitch asks why she likes Dolly Parton, that '"she's so... fake."' (page 246), does Will defend her heroine's honour? Does she express her love towards her inspiration and icon in a passionate, personal rant that will leave Mitch stunned and sorry for the ignorant insult he made towards an older woman celebrity? No, instead she immediately replies, '"Her boobs are, yeah. Obviously."' (page 246). She then proceeds to stammer uncertainly her reasons for admiring Dolly, in a "I like her songs, I guess, but I like her more" way. Even in front of a boy, Will acts and sounds embarrassed to be a fan. Her driving attention towards Dolly's "fake boobs" makes her sound like a sleazy, slut shaming tabloid journalist and paparazzo. I also remember a comment being made about Dolly being an old woman celebrity, intended as an insult, and Will not defending her then, either.
Dolly Parton is too good for this hypocrisy. It doesn't do her any favours. She is much braver and more expressive of her true self than Will ever learns to be. Just further confirmation that Millie should have been the protagonist of 'Dumplin''.
A lot of other moments in 'Dumplin'' annoyed me. Like the pageant plot and friendship theme desperately trying to dig out from under the teen angst boy troubles and sickening love triangle focus.
But in fairness, there are things in it that I do like. Such as a big deal not being made about El losing her virginity (though Will, typically, is silently envious that her best friend got to be "an adult" first). Some lines of dialogue from people who aren't Will are relevant and inspiring. And while there isn't any established story structure to speak of, it is an engaging and addictive enough read. But its contents are muddled and confused, with the damn love triangle receiving priority over what most people would want to read it for.
To me, 'Dumplin'' reads like any YA chick lit. The only thing defying convention is the main girl is fat. It could be wish fulfilment as well; a rather odd one where the author's frustrations and insecurities are poured in unchecked.
And it is frustrating, because it could have been so much better.
Watch the film instead. It's more positive, diverse, and it fixes the book's major problems. And there's no damn love triangle.
Final Score: 1/5
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