Hey, Frisky book lovers, have you heard about “bigger chick lit”? Pissiness over a poochy tummy is a sub-plot in plenty of books, most notably Bridget Jones’s Diary, but the Guardian says “bigger chick lit” novels feature a “young woman who is seriously overweight—and doesn’t care.” And apparently, they’re all the rage.

Tucks of skin trickled out from a pink, tropical bikini top. My half-naked body glared back at me from the unforgiving gleam of a fitting room mirror as I modeled a two-piece suit, gripped to the grooves of my body.

Often when people find out how short I am, they say, “Only a few inches away from being a midget.” Hardy, har, har. Instead of thinking about mashing their face with a fork, I can take solace in the fact that we short girls are more evolutionarily advanced than our tall counterparts. Although tall women are fantabulous, a new study claims that human beings are continuing to evolve and that women of the future will be shorter and heavier, with lower cholesterol and blood pressure. But why?

Jessica Simpson really hasn’t had a great year. First, Tony Romo dumped her the day before her Barbie and Ken-themed birthday party, and then she witnessed a coyote snatching her beloved maltipoo, Daisy. Recently, meaning just last Sunday, she was the subject of a Fox and Burger King ad that aired during “Fox NFL Sunday.” In the ad, as you can see above, a few Dallas Cowboys players mock Tony for dating Jessica because she’s so fat. Both Fox and Burger King have released statements regarding the ad. Read them after the jump.

Yesterday, I came across a wedding story in the Washington Post that caught my eye: “In the End It’s a Fairy Tale.” Who doesn’t like a happy ending? It was the wedding story of interior designer Kerilyn Fox, 34, and chef Peter Russo, 38. The bride describes their path to the altar as “part fairy tale, part ‘Jerry Springer’ episode.” They were together; they broke up. He proposed; she turned him down. She moved in with another man; finally, she left the other man for Russo. Fox says they were “meant to be,” adding, “In the end it’s a fairy tale. I’m marrying the man of my dreams.” The story is accompanied by a photo slide show, and while they seem like a happy, well-matched couple, I couldn’t help but notice Russo looks to be morbidly obese. That got me wondering: Would you marry the man of your dreams ... if he was obese? Put your thoughts in the comments. 

NOTE: The Washington Post requested that we take down the photo. So we did.

We try to stay away from scales (happiness is not a number, people), but this one caught our attention. Um, as if blindingly bright magenta shag couldn’t. Meet the Plush Size Yay! Scale, a device which doesn’t so much read your weight as it does tell you you’re great. Step on it and the needle points to words like lovely, hot, ravishing, and sexy.

So, would this mean that the fatter you get, the more awesome you are? Oh dear. Here’s the crazy thing about this kooky item that you’d think is a gag gift: It’s sold out and on back order. People are actually buying this and putting it in their homes (oh, the horror!). Although, we hear that Austin Powers put in an order for a couple dozen, so maybe it’s just him. [VoluptuArt.com]

In our weight-and-beauty-obsessed culture, there’s something almost fetishized and taboo about an image of a skinny girl eating a big, honking burger. That’s why I’m oddly obsessed with a new site aptly titled, Skinny Girls, Big Sandwiches. It’s a blog “dedicated to skinny girls chowing down and stuffing their gullets full of sandwiches ... or tacos, wraps, burritos, hoagies, subs, hamburgers, sloppy joes, paninis, tortas ... or just about any combination of meat and bread products.” After the jump, some of my favorite featured photographs.

Oh, to be in the cast of “Mad Men,” hanging around Don Draper, sporting gorgeous, well-made clothing, and gracing the only program on television where the actresses are encouraged to be voluptuous. January Jones, who plays Betty Draper on the show, had to be asked by the producers to gain weight. “I got told a couple of days ago that I look too skinny, and I was in trouble,” she said. “I’m naturally pretty thin, so I’m trying. I eat whatever is at craft services.” Since women had more meat on their bones in the ‘60s, “Mad Men” actresses are asked to not work out. “They want a soft, voluptuous woman which they were [back then] which is beautiful, as it should be,” said Jones. [OK! Magazine]

How refreshing—I’ve been prepping for January’s role all my life! I happen to be an expert on the subject of gaining weight. So here are five ideas for how January can soften up.

Lately we’ve been talking a lot about height. Ali has written two pieces in the last few days, about how to amplify your height (if you’re on the shorter side) and the height issues that can come up in relationships. We also posted part of an essay from a woman about being tall and how it impacts her dating life. Many of your comments on these posts had to do with your own insecurities about your height, whether you’re “tall” or “short.” Meanwhile, Meryl Streep, who plays Julia Child in the upcoming film “Julie and Julia,” says about the famous chef’s 6’2 height, “I mean, it’s like having club foot ... it was a handicap of sorts, certainly in the world where she was born.”

“I don’t like fat jokes about women. Men can take it because we live in a society where fat men still deserve love, still can be respected. Fat women are treated (in the white culture, anyway) like s**t, and it bums me out.

—Comedian Sarah Silverman on what she doesn’t think is funny [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]

Two recent studies, a Canadian one and a Japanese one, have found that slightly overweight people live longer than healthy weight folks. The two separate groups of researchers said they expected both underweight and obese people to have many more health concerns than healthy weight people, but they were surprised that a few extra pounds could protect people from an early death. However, the researchers warn against healthy weight people bulking up. “Our study only looked at mortality, not at quality of life, and there are many negative health consequences associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes,” said Kaplan, a professor of Community Health at Portland State University that participated in the Canadian study.

Now I’m really confused. Society says thin is in. Health professionals say to stay within an ideal body mass index. Researchers say a little cushion keeps death from pushing—but don’t do anything with these findings. So I’m going to weigh the positives and negatives of each weight category to see which one is really ideal.

When I heard a few months ago that pop star Jessica Simpson was considering a reality TV show about “real beauty,” I was thrilled. Finally! A celeb who sought to use the negative press attention towards her and spin it a positive way! In the wake of the offensive tabloid lynch mob over Simpson’s “mom jeans” weight gain, taking the high road seemed like a classy thing to do.

The details of said show are finally out: in a docu-series called “The Price of Beauty” for VH1, Simpson will travel around the world speaking to women about the lengths they go to to achieve physical perfection, including their diets, clothes and beauty regimens. 

It does sounds like a cool premise for a TV program. But when I read Jessica’s statement regarding her show, I came to my senses about just who the feel-good, body-positive “messenger” is.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy…was he?

Why can I still recite this nursery rhyme by heart even though I’m 25-years-old now?

Because I have hairy arms and my mom unwittingly drilled the rhyme into my head by teasing me about being her little “fuzzy wuzzy.” Yeah, kids remember what their parents said to them. I’m a testament to that.

But even I thought the Babble.com advice columnists who discouraged a lady against calling her toddler “Chubby Chubs” and “Greedy Guts” were overreacting.

We all know most dudes don’t like chicks who can count their own ribs, but a new study suggests that bigger girls are where it’s at. When 100 dudes were asked to rate the attractiveness of different sized female torsos, researchers found that most men prefer women who are a size 14. The idea gal is 163cm tall with a 76cm waist and 102cm hips. This study didn’t take bust size into account which seems like a pretty important factor. Other studies have suggested that women with hourglass figures, rather than women with athletic bodies, are more attractive to men.

I don’t agree with this study, based purely on the fact that I talk to dudes about women all the time. I don’t know many guys whose ideal woman is a size 14, but maybe that’s because they don’t understand sizes in the first place? Guys certainly don’t like chicks as skinny as the ones you see strutting down the catwalk, but when I ran this study by my male friends one of them called it “ridiculous” and all of them just plain disagreed. What do you think? [News.com.au]

I have no idea how much my own weight has fluctuated in the past couple of years, but I can tell you all about Kirstie Alley’s rides on the bathroom scale. And Melissa Joan Hart’s. And Britney’s and Kelly Clarkson’s and…well, you get the idea. A girl can’t grocery shop without 42-point font headlines screaming about another celeb’s double digit weight loss.

The problem isn’t just opportunistic tabloid editors making a quick buck. As Times’ Sunday Styles section pointed out, the “Ass Size Ad Nauseum” problem is not so simple. No, some celebs are more than happy to tell us all about their jiggly parts.

Ever step on the scale and have a hard time believing its accuracy? Now, I’m not talking about delusion or denial, but more about the fact that you honestly can’t pinpoint why the scale is reading a three pound increase in your weight. It happens—it happens to all of us, and it can be very confusing, let alone frustrating.

Oh, no! We forgot to celebrate our new favorite holiday, International No Diet Day, on May 6th!

But it’s cool. We can still score some body-image karma by grabbing a copy of Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body by bloggers Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby.

Both women call themselves bloggers of the “fat acceptance movement,” Harding at Shapely Prose and Kirby at The Rotund. These cool ladies critique our society’s obsession with skinny bitches and cover topics like how most diets don’t work and how women can be healthy at lots of sizes, not just when they’re Olsen-twin thin.

Maybe you want to buy it to empower a bigger woman in your life—or maybe you’re the bigger woman who wants empowerment. In any case, we’re really excited when anyone acknowledges what real women look like. [$13.95, Lessons From The Fat-O-Sphere]

Valerie Bertinelli is on the cover of People showing off her new bikini body just a couple of weeks shy of her 49th birthday. She has the body of a 20-year-old, but her face looks much older. In fact, she looks older than she did when she started losing weight two years ago. It turns out that being too thin ages women over 40 more than smoking, heavy drinking, or sun exposure, according to a new study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Journal. The reverse is true for women who haven’t reached the big 4-0.

Dear Jessica,

The mistake you made wasn’t so much in gaining weight, it was in making such a big to-do of yourself when you were skinny. And those high-waisted jeans weren’t doing you any favors either. But the thing is, plenty of women in Hollywood are your size or bigger and no one’s giving them a hard time about it. Just look at Salma Hayek, Scarlett Johansson, or Christina Hendricks — they’ve all got curves like you and they’re hot! No one’s drawing them as 500 lb. caricatures, so what gives?

Listen, I don’t know where they get this “research” or who they’re asking, but according to a new study, women who are a size four have sex more often than size eight women. Now, I think if they continued to do the math they’d find size 16’s like me do it even more than both of them combined, because we’ve got more cushion for the pushin’!  But you know, I’m really getting carried away because I’m sick of fat chicks getting accused of being unsexy or disinterested in doin’ it. Skinny or chubby, whatever, we’ve all got needs! In general, size-based statistics, like this one, seem like something a fitness “guru” would invent to get clients…oh wait, the study was conducted by a “weight loss specialist.”  Ugh, girl-on-girl crime strikes again!  Well, no matter how much you’re getting frisky, we all could always use some extra sexercise. That’s the only kind of personal trainer I’m going to work out for! [That’s Fit]