Dietland

Sarai Walker’s 2015 novel, Dietland, introduces Plum Kettle, a 300-pound, twenty-nine-year-old woman who secludes herself in her Brooklyn apartment to avoid cruel comments and stares. An unsuccessful serial dieter, Plum now pins her hopes on bariatric surgery to release the thin woman inside her and set her on the path to happiness. Just before her much-anticipated surgery, however, Plum is drawn into a circle of women who challenge her to reconsider her notions of beauty and worthiness.

Although she lives in a plush Brooklyn apartment, thanks to a cousin’s generosity, and she writes for a glossy teen fashion magazine, Plum Kettle is miserable. Her real name is “Alicia,” but she refuses to use it until she frees herself from the extra weight she has carried all her life. Because her large size makes her a target for ridicule and worse, Plum avoids contact with others. She has no real friends or love life. Her job as a ghostwriter for Kitty Montgomery, the editor of Daisy Chain magazine, allows her to work from a café near her apartment, where she answers angst-filled emails teen girls send to the publication’s “Dear Kitty” advice column.

Plum has almost saved enough money to fund weight-loss surgery and has set the date for the procedure. As she anticipates her new life and even ventures out to purchase clothes fit for her thinner self, “Alicia,” Plum notices a young woman is shadowing her. In a departure from her usual timidity, Plum confronts the woman, who responds by handing Plum a book titled Adventures in Dietland. The woman, whose name is Leeta, then disappears.



The author of Plum’s newly acquired book is Verena Baptist, daughter of the self-proclaimed weight-loss expert, Eulayla Baptist. Plum remembers how, as a teenager, she put her faith and money into the wildly popular Baptist Diet Plan. Unfortunately, the weight loss she achieved proved only temporary.

When Eulayla died, Verena closed her mother’s company. Adventures in Dietland is Verena’s exposé of how the Baptist Diet exploited women’s insecurities to peddle unhealthy meal plans that actually perpetuated their weight loss struggles. Determined to use her inherited fortune to redress the wrongs perpetrated by the Baptist Diet, Verena established Calliope House, a women’s collective.

Following her strange encounter with Leeta, Plum experiences another surprise. Feeling unwelcome in the glamorous office building of Daisy Chain’s parent company, Austen Media, Plum rarely goes there, so it’s odd when she is called in to sign some papers. It’s a ruse, however, as Plum discovers when she is summoned to the basement where Julia, the make-up artist, manages the “Beauty Closet.”



Julia, who has a PhD in Women’s Studies, is working from within the fashion industry to undermine its damaging promotion of unrealistic beauty standards. Telling Plum that Leeta acted under her direction, she invites Plum to join her campaign against misogyny. Thus, Plum finds herself at Verena’s Calliope House.

Meanwhile, a separate story develops through a series of interludes that interrupt Plum’s first-person narrative. According to news reports, of which Plum is aware, a vigilante force called “Jennifer” is brutally avenging the injustices women suffer. The bodies of two men, stuffed into bags, are thrown from a highway overpass, and inside their mouths are cards that read “Jennifer.” Both men were credibly accused rapists who nevertheless went unpunished; one assaulted a girl named Luz who later committed suicide.

Over the course of the novel, Jennifer’s reign of terror includes killing and abducting rapists and porn stars, threatening violence to coerce print media to forego objectifying images of women, and broadcasting names of potential future targets, including that of Austen Media’s CEO.



At Calliope House, Verena offers Plum $20,000 to complete Verena’s “New Baptist Plan” before proceeding with her stomach-stapling surgery. Comprised of five challenges, Verena’s plan would compel Plum to immediately start living the life she had been reserving for “Alicia” – or for her post-surgery self. Plum accepts the offer.

With trepidation, Plum discards her anti-depressant medication, as required by the first challenge. For the second challenge, instead of silently enduring humiliating remarks about her size, Plum confronts her tormentors. Calliope resident Marlowe Buchanan coaches Plum as she tackles challenge three: a complete makeover. Once a teen television star, Marlowe abandoned the industry for feminist activism when producers accused her of getting too heavy. She guides Plum’s efforts to replace her black, loose-fitting clothes with a colorful, figure-enhancing wardrobe and also introduces Plum to the discomforts of body waxing.

With the exception of Tristan, a college friend who ultimately rejected her romantic overtures, Plum has had no experience dating men. Challenge four obliges her to go on four blind dates. None of them are pleasant or successful.



For the plan’s final challenge, Plum is isolated in a basement apartment for several days to reflect on women, men, and power. One of the apartment’s rooms features multiple screens where pornographic videos are constantly showing. Plum watches as women submit themselves to men and to all sorts of degradations.

By the time she leaves the apartment, Plum’s desires have changed. She no longer wants to starve herself, squeeze into body-shaping underwear, or suffer body waxing in order to meet social beauty standards so that men will consider her a sex object. Resolving to satisfy herself, rather than social or patriarchal expectations, Plum decides against bariatric surgery. Verena gives her $20,000.

Plum happens to see a televised report about Jennifer’s ongoing guerilla-style attacks; she is startled to recognize Leeta in a picture accompanying the news story.



Done with dieting, Plum becomes the cook at Calliope House and relishes eating on the job. As for her “Dear Kitty” responsibilities, she starts sending feminist writings to teens who ask “Kitty” for advice about beauty or boys. Moreover, Plum now advocates for herself without flinching. When a man at a bar derides her figure, she knocks him down and plants her foot on his chest.

Jennifer is in the news again when investigators learn the group’s ringleader is Soledad Ayala, an Air Force veteran and mother of Luz, the rape victim. Soledad organized Jennifer after Luz killed herself. Julia tells Plum that Leeta, Soledad’s associate, is hiding out at the Austin Media building and needs money to escape the authorities. Plum gives Leeta her $20,000, and, at Julia’s request, agrees to write an exposé of Austen Media using Julia’s research.

Walker acknowledges Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club inspired her novel, but Dietland also delivers nods to Alice in Wonderland by using section titles such as “Rabbit Hole” and “Drink Me.” In 2018, Dietland, the television show, premiered on AMC.