The Slim Princess

In the tiny kingdom of Morovenia, where a generous girth is the mark of beauty and marriageability, Princess Kalora is catastrophically thin. Her father, Count Selim Malagaski, despairs of ever arranging a suitable match for his slender daughter in a land where the ideal woman rolls rather than walks. So begins George Ade's deliciously absurd 1907 satire, a razor-sharp send-up of cultural vanity and the ridiculous standards we impose on one another. When Kalora's more 'properly proportioned' sister Jeneka becomes entangled in court intrigue, both sisters find themselves navigating a world that measures worth in waistlines. Ade, the great American humorist behind The Fables of Slumberland, skewers the arbitrariness of beauty standards with gleeful precision. The satire cuts both ways: the fat-obsessed culture of Morovenia is absurd, but so is Kalora's stubborn refusal to simply eat more. Over a century old, this novel reads like proto-body-positivity wrapped in vaudeville wit, speaking to anyone who's ever been told they don't measure up.