JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
When you meet the bestselling author Jennifer Weiner, the thing that strikes you immediately is how disarmingly normal and friendly she is.
How are you doing?
JENNIFER WEINER: I'm good.
SUMMERS: I'm Juana.
WEINER: It's so nice to meet you.
SUMMERS: It's so nice to meet you in person.
WEINER: Come on in.
SUMMERS: Barefoot, dressed in faded black jeans and a T-shirt, Weiner, along with her husband, writer Bill Syken, and rescue dog Levon, greeted my team and me at the front door of her Philadelphia row house on a recent spring day.
WEINER: So the house is yours, wherever you guys want to set up.
SUMMERS: Weiner's house, like Weiner herself, is welcoming, comfortable, warm. It has high ceilings, big windows and walls decorated with gorgeous and engaging art. I was at Weiner's house to talk about her 22nd book, "The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits." It chronicles the rise and breakup of an early aughts sisters band, and it comes out this week. The 21 books that have come before "The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits" were huge hits. But when Weiner began trying to sell her debut novel "Good In Bed," her potential was far from clear, in part because the heroine of her story was a size 16.
WEINER: And there was a lot of anxiety about that story. I remember when I was trying to find an agent - there was an agent who was interested. She liked the writing. She liked the characters. But she said, like, does she have to be, like, fat-fat? Like, couldn't we just, like, give her, like, 15 extra pounds, like Bridget Jones? Like, I wanted to tell a story as a fat girl. I wanted a story where the fat girl got the happy ending and stayed fat, and I felt really strongly about that. So I decided I wasn't going to work with that agent.
SUMMERS: Even once Weiner found an agent, there was still discomfort around the size of the protagonist of "Good In Bed," Cannie Shapiro.
WEINER: I found an agent who was OK with Cannie Shapiro being the size that she was. And I just remember, like, going to meetings with publishers, and they were like, we think this book is going to be huge - no pun intended. Like, we think it's going to be a giant hit - like, oh, my God, no pun intended. Like, it was just so awkward. Because, you know, back in the day, like, there wasn't a lot of language. There wasn't a lot of sensitivity. There wasn't a lot - you just didn't see fat women. Like, there was Fat Monica on "Friends," which was Courteney Cox in a fat suit. There was Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit in "Shallow Hal."
SUMMERS: Readers were more than OK with Cannie Shapiro, and "Good In Bed" was a bestseller. Since then, Weiner's published a book about every 18 months. They all do well.
I have this book in my office the other day, and somebody walked in, and they were like, wow, she's got another book coming out?
WEINER: Yeah, I know (laughter).
SUMMERS: You write so prolifically, and it made me wonder - one, how? And two, where and when do you write?
WEINER: The how of it - I was a journalist for 10 years before my first novel was published, and I learned to write every day and to write on deadline and to be edited and to take suggestions and criticism. And if you are sent out to cover the sewage board hearing, you can't come back to the office and say, I'm sorry, my muse has not spoken to me, so I will not be able to write about this. Like, you and your muse will be unemployed. So - but I also - like, this is what I love to do. I like sitting in my little office and, like, making stuff up. It's my happy place.
And this is my little office.
SUMMERS: Wow.
WEINER: Isn't it so cute?
SUMMERS: Weiner's happy place is at the end of her bedroom closet.
WEINER: This is where it is. This is where the magic happens. See, that's Levon's bed.
SUMMERS: Aw.
WEINER: I'm changing out my artwork because my husband did a Zoom where I was on it, and he's like, the pictures don't look good.
So I used to write at my vanity. Like, I have this enormous closet. It's ridiculous. And then when the pandemic happened, I was just like, you know what? I could really use an office, like, an actual office. And so I had contractors come and, like, make this. They basically put up, like, a wall and a door. There's a desk and a bookcase and a chair and me and a bed for Levon, my dog. And I'm in there.
SUMMERS: Many of Weiner's books feature a plus-size heroine - women being judged and misjudged for their size. It's something that comes up over and over again.
Why is that something that you feel compelled to just keep coming back to?
WEINER: As somebody who has lived in a larger body her whole life and as somebody who loves pop culture and loves People Magazine and Us Weekly and just consuming all the tea about celebrities and women, it's really hard not to notice the way the world treats larger women, and especially right now. It felt for, like, a hot minute that we were sort of having this, like, body positivity, and we're not going to shrink ourselves to make the world happy. We are going to live in our bodies. And then, boom, Ozempic - pendulum has swung all the way back, and I feel like plus-size protagonists are more necessary than they've ever been.
SUMMERS: Given the sort of moment of - the fleeting moment, I would say - of body positivity that we all experienced, now we are where we are. Do you think that your daughters, their friends, young women of their generation, do they feel the same pressure that we've all felt?
WEINER: I would so like the answer to be no. Sadly, I see them suffering in many of the same ways, probably because of social media, you know? I also think, like, our daughters - it's the old saying, like, they hear what you say, but much more than that, they watch what you do. So I believe that many women of my generation, we knew to tell our daughters, like, no, honey, you're perfect. But if they're watching us watching the culture - I mean, I know so many women my age on Ozempic. Like, I think they are handing it out like candy. On the one hand, I think that it has not gotten better. On the other hand, I took my daughter shopping for prom dresses over the weekend. And we're in this dress shop, and they have sizes zero to 24.
SUMMERS: I could have never imagined that being a thing that I could have accessed growing up, and I'm in my late 30s.
WEINER: So my daughter - we're trying on dresses, and she's like, did you go to prom? And I'm like, I did. And she's like, what was your dress like? And I was like, you know, I couldn't find a dress in this store. My mom's friend, Beth Klein (ph), had to sew me a dress because - and I was maybe all of a size 14. I should have been able to go in the store and buy a dress. There was nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with any of these girls. And as awful as I think, as frightening as I think this moment that we're in right now is, as damaging as I believe it's going to be for them, I do hold tight to the idea that at least that's changed, right? Maybe it's a baby step. Maybe it's not going to mean much in the end. But at least the circa 2025 Jenny Weiner could have walked into a store and found a pretty dress.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE CRANBERRIES SONG, "DREAMS")
SUMMERS: And maybe that baby step is in some small part influenced by the fact that those plus-size protagonists in Weiner's books have something else in common - they triumph. They get the job, the guy, the happy ending, all without having to lose weight.
And tomorrow on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, more of our conversation with author Jennifer Weiner about her latest novel, "The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits."
(SOUNDBITE OF THE CRANBERRIES SONG, "DREAMS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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