No Single Sandbag Can Stop a Flood

HH and I watched Huge last night.  It is about Willemina and the people she meets at a summer weight loss camp.  It starts out with all the campers having to be in their bathing suit to take the "before" picture.  Almost immediately a girl is introduced who I wonder if she could become the villian later on.  She is the thin girl.  She is probably twenty pounds overweight, and all the other kids just can't wait to get to where she is. 

Willemina has convinced herself that she is fine being fat, and that her parents have the problem.  She in more words or less tells the camp doctor that she isn't about to drink the kool-aide.  She has even made a false wall in her suitcase filled with banned candy items.  She sells them to desperate campers. 

I was wondering if this show would be completely humorous, or start to dive into some of the issues that overweight people face.  It did dive in.  I related quickly with one teenage boy who was talking about gym class, and how there was always this one guy who was bigger than he was.  Then, one day they were getting ready in the locker room, and he realizes that he is not only as big, but bigger than the other boy.  Man does that hit home.  Willemina lightens the mood with talking about how she has no issues with her fat.  She is down with her fat.  "My fat and I are BFFs."

Willemina decides that she is going to run away from camp, and go spend the summer with her uncle.  She goes to a diner as she leaves camp, and orders fries and a large double chocolate fudge shake.  As chance would have it, she was at the diner where the doctor from camp was eating.  The doctor was having a heart to heart with her dad, and for a moment Willemina sees her as a human being, not some crazy woman.  Willemina decides not to run from camp, yet not sure she is going to embrace the whole weight loss issue either.  It closes out with the doctor pointing out her initials carved on the porch outside the cabin with 85 written by it.  Yes, she too had been a camper.

I remember reading the ads in the back of my YM (Young Miss) magazine as a teenager.  It was called Camp La Jolla.  The name I thought was horrid, and still do.  I googled it, and Camp La Jolla is still open.  It is operated by Wellspring, which is the same camp that helped the girl from England lose weight.  (I've blogged about that a few months back.)  They have a camp in North Carolina.  There is still a chance that we might end up in NC with HH's job search.  I had entertained the idea of working at the camp.  I'm not sure if I would or not.