This summer, I found myself judging a couple of books by their covers.

One was a copy of “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life,” featuring an adorable, curvy, swimsuit-clad caricature of author Wendy Shanker on the front. I was delighted when the 2004 memoir, which is as much about feminism as it is about fat, lived up to its fun, fearless cover.

A few weeks later, I had misgivings upon seeing “Skinny Bitch,” a 2005 diet book by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, with a lean, angular woman in a little black dress staring snidely from the cover. I found this book to be as scary as its cover.

Both books got me thinking about my cover, so to speak. They also got me thinking about what’s inside.

I don’t consider myself a fat girl, but I’m not a skinny bitch, either. Like most people, I have days when I love my cover, and others when I would rather hide behind a dust jacket.

“Fat Girl’s” Shanker is a self-described “ex-dieter with a chip on my shoulder and a mission on my mind.”

“It’s time to change our attitudes about this whole body-image business,” Shanker says. “It is a business. It is an image. But it is YOUR body, which contains YOUR mind, which can be a whole lot easier to change than the width of your thighs or the shape of your ass.”

While “Fat Girl” promotes self-acceptance, “Skinny Bitch” takes a different tone:

“Are you sick and tired of being fat? Good. If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to get skinny. … It’s time to reclaim your mind and body. … It’s time to prance around in a thong like you rule the world. It’s time to get skinny.”

The way to do this, they say, is to adopt a vegan diet. I was surprised their book turned out to be basically a promotion of veganism.

Veganism goes a step beyond vegetarianism: In addition to avoiding meat, adherents eschew all animal products, including eggs and dairy.

To be healthy, you apparently have to give up the foods most of us were raised on, the authors say. In Chapter One, titled “Give It Up,” they write, “Use your head. You need to get healthy if you want to get skinny. Healthy skinny. Unhealthy fat.”

After settling down with “Skinny Bitch,” I felt my “Fat Girl” high quickly fade away as I read scary chapters titled “Sugar is the Devil” and “You Are What You Eat.”

But the most devastating chapter was “The Dairy Disaster.” According to the skinny authors, not only does dairy make you fat, “the high protein content of dairy actually leaches calcium from the body.”

What?!

The book says many, more frightening things about non-organic, non-vegan foods. Confused and wondering if every piece of cheese and glass of milk I had ever consumed was a lie, I consulted a nutrition expert: Karen Miller, a registered dietitian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s University Health Center.

While Miller had not read “Skinny Bitch,” she disagreed with many of the general statements the authors make.

She reassured me dairy products were in fact a healthy source of calcium. And she refuted the claim that milk makes people fat.

“There’s new research about dairy actually showing that three cups of low-fat dairy a day actually helps in weight loss,” Miller said.

It’s not impossible to get adequate calcium from alternative sources, Miller admitted. But it’s tougher — roughly eight cups of broccoli equals one cup of dairy, she said.

“It’s just difficult to get all the vitamins and minerals and all those things (with a vegan diet),” Miller said. “It’s an extremely rigid lifestyle.”

Though Miller had not read “A Fat Girl’s Guide to Life,” either, she did agree with some of Shanker’s health statements.

At the time Shanker’s book was published, she was 5-foot-7 and weighed about 220 pounds. That is not her ideal weight, according to the body mass index chart. However, she exercises, her blood pressure and cholesterol are normal, she’s not diabetic and she doesn’t have a family history of heart disease.

So why does society think she is unhealthy?

“The medical model is pretty discriminatory,” Miller said. “The media is discriminatory.”

Miller agreed with Shanker’s claim that BMI recommendations are not necessarily accurate representations of health — and weight is only one indicator of health.

“Healthy weight has a bell curve, and I don’t think that we ever get that message,” Miller said. “I think we get the message that you have to be a certain weight or you’re not healthy.”

I’m not scoffing at veganism. I just think, as Miller pointed out, it’s more difficult to plan a vegan diet that accounts for all of a person’s health needs.

But I definitely do not like the “Skinny Bitch” notion that an organic vegan diet is the only way to be healthy. I also do not like the authors’ repeated emphasis on skinny-skinny-skinny. Perhaps it is telling that Freedman is a former agent for Ford Models, and Barnouin is a former model.

I would think we all know by now that models in no way represent what is normal or even, sometimes, what is healthy.

“This is promoting a look,” Miller said. “I mean, ‘Skinny Bitch’ — look at the title.”

Weight is not the main focus Miller has when counseling students about their health and nutrition, she said.

“I always talk to clients about, ‘Let’s look at your behaviors. Let’s look at your health indicators. Are you exercising, are you getting your fruits and vegetables? Are you doing stress management, are you sleeping?’ All those things and not just looking at height and weight.”

Books like “Skinny Bitch” seem to promote a culture where we judge others by their covers, and that’s definitely not healthy inside. I think all of us — the skinny bitches, the fat girls, and those of us in between — will be much better off following the advice of Fat Girl: “The idea is to be who you are, not who you’re not. … Choose to be yourself.

“And may the results never be typical.”

Reach Hilary Kindschuh at 473-7120 or hkindschuh@journalstar.com.