If you like high fashion, Hollywood and all things French, then you’ll enjoy reading “Scruples“
My uncle gave me this book when I was 16 and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the first few pages because it described a blowjob!
Yup, that’s right but after that, this intriguing novel is about a poor, mother-less, overweight girl whose miserable life is spent dragging her fat body through ballet lessons (ugh!) and getting laughed at by her slimmer and richer cousins who find her a huge embarrassment.
Of course, they snub poor Billy Winthrop and would even tell their friends that they are “distant cousins”.
Billy’s father is the typical blur father who spends most of his time at work and is oblivious to his daughter’s suffering.
Her aunts decide that poor Billy cannot continue to be the social outcast because she was affecting their social lives as the “poor, fat cousin”.
In the end, they decide to hold a family meeting with Billy’s father and convince him that the best thing for Billy is to ship her off to Paris, France where she:
a) learns how to eat healthily and lose weight steadily
b) discovers that she’s a beautiful girl if she takes good care of herself
c) explores the meaning of beauty, elegance and style from living in the care of a wise old French woman and also by observing the French women around her and lastly,
d) learns how to speak French.
I was sitting in the bus today listening to a Chinese man talking to his lady friend for almost an hour and I suddenly thought of this book and Billy Winthrop’s nightmarish days living in France surrounded by French-speaking people.
Since she couldn’t speak French, she’d simply point to breads that she wanted and furtively pay for them, which is pretty much the way I had been shopping for food in China myself 
She lived in a boarding house with a small family i.e. a widow with her two young daughters but she kept to herself mostly because she couldn’t speak French!
Billy’s life in France was really awful: she cries herself to sleep every night, she hurries through dinner with the French and locks herself up in the room most of the time. She even has nightmares in French!
One day, one the French girls told their mother that she thinks Billy has “the ear” for French. Due to this, the Madame decides to make an intervention i.e. she takes Billy under her wing and starts giving the young American girl lessons on healthy eating, budget shopping, deportment and finding her own style.
And Billy’s life starts to change for the better and she eventually returns to the US and boy, does she create a sensation at home 
“Scruples
A handsome photographer named Spider Elliott (no, he’s not the one who got the blowjob), a beautiful and eccentric French designer named Valentine and someone else (I forget who…), Billy sets about planning the various departments, designing her mall and of course, organizing her first fashion show.
Since it’s Billy’s first business, she goes through a lot of frustrations because she doesn’t have any experience in business, marketing or even retail. All she knows is how to shop for beautiful clothes
Does Billy make it? Of course she does. She’s a woman.
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