The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things is a heckofa title, to say the least, but what does it mean? It takes quite a while to figure out, but once we do, it's totally worth the wait.
Sometimes book titles never show up in the text, and we're left to sort through the symbolism and references to make some sense of them. We don't know about you guys, but because of this, we always get a little giddy when we see the title in its full form tucked into the story. It's like finding the last egg on Easter morning or something. And this is one of those books.
Virginia uses the book title as the title of a list she makes for her webzine, Earthquack. In this list she tells the world how she feels about her body and her best friend moving away, and she admits that big butts are all the better for shaking at tapings of TRL. And since this list is like a mini-version of the book we're reading, it's totally perfect that they share a title. Add into the mix that the title refers to a point in her journey when Virginia is finally feeling good about herself, and we get that this book is all about where Virginia's heading, not where she starts out.