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4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
Required reading! Allow your biases and ingrained beliefs to be challenged by what is presented here. As a straight-size white cis woman reading this book, sometimes it made me uncomfortable! Sometimes it made me feel fucked up! But those thoughts and feelings are necessary to confront all of the things discussed in its pages and actively work to change what the system has taught.
This book is important and relevant food for thought, but I was hoping for more from it... It shares real stigma, heartbreaks, & bias, and introduces a perspective that needs to be shared. However, I hoped for a more nuanced discussion. I wanted to love this book, but the myopic tone made it fall a bit flat.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I really struggled reading this book. Not because it’s badly written or boring, but because of my clearly anti-fat bias I need to address. That doesn’t mean this book isn’t worthwhile or unimportant - it’s completely the opposite. However, obviously coming from an American writer, the book is completely rooted in the fat American experience, which is interesting but as someone in the UK I’m eager to find more insight from people closer to home.
How different my self-image would be if I'd been able to read a book like this twenty years ago.
Excellent book. Highly, highly recommend it.
Excellent book. Highly, highly recommend it.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
I learned a lot from this book! I appreciate Gordon’s candor and vulnerability and her meticulous research on every claim she makes. As someone just learning about the anti-diet, intuitive eating, health at every size lens, this was a really great introduction into seeing how immensely fatphobic our society is and challenging my own anti-fat bias.
I also really appreciated how intersectional Gordon is in showing how white supremacy and homophobia and misogyny also all play in to and worsen anti-fat bias. Her critique of the body positivity movement was particularly striking (“body positivity drowns out so many of us, reducing problems of social exclusion to issues of self-esteem and body image”), as was her critique about how media portrays fat people and their lives.
Gordon does not mince words or hold back on how the thin ideal and fatphobia is literally killing us, particularly fat people. She’s a really great teacher and writer and we are indebted to her brilliant work here. Definitely categorized as a required reading book for me!
I also really appreciated how intersectional Gordon is in showing how white supremacy and homophobia and misogyny also all play in to and worsen anti-fat bias. Her critique of the body positivity movement was particularly striking (“body positivity drowns out so many of us, reducing problems of social exclusion to issues of self-esteem and body image”), as was her critique about how media portrays fat people and their lives.
Gordon does not mince words or hold back on how the thin ideal and fatphobia is literally killing us, particularly fat people. She’s a really great teacher and writer and we are indebted to her brilliant work here. Definitely categorized as a required reading book for me!
This is essential reading about the politics of anti-fatness and the emergent movement for fat justice. Aubrey starts every chapter with an anecdote drawing from her personal experience as a self-identified very fat woman and uses these narratives to construct a broader argument about anti-fatness as a systemic mode of oppression that negatively impacts the life chances and opportunities of fat people. Her chapters dive into sexual harassment and fat-calling; architectural barriers that stigmatize, humiliate, and exclude fat people; the scam of diet culture; the myth that the BMI is a predictor of health; food policing and how it gets masked under the banner of “concern”; and the ways that disgust and outright hatred of fat people are widely normalized and left unchallenged. Although Aubrey is a white queer woman, she does utilize an intersectional approach (to some extent), and analyzes how anti-fatness has unique consequences for people who are transgender and/or people of color. My only criticism is that Aubrey cites much of the same statistics and studies over and over throughout the chapters, which made it a bit repetitive at times, though it works if you approach the book as a series of stand-alone essays. I also thought it was strange, given how much research she was drawing on, that she didn’t spend more time debunking the idea of fatness as being bad for one’s health. While it is discussed, I did think she could have made a stronger argument. Regardless, I learned a lot reading this book and can see myself assigning it in classes.
4.5 stars
Content warnings: discussions of anti-fatness, body shaming, sexual harassment and assault, rape culture / victim blaming, medical violence, racism, trans antagonism
4.5 stars
Content warnings: discussions of anti-fatness, body shaming, sexual harassment and assault, rape culture / victim blaming, medical violence, racism, trans antagonism
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I'm a huge fan of the Maintenance Phase podcast so was looking forward to this book. It hits a lot of the same points with some anecdotes woven in. Would recommend, especially for someone who's trying to unlearn/unpack all of the wacky shit we've been taught about the "obesity epidemic," BMI, etc.