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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
Heartbreaking, insightful, and powerful. I can't wait to read her other work.
I listened to this as an audiobook read by the author, and wow, was it a knockout. I have been part of the Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance/Fat Positivity movement for some time, so listening to Gay's struggles with her own body was hard, but worth it. She lays open her deepest secrets, feelings, longings, and vulnerabilities as she talks about being brutalized at age 12, her feelings about her very large (400+ pounds) body, and all the terrible choices she made in her 20s.
These movements are important and I do wish that more people (women, especially) would be kinder to their bodies, but she's right that often these movements are centered on a "certain kind of fat person." People who are 300, 400 and up tend to move through the world in a different way than someone who can shop the plus-sized section at Target, and she's brutally honest about what this means for her.
I was glad to read recently that she's married and seems to be with somebody who is really good for her. I wish her and her wife Debbie all the happiness in the world.
These movements are important and I do wish that more people (women, especially) would be kinder to their bodies, but she's right that often these movements are centered on a "certain kind of fat person." People who are 300, 400 and up tend to move through the world in a different way than someone who can shop the plus-sized section at Target, and she's brutally honest about what this means for her.
I was glad to read recently that she's married and seems to be with somebody who is really good for her. I wish her and her wife Debbie all the happiness in the world.
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
how human this book is. the strength and vulnerability. secret dark thoughts are shared, reinforced, contradicted, laid out to be seen. anyone with a female body knows what it is like to be told to be smaller, to be at odds with your shape in some regard, to apologise for moving through (or taking up) space/s whether consciously or not. and then very large bodies, how they are seen (or hidden) in our world. i am challenged by what i read and still thinking. those relationships we have between our intellectual idea of self and the self of the body, and that the way we are seen by others in the world is a body - isn't it? or all the other ways that a person can be represented now. once i wrote to someone that to know me through my words is to know my true self. but there are all the physical signs of me that have been developed over some time. anyways i don't know anything much about anything.
Hard to listen (read) at times. But a very well written and important perspective on a unique situation that most people can never relate to.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Thank you, Roxane Gay, for writing this lovely and much needed memoir. We don't talk about our bodies enough. We don't talk about the effect that body shaming can have on a person enough. And we especially don't talk enough about all the ways that fat people are shamed and marginalized in our society. And Gay talks about all of that in here. And the result is a powerful, poignant and sometimes sad book. This was worth the wait. More people need to pick this up and read it. And then think about the ways in which our society continues to shame different bodies that don't fit the norm.
This book offers an honest perspective on being a large woman and having to move though the world. As a society, fat shaming and body shaming do not help motivate the individual, as some seem to think, but with stories like this, I always find myself feeling a tension between her experience, my own experiences with weight and family criticism about my weight, and what I know based on my research and knowledge of physical activity and nutrition research. I did appreciate her talking about her physical activity, because as a society, we should move away from looking at the outcome (obesity and other chronic disease) and focus on the actual behaviors people can slowly change (physical activity and nutrition). I do think it is an oversight on her part to criticize the "weight-loss industrial complex" and corporations who are in the market to promote weight loss or health foods (like criticizing gyms or Weight Watchers), but not criticize the corporations who very cleverly psychological manipulate and advertise fast food and junk food to people. But it was a masterfully written, brutally honest depiction of her true and lived experience, and for that I loved it all.