Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

89 reviews

oddpilot97's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

4.5

Aubrey Gordon is inspiring. Listen to her podcast Maintenance Phase! I appreciate how well researched she always is while blending data with human experience.

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tree_branch's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

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ashylibrarian's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.25

Well...this was a book I needed to read. I needed to read this one for me, and I needed to read this one to challenge me.

For so long, I have fed myself the narrative that my body is bad because it's fat. My body is bad because it doesn't fi society's expectations of "good." I STILL fall for this narrative.

Aubrey Gordon challenged my beliefs, validated my feelings, and gave me anti-fat biases to challenge in my own life.

I would recommend this a s read for any body.

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murderousscottishgremlin's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Informative and engaging, with personal stories spread throughout. Required reading for anyone looking to learn more about anti-fat bias and unlearn their own biases.

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zoiejanelle's review

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emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

with the context that i am a huge maintenance phase fan, i must rate this 4.5 stars instead of 5 simply because i felt that 80% of the book was a retelling of past maintenance phase episodes. i have learned so much from Aubrey Gordon and i am still so glad to have read this book. i really appreciate the personal anecdotes that served as the through line for the entire book, and i found a handful of chapters to be extremely informative and new.

good elements:
the sections on feminist theory, race, and government intervention were the redeeming qualities for me. i felt like i had really clear takeaways from these sections that i could reflect on and use to better myself/work on my internal struggles with anti-fatness and racism. the final chapter was extremely reflective and hopeful, though, despite the insurmountable and overwhelming evidence of anti-fatness in our culture that is explained throughout the book. i felt that this work was an actionable, interesting, affirming, and informative read overall.

not so good elements:
i believe she harped on the Body Positivity movement a LITTLE too much, but i understood why the angle was important. i also felt that her perspective skewed very left-leaning, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but if this book was supposed to be accessible and introductory to all readers, it would definitely lose the more conservative (specifically anti-regulation) crowd simply from implicit bias. i wanted to dive a little deeper into why government intervention and regulation are important considerations and what that looks like EXACTLY, but i realize that those subjects may be better explored in another book.

i would still recommend this book to anyone just starting out in their fat liberation journey!

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librarykiana's review

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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quasinaut's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.25

An important book combining statistics and research with stories from Aubrey Gordon's and other fat folks' actual experiences living in a fatphobic world. At times, it was repetitive - I suspected that some examples or stories were intentionally reused knowing that some people might only encounter one chapter or section. But having read the whole book, I found that there were individual passages that were devastatingly, beautifully written but sometimes the larger structure or flow didn't quite work.

All in all, an eye-opening introduction to systemic fat oppression for anyone who still thinks fat people, not fatphobia, are the problem.

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