You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
Could I have given this book anything less than five stars?
I’ve been following Your Fat Friend for a while now and I love her essays. Of course I had to immediately download the ARC when I saw it up on Edelweiss.
This book is a collection of well-researched essays about fat activism and fat justice. It talks about completely legal weight-based discrimination in the workplace, airlines, healthcare, and other public spaces and raises a rallying cry against systemic fat discrimination and towards advancing fat justice.
I personally think this book should be made required reading for everyone. It’s definitely one of my favorite 2020 releases.
I’ve been following Your Fat Friend for a while now and I love her essays. Of course I had to immediately download the ARC when I saw it up on Edelweiss.
This book is a collection of well-researched essays about fat activism and fat justice. It talks about completely legal weight-based discrimination in the workplace, airlines, healthcare, and other public spaces and raises a rallying cry against systemic fat discrimination and towards advancing fat justice.
I personally think this book should be made required reading for everyone. It’s definitely one of my favorite 2020 releases.
challenging
emotional
informative
fast-paced
This is a good analysis of the way that being fat leads to systemic disadvantages despite the fact that weight has been proven to be based on more complicated factors than has been previously shown.
I wish this was a book everyone had to read. Well-researched, organized, and perfectly presented. The anti-fat society we exist in on baseless claims of “health” based on racist, outdated systems like BMIs and corporations making billions preying on people’s insecurities that they are genetically disposed to with programs and diets that only hurt their health in the long run is completely destructed in this book. I definitely recommend this. It’s a nuanced and necessary conversation in the name of respecting people as people, no matter their size.
informative
sad
medium-paced
This is not a book about body positivity. It is not a memoir about Aubrey Gordon coming to terms with not being skinnier. This book covers the important and under-valued topic of Fat Justice. Gordon It is a book which lays out in harsh detail how anti-fatness is one of the last remaining prejudices that is socially-acceptable to express or in many cases even celebrate. At the very least, it is one of the few prejudices for which the main remedies offered are for the oppressed and marginalized to change their own appearance rather than changing the behavior of the oppressors. Gordon gives due credit to the body positivity movement and shares plenty of anecdotes from her own life but the value of this book is in how she covers the worthwhile effort to reshape society and institutions to better serve people of all sizes.
My biggest takeaway: if you love a fat person (friend, family member, romantic partner, coworker, anyone at all) there is nothing to be gained from ever offering unsolicited advice or input on how they could lose weight or take better care of themselves. No matter how much you may think your well-intentioned comments are “coming from a place of concern” they will almost certainly provide no benefit at all to someone who has lived their entire life in their body and has experienced harassment and mistreatment on a regular basis. One thing “straight size” Allies can do is to confront perpetrators of anti-fatness when they witness them. Gordon shares multiple stories of strangers saying or doing inexcusable things to her on airplanes, at the grocery store, at work, etc. and, in almost all of them, she watched as no one advocated for her, came to her defense. I was left feeling like Gordon is understandably jaded by a lifetime of mistreatment but remains optimistic that a better world is possible if all of us make an effort to dismantle anti-fatness (internally AND externally) with the same conviction we bring to other pursuits of justice.
My biggest takeaway: if you love a fat person (friend, family member, romantic partner, coworker, anyone at all) there is nothing to be gained from ever offering unsolicited advice or input on how they could lose weight or take better care of themselves. No matter how much you may think your well-intentioned comments are “coming from a place of concern” they will almost certainly provide no benefit at all to someone who has lived their entire life in their body and has experienced harassment and mistreatment on a regular basis. One thing “straight size” Allies can do is to confront perpetrators of anti-fatness when they witness them. Gordon shares multiple stories of strangers saying or doing inexcusable things to her on airplanes, at the grocery store, at work, etc. and, in almost all of them, she watched as no one advocated for her, came to her defense. I was left feeling like Gordon is understandably jaded by a lifetime of mistreatment but remains optimistic that a better world is possible if all of us make an effort to dismantle anti-fatness (internally AND externally) with the same conviction we bring to other pursuits of justice.
As a very fat person this one was tough to get through. It was infuriating to read through stories and experiences so similar to mine, where abuse is just accepted because it's kinda my fault, right? I'm asking for it by not living in an acceptable body. It was also comforting to realize so many of us have face the same things and I'm not alone.
This is an important and fascinating book about the insidiousness and shocking pervasiveness of anti-fat bias in our culture. If everyone could just read this book, please, and we can open the floor for talks about Body Justice, because as you'll all now know, 'body positivity' is just not enough.
Having gotten to know and love Aubrey Gordon's voice from her podcast Maintenance Phase with Michael Hobbes, I was pretty disappointed that she didn't read the audio version, which I listened to on Audible. Alas and alack.
Having gotten to know and love Aubrey Gordon's voice from her podcast Maintenance Phase with Michael Hobbes, I was pretty disappointed that she didn't read the audio version, which I listened to on Audible. Alas and alack.
This book is informative, validating, terrifying, hopeful and depressing in equal measures. I wish everyone would read it. Fat shaming and anti-weight bias needs to become a thing of the past, particularly in the medical world (but also just full stop).
A very powerful read, especially for straight-sized folk like myself. I learned a lot from Aubrey's clever prose and the personal stories she recounted so vividly between pages of meticulous research backing up every claim she made.
This should be required reading for anyone who cares about a fat person. Aubrey lays out her points beautifully, hooking you in with personal anecdotes before delivering data. She brings the facts and the humanity to the experiences of fat folks.