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4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
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.
Well written, thoroughly researched, and incredibly thought provoking. This should be required reading. I highly recommend the audiobook.
informative
medium-paced
This is and interesting and well researched book which gave me good insight and a whole new perspective. Mixing in personal anecdotes with well researched data made the book both emotional and thought provoking.
This book ought to be required reading for all humans. What a beautiful, challenging, heartbreaking, and hopeful book. Sign me up - I’m ready to get to work.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
More social science than science but a very good read. Still has a hefty bibliography and tons of notes.
such a good read and hard to put down!! as a straight sized person, a lot of these points i had never considered before and it definitely make me reflect on my own biases.
informative
medium-paced
The best nonfiction book I've read in ages. Well, actually I listen to it on audiobook, which I highly recommend if you're like me and have a hard time focusing on nonfiction books, but love educational/informational podcasts (maintenance phase, you're wrong about, etc). I'm still thinking about a lot of the data and overall messages from this book, and I finished it weeks ago. As somebody who works in public health, I think this perspective is so important and has really changed the way I think about some of the "conventional wisdom" of our field that isn't actually backed up by data or compassion. This book has made me a better ally. I highly recommend reading it.
This is a book that I think probably most people should read. Gordon describes her own and other fat people’s experiences in the world and the way that bias and judgment interfere with their health and well-being. She also addresses the intersections of disability, race, and queerness, and especially how literally damaging shaming is to our bodies. There’s discussion of the myriad ways the world is built for lighter, able bodies, from plane seats, job discrimination, and medical bias to limited drug studies, ineffective medication, and even the body positivity movement. As someone who possesses a disabled body that at its lightest still didn’t meet what’s considered a “healthy” BMI, as well as having lived through my own fair share of gaslighting by doctors, I identified with many of her experiences. I’m sad to say that the explicit and public shaming she’s been the target of did not surprise me even if much of it was completely awful because, well, people can be terrible. With all of that said, this didn’t strike me as a hopeless book. She discusses the impact of education on medical students toward the end and proves again that exposure to different types of people and bodies creates—say it with me—empathy! This was a common theme in my teaching practice and one that I’ve read quite a bit about. We are more likely to treat people as human when we see and meet more types of humans. My only other point is in response to one of the top reviews of this book that criticizes, basically, how she doesn’t use her platform to encourage people to be healthier. This book is literally called “what we don’t talk about when we talk about fat.” It’s a pretty safe bet that there are few fat people who haven’t been lectured about how their health is entirely dependent on losing weight; that would be an apt subject for a book called “what we DO talk about when we talk about fat.” I, for one, am grateful for this book and for the large amount of both subjective experience and objective science covered within.