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4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Gordon offers a poignant and compelling look into the historical, medical, and cultural factors that perpetuate anti-fat bias in our society. Her main thesis is that fat people-like straight sized people-are humans who deserve love, respect, and access to resources to have a full, complex life without seeing their bodies as a tragic moral failing, a medical disease, or some temporary stasis on the road to thinness. Gordon explores the many ways society and its institutions perpetuate anti-fat bias. She calls for everyone (particularly straight size people) to be more aware AND take action against the structures.
Gordon weaves in her own experiences to amplify deep, rooted, beliefs, and practices that it reinforce by society that values thinness as a marker of moral priority to its opposite, fat, a moral failing. She disabuse us the argument that fatness is 1) completely self-perpetuated 2) a signifier of worth, and value and 3) a signal to a lack of health. In particular, Gordon challenges the reader to look beyond what is often presented as causal evidence that being fat or obese is inherently in unhealthy, particularly because some people’s body types naturally are larger.
Gordon’s most compelling chapter is “such a Pretty Face” wherein she explores and deconstructs long held and interwoven notions of fatness, love, and attraction. She uses poignant pop culture examples in TV and film to reinforce her argument that society devalues and dehumanizes fat people through portraying one-dimensional characters often used as comedic relief.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Medical content
Minor: Eating disorder
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia
Moderate: Eating disorder, Violence, Sexual harassment
TLDR: a absolutely brilliant investigation to the danger of anti-fatness, written beauitful by one of the most intelligent, wonderful women existing right now.
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
A very informative book about fat bias in our society and how it impacts fat folks. It makes you reflect on yourself and how you have been taught to think of fatness in a negative light since childhood.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia
Minor: Bullying, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Transphobia, Medical trauma, Sexual harassment
I was brought to this book by Maintenance Phase podcast, so not "fresh" to this subject, but this is an amazing book. Aubrey's work has opened my eyes to the ocean of anti-fat bias we are all swimming in, and I'm grateful for advocates like her.