Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

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

91 reviews

lou_christie's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual harassment, Fatphobia, Eating disorder, Body shaming, Ableism, and Sexism

evdark's review against another edition

informative sad medium-paced

3.25

There is a fine line between body positivity and endorsing a deadly lifestyle. I do get that the author said that she eats healthy, exercises, and is almost 400 lbs. She cites Lizzo as another person who is "athletic and fat" as proof of her point that you can do everything right and be fat. That did not age well as Lizzo dropped over 100 lbs due to her activity on stage. The part of this book I enjoyed was about how diet culture hurts society and reinforces terrible habits in overweight individuals, barring them from losing weight while also shaming them for it. It probably does mess with the metabolism so much that when you try extreme dieting at a certain weight, you can die trying to lose the weight, too much too fast, too little too late. Another part was how doctors treat overweight and highly obese individuals, which I have experienced even as a "small fat person" (after pregnancy). What I did not enjoy about this book was that this author would probably be happy if every person in the world were fat, based on her manifesto at the back of the book, and that we shouldn't try to improve ourselves but give into that lifestyle and embrace it. That fat people should be celebrated and catered to and embraced as a standard of normality. That's a dangerous mindset to have, especially in light of several body-positive influencers dying due to their weight.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Body shaming, Emotional abuse, and Fatphobia

oddpilot97's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming

Minor: Eating disorder

tree_branch's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Body shaming, and Bullying

Minor: Sexual harassment, Emotional abuse, Dysphoria, Violence, Sexual violence, Rape, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, and Eating disorder

ashylibrarian's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Medical trauma, and Fatphobia

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Eating disorder, Medical content, and Sexual assault

murderousscottishgremlin's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming and Fatphobia

Moderate: Eating disorder

zoiejanelle's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Bullying, and Body shaming

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Chronic illness, Medical content, Medical trauma, Sexism, Mental illness, Gaslighting, Cancer, Sexual violence, and Toxic friendship

librarykiana's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Fatphobia, and Sexual harassment

quasinaut's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia

Moderate: Body shaming and Medical trauma

Minor: Sexual assault and Eating disorder

lipstickitotheman's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Body shaming, Medical content, Medical trauma, Sexual harassment, and Fatphobia