Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia by Kate Manne

13 reviews

challenging informative reflective fast-paced

I liked this but I felt like I was already familiar with the content! However, I rarely hear explicit arguments about what is or isn’t moral, and enjoyed the breakdown of her points! I also appreciated how present the author was in her argument. (Evidenced by a her clear positionally and we/our language) A bit dissatisfied with the conclusion.

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challenging emotional informative slow-paced

Books like this are always hard to rate and review, particularly if you are a reader that weights a lot towards their enjoyment of a read. The subject matter was heavy, and deals with a lot of damning and heartbreaking statistics around how we as a western culture view and treat fat bodies. 
As a plus sized mom to a baby girl it really hammered home just how important it is how I talk about my body and how I fuel and dress it. Genetics being what they are, she will likely continue from being an adorably chunky toddler into a chubby kid, tween and teen, and its so important to me that she gets to view her body in a way I never did. As a joy and pleasure to live in and explore the world in. 
It sparked great conversation with my husband about how we view things, and the inherent racism of fatphobia, and even limiting family access to our daughter based on how they speak about others and their bodies. 

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“This is how misogyny works: take a hierarchy, any hierarchy, and use it to derogate a girl or woman. We value intelligence: so call her stupid, insane, clueless. We value rationality: so call her crazy and hysterical. We value maturity: so call her childish and irresponsible. We value morality: so call her a bad person. We value thinness: so call her fat and, implicitly or explicitly, ugly. We value sexual attractiveness: so make her out to be the kind of person whom no one could ever want,” page 102. 

Listened as an audiobook through Libro.fm AND annotated with my physical copy (yes, I buy too many books 🫣) Carmen Maria Machado said it the best with her blurb for the book, Unshrinking is a vital addition to the fat canon. 

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True, accurate, and deeply depressing.  Feels validating to have the problem identified, but defeating that there really is no cure for it.  Fat phobia will persist and it is unnerving to read about how insidious it is.

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 It is so critically important to me that everyone in my life read this book.

Kate Manne never fails to get me absolutely FIRED UP! and this is no exception. Beautiful demonstration of the ways that fatness intersects with race, feminism, disability studies, capitalism, etc. It's accessible and practical philosophy. If you are a person in a body you need to read this book. 

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I appreciate that the author emphasizes the systemic nature of anti-fatness and its connections to other systems of harm.

Fatphobia is a form of structural oppression that--just like any other--is based on a socially constructed hierarchy of bodies and intersects with other systems of oppression (e.g., a fat Black woman is treated considerably worse than a fat white man).

Specifically, anti-fatness is rooted in and upholds racism, in particular anti-blackness.

Fatphobia also often serves as an outlet for other forms of bigotry because it's more socially acceptable to be anti-fat than it is to be racist or classist.

The author advocates for fat liberation and body reflexivity, although I wish the author had spent more time on that. Seems weird to introduce a new concept in the conclusion.

Key takeaways:
-Fuck diet culture, but also beauty culture in general.
-You have a right to shrink yourself or have plastic surgery (accepting all health risks/ consequences), but you are not obligated to.
-You can resist fatphobia by refusing to diet. In doing so, you're also standing up to the other systems of harm that are tied to, or intersect with, fatphobia.

Your body is for you
It's not for consuming, comparing, assessing, or ranking. 
It's not good, bad, or neutral. 
You're not required to have any particular attitude toward your body, and your perspective is the only one that matters. 
You are not responsible for pleasing others. 
You can appreciate bodies, viewed through an uncritical lens, in all their diversity. 

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informative reflective medium-paced

This book covers very important aspects of body politics and how it affects our perception of bodies. I would say that it’s a bit of an introduction to these concepts (i.e. explaining the gaslighting phenomenon in detail before discussing it in relation to bodies). 

Manne explicitly states in the beginning she would only be looking at fatphobia from a political lense. That being said, I think it could be even stronger if there were more layers to it. I still recommend it to anyone who would like to start learning more about fatphobia. 

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