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A review by hedgewinnery
Queer Body Power: Finding Your Body Positivity by Essie Dennis
5.0
ARC provided by netgalley :-)
I really, really loved this book. It has content warnings (not something I've seen frequently before and something that's very appreciated!), broad and engaging chapters, an informal and unintimidating writing style and it's super accessibly written language-wise.
The introduction (and through the book honestly) is very personal and draws on experiences in Essie Dennis' life, lending it the very important quality of being truly relatable for young, fat, queer folks. It immediately tackles Body Positivity as something dominated by white cishet women, something well worth pointing out & deconstructing. It also goes through toxic positivity and seperating it out from Body Positivty - it's a movement that doesn't always encompass positive things!
It's peppered throughout with testimonies from other Queer people and is super affirming to read others experiencing the same. Thanks to the nature of the book centreing queer & trans/nb people, it approahces bodies from a perspective relatively free of a gender binary and highlights the need for intersectionality & intersectional approaches. I cannot even begin to gush about how refreshing it is to read a book about bodies that doesn't spent pages placating straight size people, encompasses the various reasons that someone might feel shame about their bodies and (even better!), talks about more than just reclaiming fat bodies and joy...it talks about racialised and disabled bodies!!
The chapters that engage with social media consumption do so mindfully, especially because this was written in the pandemic, and is aware of both its flaws and strengths. It even delvs into the censorship of queer bodies in online spaces (something especially prevalent on instagram). The sections on face filters and digital auto-editing have a lot of basic but still important critiques about the way it can divorce us from our bodies, something I'm super happy to see written about from a queer perspective. The entire chapter on makeup and fashion is fantastic too!
A really, really good book. A bit of a 'starter' on the subject of queer bodies & queer joy, but super super good.
I really, really loved this book. It has content warnings (not something I've seen frequently before and something that's very appreciated!), broad and engaging chapters, an informal and unintimidating writing style and it's super accessibly written language-wise.
The introduction (and through the book honestly) is very personal and draws on experiences in Essie Dennis' life, lending it the very important quality of being truly relatable for young, fat, queer folks. It immediately tackles Body Positivity as something dominated by white cishet women, something well worth pointing out & deconstructing. It also goes through toxic positivity and seperating it out from Body Positivty - it's a movement that doesn't always encompass positive things!
It's peppered throughout with testimonies from other Queer people and is super affirming to read others experiencing the same. Thanks to the nature of the book centreing queer & trans/nb people, it approahces bodies from a perspective relatively free of a gender binary and highlights the need for intersectionality & intersectional approaches. I cannot even begin to gush about how refreshing it is to read a book about bodies that doesn't spent pages placating straight size people, encompasses the various reasons that someone might feel shame about their bodies and (even better!), talks about more than just reclaiming fat bodies and joy...it talks about racialised and disabled bodies!!
The chapters that engage with social media consumption do so mindfully, especially because this was written in the pandemic, and is aware of both its flaws and strengths. It even delvs into the censorship of queer bodies in online spaces (something especially prevalent on instagram). The sections on face filters and digital auto-editing have a lot of basic but still important critiques about the way it can divorce us from our bodies, something I'm super happy to see written about from a queer perspective. The entire chapter on makeup and fashion is fantastic too!
A really, really good book. A bit of a 'starter' on the subject of queer bodies & queer joy, but super super good.