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saltycorpse 's review for:
The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy
by Caroline Dooner
Before I go into anything else, I will say the research on this that Dooner cites does bear out. I am super anti-diet. Diets and diet culture are irredeemably fucked and nobody deserves to be treated like shit based on their weight, or made to feel shame. There is a lot of good information in this book, but you gotta sift through the self-serving self-help rhetoric to get to it, and my personal bias is that I'm extremely wary and highly skeptical of anything that falls under the "self help" umbrella. I understand the genre can't simply be dry science shit because then it wouldn't sell - and that's the thing, at the end of the day this book is meant to make money.
The Peak Millennial Quirky "I'm Relatable and Funny" shit in this book was highly irritating. I too am a millennial but oh my god. I get it's likely a marketing thing but jesus. It didn't make the book more readable. It was actually a bit insufferable. Like "lol I read harry potter" cool so did literally every kid in our generation, good for you, please get back to the actual information.
Also the target demographic of this book is clearly midsized white women who have the access to a variety of food as well as the means to purchase it. There was no taking into consideration of stuff like poverty or food deserts. Which is fine, but like if that's the case don't act like this book is actually for everyone. It's not. It's for specifically women who in all likelihood aren't obese or dealing with issues, either societal or medical or whatever, that come with being fat. Dooner does a half-hearted job addressing this in one chapter where she "recognizes" her "thin privilege" but also like...congratulations you had the baseline health and body type to be able to continue in life eating without restriction and suffer little to no shame or consequences - at least not on the level of folks who are discriminated against fucking daily based on their weight. Not only that, you had the means to feed yourself the variety of food you are craving when you wanted, and a lot of that was likely fresh produce and whole foods. Not everyone has access to that.
On top of that, in the latter half of the book Dooner suddenly starts talking about energy work. I'm sorry but what the fuck? Get reiki to stop feeling fat-shamed? I'm sorry but absolutely fuck off. Even IF, and a big IF, that was helpful to someone (and maybe it is!) once again, Dooner assumes access to these 'therapies'. Again, not everyone can afford to drop money on someone to wave their hands around them to help 'energy heal' when, say, they need to buy groceries or pay their rent or bills. The fucking caucasity. And I say that as a white woman. Jeeeeesus.
Also, as is an issue with many self-help books: there's a metric fuckton of repetition. Honestly. This book could have been half the length - and I wish it was, and then dedicated the 50% cut to going more deeply into the studies, etc referenced instead of just saying "oh this study said this thing." That's great but I want more? And the average person who likely won't follow up on everything cited because who has time deserves more and to know something hasn't been simply taken out of context to further book sales.
tl;dr maybe I'm an asshole, but the actual helpful content of this book was so mired in "i'm so quirky" rhetoric and then some weird-ass energy healing shit that excavating that to get to the stuff that mattered and was legitimate was a pain in the ass. I do hope, however, that this book did help people tell diet culture to shove it up its collective ass, and it seems it has. So hey, I'll give it that!
The Peak Millennial Quirky "I'm Relatable and Funny" shit in this book was highly irritating. I too am a millennial but oh my god. I get it's likely a marketing thing but jesus. It didn't make the book more readable. It was actually a bit insufferable. Like "lol I read harry potter" cool so did literally every kid in our generation, good for you, please get back to the actual information.
Also the target demographic of this book is clearly midsized white women who have the access to a variety of food as well as the means to purchase it. There was no taking into consideration of stuff like poverty or food deserts. Which is fine, but like if that's the case don't act like this book is actually for everyone. It's not. It's for specifically women who in all likelihood aren't obese or dealing with issues, either societal or medical or whatever, that come with being fat. Dooner does a half-hearted job addressing this in one chapter where she "recognizes" her "thin privilege" but also like...congratulations you had the baseline health and body type to be able to continue in life eating without restriction and suffer little to no shame or consequences - at least not on the level of folks who are discriminated against fucking daily based on their weight. Not only that, you had the means to feed yourself the variety of food you are craving when you wanted, and a lot of that was likely fresh produce and whole foods. Not everyone has access to that.
On top of that, in the latter half of the book Dooner suddenly starts talking about energy work. I'm sorry but what the fuck? Get reiki to stop feeling fat-shamed? I'm sorry but absolutely fuck off. Even IF, and a big IF, that was helpful to someone (and maybe it is!) once again, Dooner assumes access to these 'therapies'. Again, not everyone can afford to drop money on someone to wave their hands around them to help 'energy heal' when, say, they need to buy groceries or pay their rent or bills. The fucking caucasity. And I say that as a white woman. Jeeeeesus.
Also, as is an issue with many self-help books: there's a metric fuckton of repetition. Honestly. This book could have been half the length - and I wish it was, and then dedicated the 50% cut to going more deeply into the studies, etc referenced instead of just saying "oh this study said this thing." That's great but I want more? And the average person who likely won't follow up on everything cited because who has time deserves more and to know something hasn't been simply taken out of context to further book sales.
tl;dr maybe I'm an asshole, but the actual helpful content of this book was so mired in "i'm so quirky" rhetoric and then some weird-ass energy healing shit that excavating that to get to the stuff that mattered and was legitimate was a pain in the ass. I do hope, however, that this book did help people tell diet culture to shove it up its collective ass, and it seems it has. So hey, I'll give it that!