From the creator of Your Fat
Friend and co-host of the Maintenance
Phase podcast, an explosive indictment of the systemic and
cultural bias facing plus-size people.
Anti-fatness is
everywhere. In What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat,
Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that
have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and
calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized
people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi
self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves,
Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism,
which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal
access to health care for large people, increased access to public
spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, “I did not
come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social
justice.”
By sharing her
experiences as well as those of others—from smaller fat to very fat
people—she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as
an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally
condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express
disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied
humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual
assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their
thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and
13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe
their fat patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly and
noncompliant”; and in 48 states, it’s legal—even routine—to
deny employment because of an applicant’s size.
Advancing fat
justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will
require work from all people. What We Don’t Talk About When We
Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in
the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.