Aubrey Gordon

Really thinking about how necessary this work is today.

We need intersectional fat activism NOW. Wonderful and necessary book. Anyone going into healthcare should be required to read this book. Also, anyone in media should absolutely read this book.

I was average size for 20 years and then I was fat for about 10 years. I am, again, average sized. I used to refer to my heavier days as "my fat decade". I guess I felt like it was important to reassure folks that I was no longer that person, that it was a decade not worth remembering. That my existence during this time was better left unaccounted for. It is so strange that I consider my larger-body years as like a mistake or a bad place when so many wonderful things happened during that time: I began a relationship with my husband, I was married, I moved to different parts of the country and my fur babies came into my life. It's weird how nothing is really good unless you're skinny. Smaller. More toned. I didn't come up with this on my own, it was drilled into me by a media landscape that is violently anti-fat (anti-anything that is not THIN af).

Anyway - EVERYONE!!! DO BETTER! Hold people, industries, organizations, etc etc accountable.… (mehr)

“In the United States, anti-fatness is the rule, not the exception.”
“For fat people, the biggest barrier to health may be pervasive anti-fatness.”
“Anti-fat discrimination is real, it deeply harms fat people, and it operates at alarming rates.”
“Anti-fatness is the last socially acceptable form of discrimination.”

This book really resonated with me, as I have been fat all of my life. It is extremely well researched, and debunks a lot of the myths that I have taken for truths all of my life. And it really details how society has 'criminalized' fat people in almost every facet of life. I wish everyone, regardless of shape or size, would read this book!… (mehr)

yes. yes. yes. “This cultural obsession with weight loss doesn’t just impact our physical and mental health; it also impacts our sense of self and, consequently, our relationships with others of different sizes.” this book addresses fat phobia, harassment of fat people, intersections of fat phobia with racism and misogyny, systemic anti-fat bias as it affects everything from employment to good health care and much more. Aubrey Gordon talks about the real effects of anti-fat bias tend to exist on a sliding scale with the worst of it often being directed at the very fat. she mentions a lot of research. research that shows dieting to be statistically really bad in helping people to lose significant amounts of weight and keeping it off. research on how cycling through weight loss and gain actually harms your metabolism and makes it harder to lose or even maintain a weight. research showing that the abuse and bias faced by fat people makes them less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. research showing that despite the public discourse that fat people are supposedly unattractive, fat porn is one of the most searched types. Aubrey Gordon writes about the reality of living in a fat body, the harmful nature of fatphobia and what it would take for our culture to re-imagine our relationships to our bodies. everyone should read this and really sit with it. “We can build a world in which fat bodies are valued and supported just as much as thin ones.”… (mehr)