You Just Need to Lose Weight by Aubrey Gordon

Title: “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People

Author: Aubrey Gordon

Publisher: Beacon Press 2023

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 224

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Spring TBR

The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance “glorifies obesity.” The BMI is an objective measure of size and health.Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive.

In “You Just Need to Lose Weight,” Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people. Bringing her dozen years of community organizing and training to bear, Gordon shares the rhetorical approaches she and other organizers employ to not only counter these pernicious myths, but to dismantle the anti-fat bias that so often underpin them.

As conversations about fat acceptance and fat justice continue to grow, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” will be essential to ensure that those conversations are informed, effective, and grounded in both research and history.

Finally, I got Gordon’s follow up to her first book. I had really been excited about this volume and make no mistake, this is a great book. It just fell a little flat for me because it felt like a rehashing of a lot of things from her first book. I think that this one has a better format for people. Taking on one myth at a time helps to break up the science and the heavy. Having follow-up questions at the end of chapters is a great way to push the knowledge and questions back to the reader. In a sense, this is the workbook version of her first book. The content isn’t completely the same, but there’s a lot of overlap. I enjoyed hitting some of the high points. I really enjoyed getting some language to help combat anti-fat bias in the wild. If you had to pick up one Gordon book, make it this one.

Next up on the TBR pile:

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

Title: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat

Author: Aubrey Gordon

Publisher: Beacon Press 2020

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 197

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

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.

Not a happy book by any definition, but a very important book to read. A lot of what is covered in these pages has been mentioned on Gordon’s podcast Maintenance Phase, but I very much appreciated hearing her arguments laid out systematically in each chapter. We get au unflinching look at anti-fat bias in our society from the words we use to the programs we enact. I loved the deep dives into different aspects. Definitely a proper primer on the topic. I am waiting for a library copy of Gordon’s second book to further educate myself.

Next up on the TBR pile: