Promotional Information

From the creator of Your Fat Friend, an explosive indictment on the systemic and cultural issues facing plus-sized people that will move us toward creating an agenda for fat justice.

Table of Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Into Thin Air

CHAPTER 2
Becoming an Epidemic

CHAPTER 3
What Thinness Takes

CHAPTER 4
On Concern and Choice

CHAPTER 5
The Desirability Myth

CHAPTER 6
Such a Pretty Face

CHAPTER 7
First, Do No Harm

CHAPTER 8
The World to Come

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About the Author

Aubrey Gordonwrites under the pseudonym of "Your Fat Friend," illuminating the experiences of fat people and urging greater compassion for people of all sizes. Her work has reached millions of readers and has been translated into nineteen languages. She is co-host of the Maintenace Phase podcast and a columnist withSELFmagazine. Her work has also been featured inHealthmagazine,Vox, andGay Mag, among others. She lives in the Northwest, where she works as a writer and organizer. Connect with her at yourfatfriend.com, and as YrFatFriend on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Reviews

"Everyone who has a fat family member, friend, acquaintance, or coworker should read this insightful book."
-Library Journal, Starred Review

"It's not often you find a book that's going to save someone's life. As a fat person, I felt heard and seen. An essential read if you ever wondered why you've been taught to hate yourself and fat people-it will make you a better person, a happier person. It's like having a fat best friend on your bookshelf, ready to explain everything that you didn't think you needed to know about fatness."
-Sofie Hagen, author of Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You

"Few writers approach the realities of living in a fat body, the pernicious nature of fatphobia, and what it would take for our culture to radically reimagine our relationships to our bodies than Aubrey Gordon, who you may know online as Your Fat Friend. In her debut book, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Gordon has crafted a manifesto on unapologetic fatness and fat justice. Her cultural criticism about bodies is timely, elegant, searing. This book is required reading for absolutely everyone. The wisdom Gordon offers in these pages is going to irrevocably change fat discourse, and it comes not a moment too soon."
-Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger

"A deeply articulate, validating, and empowering read! Aubrey Gordon pushes the envelope beyond feel-good-Instagram-body-positivity and calls for structural change in our thinking, understanding, and treatment of fat bodies. Your fat friends need this book, but your thin friends need it even more."
-Julie Murphy, author of Dumplin'

"In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon gives us an authoritative, forceful, splendidly written, and deeply moving account of the shockingly personal hostility she and other fat people must endure on a daily basis. You don't have to agree with her interpretation of the research on fatness and its consequences to sign on to her thoroughly convincing demand for respect as a human being and for what she calls 'fat justice.' This book changed my thinking, and in the best possible way."
-Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, New York University, and author of Let's Ask Marion

"We can't universalize experience, and the default thin-centrism of the body positivity movement has failed all of us. Gordon's spellbinding storytelling and vulnerability are compelling and transformative, buoyed by insightful critical analysis. I'm a better person for having read What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, more compassionate and with a vision for moving forward. This book is a wake-up call to humanity and has the power to transform how we approach healthcare."
-Lindo Bacon, PhD, scientist and author of Health at Every Size and Radical Belonging