eschorrlesnick's review against another edition

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informative reflective fast-paced

4.25


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taratearex's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This was excellent and infuriating. This is a concise history of fat phobia, laying out very clearly how it originated from racism. It also lays out how connected to religion it is, as well as just how manufactured by white women and white men it is and continues to be. It's infuriating to see how little has changed and how we continue to repeat history over and over.

This book is dense and does read somewhat like a history textbook, but it is also clear and concise and lays out the facts so well in only about 200 pages. Because it is more a presentation of the facts, there isn't much analysis so I would recommend reading this in addition to other books on anti-fat bias and racism for more of the analysis part, such as What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat Aubrey Gordon and Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness Da’Shaun Harrison. But this was an excellent book on the history of how we got to where we are now and well worth the read.

I listened to the audiobook in tandem with my physical copy so that I could highlight, this was also helpful as there are a lot of names and dates which I have a harder time with if it's just audiobook. 

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leontyna's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

It was very informative but I would have appreciated some summaries of the chapters, at times I was a bit lost what the point of particular stories/chapter was besides "people changed their mind all the time about what is dangerous, thinness or fatness, and anti-fatness has definitive racial origins". But I'm really glad I listened to the book and I plan to read more about the topic.

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ravennemain's review against another edition

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slow-paced

4.0

Really interesting history, but it also felt like it accepted some of the myths about fatness at the same time.  This created an awkward tension through the text that was never resolved.

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meganmalonefranklin's review against another edition

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challenging informative

5.0


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mandkips's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0


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puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

5.0

I had seen Fearing the Black Body recommended in pretty much every antifatness related book list, so when I saw it was available on my audiobook app, I immediately added it to my shelf. Anyone who wants to dive a little deeper than the basics and learn about the history of antifatness and its roots in racism and eugenics should read this book.

It’s not long and while the language is academic, it’s not overly complicated. The audiobook was easy to follow. I haven’t listened to a lot of nonfiction audiobooks yet so I was afraid that my attention would waver, but it was the opposite: I listened for much longer stretches than I usually do because I was so intrigued.

Fearing the Black Body helps put the current discussions around antifatness into a historical context and shows how much we are still influenced by decades or centuries old ideas of eugenicist doctors and ‘race scientists’ who spouted ‘scientific’ ideas with no basis in research or reality.

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minty_3's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.0


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therecoveringbookworm's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0


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naturallybgrace's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

5.0

Incredibly thorough, well descriptive and information driven. The origins of anti-fat thought, believes, policies and action is traced to anti-Blackness through the years. 

Quotes—
“…the current anti-fat bias in the United States and in much of the West was not born in the medical field. Racial scientific literature since at least the eighteenth century has claimed that fatness was ‘savage’ and ‘black.”

“The legacy of Protestant moralism and race science as it related to fat and thin persons loomed large. Indeed, many early to mid-twentieth-century physicians relied on moral and racial logics to rail against persons deemed too fat or too thin. But over time, a growing number did so specifically, and exclusively, to condemn fatness.”

“…Revealing race to be the missing element in many of these analysis’ indeed the racial discourse of fatness as coarse, immortal, black and other, not only denigrated Black women but it also served as the driver for the creation of slenderness as the proper form of embodiment for elite white christian women. In other words the fear of the black body was integral to the creation of the slender aesthetic amount fashioned white Americans.”

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