A review by abitbetterbooks
You Just Need to Lose Weight: And 19 Other Myths about Fat People by Aubrey Gordon
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.75
Amazing. My first Aubrey Gordon book but I will definitely be reading her other work! I loved listening to the audiobook since it was narrated by Gordon herself and it added that extra personal element which I really enjoyed.
This book does a great job of moving through issues in a really thorough manner. My only issue with the book was that because each myth/chapter was self contained or could be read in isolation / out of order, there were some elements that were repeated that felt unnecessary when listening through the whole thing in chronological order. But even still, that did serve to continue driving some key points home. As someone who considers herself fairly well versed in fat liberation & fat studies, diet culture & eating disorders, I still found myself learning new things! In particular I found that Gordon has a way of perfectly wording things and distilling big themes and issues down to key elements that would be really helpful to have in ones arsenal to confront anti-fatness wherever you may Glen counter it!
This book does a great job of moving through issues in a really thorough manner. My only issue with the book was that because each myth/chapter was self contained or could be read in isolation / out of order, there were some elements that were repeated that felt unnecessary when listening through the whole thing in chronological order. But even still, that did serve to continue driving some key points home. As someone who considers herself fairly well versed in fat liberation & fat studies, diet culture & eating disorders, I still found myself learning new things! In particular I found that Gordon has a way of perfectly wording things and distilling big themes and issues down to key elements that would be really helpful to have in ones arsenal to confront anti-fatness wherever you may Glen counter it!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia and Body shaming
Moderate: Ableism
Minor: Acephobia/Arophobia, Homophobia, Classism, Eating disorder, Racism, Colonisation, Medical content, Sexism, and Transphobia