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Unshrinking

How to Face Fatphobia

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Unshrinking

Written by: Kate Manne
Narrated by: Kate Manne
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About this listen

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled

“An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Chicago Public Library

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.

Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except one: body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential.

In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity”—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.

©2024 Kate Manne (P)2024 Random House Audio
Biographies & Memoirs Racism & Discrimination Thought-Provoking Mental Health

What the critics say

“Manne’s argument draws on personal experiences . . . and on trenchant analyses of the ways in which fatness has been regarded throughout history.”—The New Yorker

“[Unshrinking] blew my mind right from the start. . . . At least once, I cried from painful realizations and memories. I couldn’t stop talking about this book with fellow parents at school drop-off or at home with my spouse—and I gave a copy to my mom when I finished reading it.”—NPR

“Kate Manne tears down the fortress of Western fatphobia. . . . Unshrinking is a project of deconstruction, archaeology, and care.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Manne] writes in harrowing detail of her own experiences of discrimination and the cycle of shockingly disordered eating. . . . Claiming total ownership of one’s own body ought not to feel radical, but perhaps it is.”—The New Statesman

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Well-researched, validating, inspiring.

This book is a must for EVERYONE. We CAN stop society's persecution of fat people. This book is highly quotable, and I intend to do so for a long time.

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