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A bold takedown of the ways women are terrorized about fatness, and a treatise on the revolutionary power of fat fury
Anti-fatness and fat-shaming are used most often as a way to inspire fear in others about being or becoming fat. Scholar and therapist Breanne Fahs breaks down how the dread of fatness is used to control and capitalize on women’s fears of their unruly bodies and demonstrates how rejecting shame and instead igniting feelings of anger can help us collectively move towards justice.
Weaving together the voices of fat people and activists with damning psychological and sociological evidence, Fahs chronicles how fat oppression and fear-mongering impacts every aspect of our lives, from media representation to workplace and healthcare discrimination to the problem with body positivity movements, and even how we handle fat death. She argues that rage, or fat fury, becomes the necessary antidote to the resignation and powerlessness that anti-fatness so often generates.
Illuminating and infuriating, Fahs intertwines the personal and systemic impacts of anti-fatness and calls on all of us—fatter and thinner alike—to reflect and revolt.
“It’s impossible to imagine anyone reading this book without taking on the much-needed fury that the title suggests. An unflinching, thorough, and urgent examination of one of our culture’s most toxic social issues.”
—Virgie Tovar, author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat
“This book is Fahs’s magnificent octopus—by which I mean her magnum opus but with fabulously functional intersectional tentacles, shimmeringly smart shape-shifting, and possessing insight and abilities we can only begin to fathom for fueling a more just world.”
—Kimberly Dark, author of Fat, Pretty and Soon to Be Old
“Fahs has masterfully tapped into the power of emotion and its role in structuring fatphobia. This book made me feel seen, empowered, and, most importantly, furious for the change needed for fat future.”
—Caleb Luna, author of REVENGE BODY
“Fiery, formidable, and feminist. In utterly readable and compelling prose, Fahs brilliantly breaks down the systems that stigmatize and terrorize fat bodies, while documenting and generating an incisive strategy of ‘guttural resistance.’ I love this most necessary book.”
—Jane Caputi, author of Call Your “Mutha’”
“Insightful and illuminating—an unabashed, essential, and persuasive call to resist fat bias and discrimination.”
—Samantha Kwan, author of Under the Knife
“The way forward is not rooted in chirpy body positivity but by boldly facing the facts and feeling the fury. This book is the unapologetic guttural call to claim the space we deserve.”
—Chris Bobel, professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, UMass Boston