Customer Reviews

The Fat Studies Reader

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a comprehensive and needed volume that introduces Fat Studies as a discipline as well as a needed antidote to rampant fear-mongering about obesity. Intellectually solid, creative, political and inter-disciplinary, this volume is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in a critical perspective on the current discourse on obesity!

What an amazing book. I read every single page and every essay and loved it start to finish.

In some ways I've always felt like a late-comer to Fat Studies, though the pursuit is still in its nascence, but the Fat Studies Reader caught me up to speed on a variety of topics.

I love that this book is out there and I only hope that it will get into more classrooms so that students can start to understand that there's so much more dimension to a fat life than the medicalized view of "obesity" allows.

Congratulations to all of those involved in this amazing project.

This is a truly indispensable resource which has no comparison in the current literature. Other titles glaze over some of the topics covered here, but none in such comprehensive detail. Part civil rights manifesto, scientific treatise and interdisciplinary reader this volume goes where others dare not tread. I highly recommend this title for inclusion in any analysis of popular culture and it's effects on diversity.

The Fat Studies Reader is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of essays by some of the most important and smart voices in the body acceptance/fat acceptance world. It is meant as a text book for those who want to enter into fat studies as an academic pursuit, or who just want a broad perspective for personal study on the subject.

The introduction, by editors Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, calls The Fat Studies Reader the "first comprehensive anthology that maps the contours of this emerging field." The book starts with a foreword by Marilyn Wann and continues from there with dozens of articles divided into these parts:

What is Fat Studies?
Fat Studies in Health and Medicine
Fatness as a Social Inequality
Size-ism in Popular Culture and Literature
Embodying and Embracing Fatness
Starting the Revolution

You know how, when you start to research something, you find broad resources that give you a big-picture idea of the topic, and then move from there toward narrowing your field? That's what this book is. A broad resource that gives you a information from a wide variety of important and vibrant voices, and leads you down the path to more focused study.

I'm especially happy to have found this book, because in the fall I'm returning to school to start my senior year. I'm a writing student, but I want to focus my senior study on body acceptance and athleticism. The Size-ism in Popular Culture and Literature part of The Fat Studies Reader will be very helpful to me in the next year.

The Fat Studies Reader is one of those books that I've read slowly and deeply. I'm still working on it. I read one essay, and then find myself needing to think on it. Do fat girls need fictional heroines? Does poverty cause fatness, or does fat prejudice cause poverty? How does my experience as a cis woman differ from that of someone who passes as a man most of the time? It never occurred to me that there is a difference between a fat woman ordering a regular Coke and a fat man doing the same, until I read S. Bear Bergman's awesome essay "Part-Time Fatso."

I'm a student. I have been all my life. I learn best by reading and writing. The Fat Studies Reader is a great resource for people like me, who want to wide education in fat studies, so that they have a foundation and a jumping off point for more focused study later.

Final Analysis: Highly recommended.

The Fat Studies Reader is a little pricey, but so packed with good information that the $25-ish dollars is well worth it. I find it interesting that despite being published about 18 months ago, on Amazon it has very few used copies and those that are available are very close in price to the cover price. This one is a keeper. You'll want it on your FA book shelf. You can save some money by buying the Kindle version.

NOTE: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review. I would have bought it anyway, and my thoughts on it are my own.

This is a text book made up of chapters which appear to be a bunch of senior thesis projects. The "chapters" really are truly research papers that the writers were hoping to publish in some sort of journal, probably one related to sociology. The "chapters" even have sections such as "methodology", "results" etc. I'm telling you, the editors grabbed a bunch of senior research papers and stuck them together calling them a "book". So, this is excruciating to read, really very very horrible to read for a person who enjoys fiction writing. I have a BA in sociology and an MA in clinical psychology. So, I do actually understand the writing and I know why it's written as it is. However, I cannot over-emphasize how painfully dull, academic, and un-enjoyable this is to read. The topic is interesting and I learned quite a bit about the movement for the civil rights of fat people (including that they prefer to be called "fat") and about the "health at any size" argument. I'm glad to know more about this subject and what I've read will definitely stay with me and inform my thinking about fat people. However, I STRONGLY encourage the authors to consider writing a book that people might actually enjoy reading. It's difficult to persuade people to your point of view by by expecting them to slog through painfully dull academic writing. This subject could be really full of emotion and humor. It could be a captivating topic but they just fail miserably at making it readable. One bright spot, however was the chapter written by S. Bear Bergman called "Sometimes I'm Fat, and Sometimes I'm Not". It's written in a narrative style instead of a research paper style. It's easily the best and most readable chapter in the book. However, I'm not sure the book is worth the asking price just for that one chapter.

I bought this volume with high hopes of getting an objective introduction to the yearling discipline of Fat Studies. As with most introductory readers, the general tone--I feel--should be broad in scope, and as I mentioned previously, objective. Yet, the stance the authors take is decidedly dogmatic and unflinchingly pro-fat, which I understand. However, I do not feel that this is an adequate nor nuanced introduction to a field that is only beginning to gain steam. These essays would be better suited to a book that does not claim itself to be an introduction to an academic discipline. I should hope that this book will not find its way onto university shelves as it will be providing only one side of a very difficult and nuanced issue.

And one more thing, one of the most problematic aspects of the volume is the rampant use of scare quotes around "fat terms" like obesity that they immediately disregard as over-medicalized. However, where is that perspective? Shouldn't there be an article by an individual who does not champion fat, or am I just not getting what fat studies is about?

And in case I'm just not understanding the field, I'll give the book two stars because it is a great collection of essays with a singular viewpoint.

For another excellent review, see the New Yorker's discussion of the book and decide for yourself.

It's hard to get into this one. I'm still trying to read it. So, I can't give it an honest review.