Unshrinking by Kate Manne

genre: non-fiction

Unshrinking is the perfect title for this book - and I love the implications of this word.  Not only is it an acknowledgment that our, to quote Roxane Gay, "unruly bodies" have no requirement to shrink and take up less space, but it is also an unshrinking look at a huge societal issue that has far reaching impacts.

To even TALK about Fatphobia feels subversive somehow, to acknowledge that the way our society treats fatness and people whose bodies don't fit whatever norm in our heads is to also admit that maybe OUR BODIES CAN BE OKAY THE WAY THAT THEY ARE.  Maybe it's our society that is COMPLETELY screwed up and not the bodies themselves.  As a person who from my early preteen years has felt significant body dysmorphia, this idea is like a lightening bolt.  And while I know I am not in the kind of body that faces the kind of marginalization that Manne discusses in this book, I see it and I know it is real and everything in me tells me that she is telling the truth in these pages.

Of course, a lot of this book is her own lived experience but it is also a compilation of a LOT of scientific studies in addition to other anecdotes and real world observations.  I almost feel like I need to listen to this again already and take notes.  She is an advocate and an ally and the conversational tone of the book fit well with the profound and sometimes upsetting subject matter.  The science backs up what she is telling us here about marginalized bodies, about the realities of diets and diet cycling and what it is to be a not-thin human living in a world designed by and for thinness.