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For anyone who has experienced (make that, suffered) fat-shaming – the internalized mortification and inadequacy resulting from a life long barrage of society’s humiliations, disapproval, and disgust – this book may just be the very beginning of something transformative.

“What I hated was less my body than the way it made me vulnerable: to being put down and ridiculed and belittled”

The ideas within, written by an eloquent and impassioned Professor of Philosophy, herself a self-proclaimed “fat person”, are academic, challenging, brilliant, and yes, hopeful, – laying the groundwork for a new conceptual framework, heavily research-based and meticulously foot-noted, which one (if so motivated to work at it) can choose to adopt to view and relate to our own bodies.

There is a place for us, the author challenges, outside the lens of the constant and insidious objectification, entitlement, injustice and oppression by those who choose to judge our bodies and find them, and us, lacking. An end to enforced ideas, beliefs, and standards about size, and health, and eating, here revealed as misguided, ethically abhorrent, and just plain incorrect.

Societal stigma and systemic discrimination stemming from “fatphobia”, we will read, across centuries and cultures, has resulted in the ongoing abuse (documented here with chilling detail) that define the existence of those of us deemed “fat”. This discrimination, as laid out here, has roots that are revealed to be largely political, patriarchal, racially-infused, and classist.

And unacceptable.

Our bodies are “our” homes, the author argues, with breath-taking, mind-freeing clarity. They are not “for” others to judge, or enjoy, or take issue with. Whichever of the very many diversities we may represent and celebrate – a standard attached to a scale of one’s own individual “beauty” and/or “value” simply does not have to be accepted.

“My body is for me”.

A book (and a concept) that is hard to put down, “Unshrinking” may just represent a path to enable those of us devastated by the internalization of toxic anti-fat messaging, “to stop dieting, stop obsessing, and live peaceably with (our) bodies”.

Through what could represent a beacon, (a movement, an Unshrinking) oh so definitely worth reaching out for.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.