Review: Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living by Jes Baker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jes Baker is just amazing and delightful to listen to (seriously, the audiobook blows the book away because she reads it herself). Baker confronts head on the challenges, judgments, discrimination, and disregard that Western culture (particularly the U.S.) has for fat girls (the term she uses and in a standard method of cultural resistance, reclaims as a badge). Her approach is multifaceted from calling out the questionable literature around health issues related to fat people to critiquing the de-normalizing of larger bodies by consumer culture, particularly fashion--she even makes room to discuss the intersectionality of size and other elements of identity. Besides laying down a critical framework around deconstructing fat in the US, she also repeatedly finds ways to speak to fat girls in particular but really, everyone dealing with self-image, self-acceptance, and self-love issues, to argue fiercely that everyone deserves the right be feel perfectly natural in their bodies. Despite the book's title, this book is for everyone. No, really. Yes, Baker focuses specifically on the internal and external challenges of life as a fat girl, but her core message is that whatever one wants in the world, what we need more than anything is compassion and love of ourselves. It reminds me in many ways of Brene Brown's work (which I really love) but with an edgier, wittier and more bad-ass kind of approach.

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