Books

An (incomplete) list of non-fiction books on fat acceptance, fat studies, and fat fabulousness

This list is most definitely incomplete.  Suggestions for books to add are strongly encouraged.

A quick note: Susie Orbach will never appear on this list.  Fat is a Feminist Issue may have a promising title, but it’s full of hideous infantalising and pathologising of fat women. Her argument is that it’s ok to be a little bit bigger than the idealised body, but that women who are actually fat are subconsciously hiding from adult sexuality and responsibility. Orbach popularised these increadibly damaging ideas, which remain a powerful part of how fatness is conceived of as a ‘symptom’ of some deeper disturbance.  Similarly, books on eating disorders are not included, because the popular equation of fatness with disordered eating is both false and dangerous.

I haven’t read everything listed below.  Books I have read are marked with an *.  Also, listing is not the same as recommending.

Fat Studies. All academic all the time.

Fat & Proud: The Politics of Size, Charlotte Cooper, 1998*

Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness, Jeffrey Sobal & Donna Maurer, 1999*

Weighty Issues: Fatness and thinness as social problems, Jeffrey Sobal & Donna Maurer, 1999*

Bodies Out Of Bounds: Fatness & Transgression, Jana Evans Braziel & Kathleen LeBesco (eds), 2001*

Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, Kathleen LeBesco, 2004*

The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology, Michael Gard and Jan Wright (eds), 2005*

Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession, Don Kulick & Anne Meneley, 2005*

The ‘Fat’ Female Body, Samantha Murray, 2008*

The Fat Studies Reader, Esther Rothblum & Sondra Solovay (eds), 2009*

Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood, Anna Kirkland, 2008

Fat Studies in the UK, Corrina Tomrley & Ann Kaloski Naylor, 2009

Biopolitics and the Obesity Epidemic: Governing Bodies, Jan Wright & Velerie Harwood, 2009

Fat Acceptance & Self Help

-

Fat Politics & Health

-

Memoir, Biography, Autobiography

-