In this illuminating narrative on the daily onslaught of body shame
that kids face from peers, school, diet culture, and parents themselves,
journalist Virginia Sole-Smith offers a compelling reported look at how
families can change the conversation around weight, health, and
self-worth.
By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids have learned that "fat"
is bad. As they get older, kids learn to pursue thinness in order to
survive in a world that ties our body size to our value.
Multibillion-dollar industries thrive on consumers believing that we
don't want to be fat. Our weight-centric medical system pushes "weight
loss" as a prescription, while ignoring social determinants of health
and reinforcing negative stereotypes about the motives and morals of
people in larger bodies. And parents today, having themselves grown up
in the confusion of modern diet culture, worry equally about the risks
of our kids caring too much about being "thin" and about what happens if
our kids are fat. Sole-Smith shows how the reverberations of this
messaging and social pressures on young bodies continue well into
adulthood--and what we can do to fight them.
Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of "fat," which is not synonymous
with "unhealthy," "inactive," or "lazy." Talking to researchers and
activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the
country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America's focus on solving the
"childhood obesity epidemic" has perpetuated a second crisis of
disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our
society's internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to
stop "preventing obesity" and start supporting kids in the bodies they
have.
Continuing conversations started by works like Girls & Sex, Under
Pressure, and Essential Labor, Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply
researched, and groundbreaking book that will help parents learn to
reckon with their own body biases, identify diet culture messaging, and
ultimately empower their kids to navigate this challenging landscape.
Sole-Smith offers an alternative framework for parenting around food and
bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive
world--because it's not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing.
