I wrote a short commentary on Kate Manne’s book that reads like a blog post so I’m sharing it here. It’s called “What I Love about Unshrinking, Why Unshrinking Makes Me Sad, and Six Things I’d Like to Talk about with Kate Manne.” Very bloggy title.
I think I was drawn to the blog post style because it’s about some subjects we’ve talked lots about here at Fit is a Feminist Issue. It’s my go-to style I guess for writing about bodies, fatness, and fat phobia.
What’s the book about? Catherine wrote a preview of it for the blog awhile back.
Here’s the Table of Contents of that issue of the APA Studies in Feminism and Philosophy which includes other commentaries by great feminist philosophers.
You can find it here.
It begins like this,
“I love Kate Manne’s Unshrinking. It’s a great book about an important topic; I’m very happy she wrote it. The book’s central thesis is that contrary to what many of us think, we don’t have a problem with there being too many fat people. Instead, we have a major social issue, which is fatphobia. Many of the problems thought to be caused by widespread fatness are, in fact, caused by widespread fatphobia, argues Manne. Connecting fatphobia to its roots in classism, racism, and misogyny, Manne systematically tears apart the myths around larger bodies. I love Manne’s thorough and exacting work. It’s pretty much exactly the book I would hand someone if I thought I needed to correct their views about size and health. I confess to feeling a little bit professionally jealous. I wish I’d written this book! But I didn’t, and so I’m glad Manne did. Unshrinking is a work of careful research, precise analysis, and argument, yet it’s also Manne’s personal story. The two aspects of the book blend very well. Manne is a terrific writer, and I applaud her for including her story.
She writes, “Where did I learn to hate my fat body?” and talks about her own experiences with fad diets and near-starvation weight loss techniques. The book’s impact on me cannot be overstated. Months after reading Unshrinking, I still
find myself haunted by Manne’s personal experiences with fatphobia and her account of her extreme dieting. Her opening story, in which she confesses to feeling “too fat to be feminist in public,” left me speechless. Manne writes that she “flinched from the prospect” of doing the usual book tour appearances because of her size. She notes that she didn’t do book tours because she was scared of what people would think about her appearance because of her weight. How could such a bright, accomplished woman care so much about what other people think about her looks? I know I might be the outlier here, not Manne, but I do fnd myself thinking that once you’ve got a PhD from MIT and a job at Cornell and some pretty amazing books, does it really matter what others think of your size? The tone in the personal sections is pretty sad, and I guess I wanted, for Manne—given the strength of her arguments against fatphobia—a little less sadness and a little more anger at living in such a fatphobic world.”
Anyway, the rest of the commentary is available at the link above.
And while you’re at it, you should buy Manne’s book.
Enjoy!
