Australian philosophy professor Kate Manne had tried everything to lose weight. But it wasn’t until 2020, when she went for seven days without eating, that she realised her unhealthy obsession had to stop. Like any addict, she had to reach her own rock bottom before she could take control and deal with her problem. Issues around this are thought through in her new book, Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia.
It certainly wasn’t that Manne, 41 this year, lacked the intellectual capacity to understand what was going on – she is a highly regarded philosopher with a professorship at Cornell University, New York State, where she has been teaching since 2013. She is a second-generation public intellectual. Her father, Robert, was a professor of political science at Melbourne’s La Trobe University whose interests include indigenous rights and refugees. Her writer mother, Anne, has published books on motherhood and narcissism.
Hers is almost the philosopher’s version of a superhero origin story. Her childhood was spent in Cottles Bridge, “about an hour out of Melbourne, where we had 20 acres of mostly bush land and herds of kangaroos roaming through the neighbourhoods”.
Philosophical training began early. Her father and his best friend, philosopher Raimond Gaita, “encouraged me to pursue philosophical thinking from about the age of five. So I was lucky to be encouraged, in a way many girls aren’t, by both
