Summary of Unshrinking by Kate Manne: How to Face Fatphobia

By Justin Reese

 

DISCLAIMER

 

This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Rebels by Joshua Green: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics

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Kate Manne's book, "The Fate of Fate," explores the harmful effects of size discrimination on everyone and how to combat it. Manne, a feminist philosopher, shares her personal experiences of being bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. She argues that fatphobia is a social justice issue, contributing to wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes. Manne proposes a new politics of "body reflexivity," a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist for, and suggests that the solution is not to love our bodies more but to dismantle the forces that control and constrain us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Jan 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224972791

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

FIGHTING WEIGHT

The author, a lifelong feminist and author of two books on misogyny, initially felt too fat to be a feminist in public. However, when her editor suggested a publicity tour of London, she flinched from the prospect. She felt too big to speak out about the down girl moves that teach girls and women to be small, meek, and quiet.

The author's book, Down Girl, was published in 2017, the same week that Tarana Burke's #MeToo movement was popularized by celebrities. She found herself talking to journalists about misogyny almost daily, but only appeared on camera via Skype to control the angle. She had carefully curated headshots from her previous weight and asked audience members not to take any photos.

The author has been on every fad diet, tried every weight-loss pill, and starved herself since her early twenties. In coming of age and size in a fatphobic society, she learned to avoid certain key opportunities, risks, and pleasures. She has been swimming just once since the age of sixteen, dancing since the age of twenty, and wearing leggings and an oversize T-shirt.

Fatphobia has made the author miss out on a lot in life and made her undertake a careful social calculus where the risk of being judged, scorned, and discredited for her fat body has often not been worth the potential benefits of putting herself out there.

The author, a woman who has been struggling with her mental health and physical health due to her weight, wrote a book called How Not to Die about the issue. She was inspired by Michael Greger's friend Art, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning while writing the book. The author continued to hide her weight and struggled with the publicity surrounding her weight. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a relief for many people, especially fat ones, who felt the need to hide their weight and explore ideas without fear of being ridiculed or belittled.

The author realized that their internalized fatphobia was a reflection of the fatphobia rampant in society. They began to view fatphobia as a serious form of structural oppression and began to gather the strength and tools to stop dieting, obsessing, and living peaceably with their body. This book is partly a product of this hard-won victory.

The author believes that the solution to fatphobia is not to improve self-image or love our bodies better but to remake the world to properly fit fat bodies and effect the socially transformative recognition that there is nothing wrong with us. They must resist the fatphobia that has oppressed, controlled, and constrained them, for the sake of themselves and larger people, and face the violence of antifatness, wherein fat bodies are put down, cut down, and cut up, all for no good reason.

Fatphobia is a growing issue that affects many Americans, with nearly three-quarters classified as overweight or obese. This societal bias is a straitjacket that restricts freedom, movement, and the capacity to take up space in a world that encourages girls and women to diminish themselves. Fatphobia is often referred to as superfat or infinifat, and other terms may be used to describe individuals who struggle to find clothing large enough for their bodies and fit into the designated space in society.

Fatphobia is a feature of social systems that unjustly rank fatter bodies as inferior to thinner bodies in terms of health, moral, sexual, and intellectual status. It is partly a misguided ideology that our culture holds about fat people, claiming they are unhealthy, unattractive, and ignorant. Fat bodies lie on a continuum of weight and value, and the fatter one is more affected by fatphobia. However, all others are not equal due to other inequalities and injustices within the social world. Fatphobia intersects with a gamut of others, including racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Fatphobia privileges good fatties who perform supposedly healthy behaviors, such as dieting, over their more unruly, less apologetic counterparts, and the less obedient they are, the less they get to speak out. Addressing fatphobia is crucial for promoting a more inclusive and inclusive society.

Fatphobia is a complex