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Fat Talk
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture | Virginia Sole-Smith
4 posts | 5 read | 8 to read
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 dont 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 adulthoodand 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 Americas 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 societys 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 worldbecause its not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing.
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Smrloomis
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On the idea of forcing kids to eat whatever we say they need to eat: “Without ever intending it, we‘re normalizing the idea that it‘s ok for somebody else to dominate your body, to decide what you put inside it - if they love you.” !!!

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britt_brooke
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ How can we raise our kids to combat fat phobic culture? So many of us were taught not to take up space, and have spent our whole lives trying to unlearn this. It‘s hard. Sole-Smith addresses social stigma, intentions / behaviors, internalized negative stereotypes, and so much more. We must promote body diversity. Humans come in a vast variety. This is such a worthwhile read!

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sebrittainclark
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Pickpick

4.5/5

This is such an important book about the impact diet culture and anti-fat bias can have on children and teenagers. It's a book that both educates on the topic and offers some suggestions for how to combat the anti-fat bias kids are being exposed to.

Content warning: eating disorders, fat phobia

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sebrittainclark
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audiobook: Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith
e-book: A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seale
#naturalitsy: Islands of Abandonment

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

rachelsbrittain Can't wait to hear what you think about A Most Agreeable Murder! 1y
merelybookish I'm also (slowly) making my way through Fat Talk. 1y
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