Review – Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Love, Life and Fashion

The kind folks at Seal Press sent me a copy of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Love, Life and Fashion edited by Virgie Tovar a few weeks ago for me to review, and I literally started reading it the minute I ripped open the envelope.  This is one book I was really excited to get into.

What can I say about this book other than… it’s fabulous!  You may know some of the contributors, amazing fierce fatties like Charlotte Cooper, Margritte Kristjanss0n, Tasha Fierce,  Golda Poretsky and of course Virgie Tovar amongst others, all of whom have been writing for awhile online.  There are also heaps of other brilliant pieces from other writers I had not heard of too.

This book made me laugh, think, cry, ask questions and pump my fist in the air in triumph.  Not just for baby fab fatties Hot & Heavy had me asking questions and stretching my thoughts about all kinds of topics, from my choices in clothes to fat sexuality.  But so much of it resonated with me I felt like I was having a conversation with friends, not just reading a book.

I would say that Hot & Heavy is the new must-have book for all fab fatties, whatever stage of their lives they happen to be in.  If you can’t buy it, urge your local library to get copies for you to borrow.  I wish I could buy each and all of you a copy, I know this one will have pride of place on my bookshelves.

Fat Activism In the Library

It has been with some considerable delight that I have been following Cat Pausé posting a lovely long list of fat studies book titles to her Tumblr over the past few weeks.  I knew about a few titles, but at last count Cat was up to 30 titles.  Which, needless to say, has created a very long “to read” list for me.

Cat and I got talking about just how many titles there are and what their availability is like, when it dawned on me – “You’re a librarian Kath!  You know how to access books!”

Let’s face it, books are expensive to buy.  Plus they take up space, have environmental impact and it’s not always necessary to keep them or read them again.  So being able to borrow them from the library is a fantastic exercise in accessibility.  Now I don’t know about your local library, but mine is free to join, you can borrow up to 20 items at any given time, can request books from other branches of our library service for a small fee, can have most items for four weeks AND has over 3 million items in the collection.  Not to mention that there are multiple languages available, resources for people with disabilities and a whole bunch of other services you can take up.  That does vary from library service to library service, but whichever way you go, it’s still a budget way to read all these great titles.

One of the things Cat and I have been talking about is the concept of having fat studies titles in a library collection as an alternative voice to the usual diet books and “you can lose weight too” pop psychology/self help books.

Now I know we have Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon PhD in our collection.  If I take the Dweey number (Dewey is the classification by subject matter) of just that title alone, 613.25, and search our catalogue, I come up with 256 titles.  All of them, except Health at Every Size, are diet books.  So to one fat-friendly title, I get 255 weight loss/diet books, just in our collection alone.

When I search the Dewey of Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby’s book Screw Inner Beauty (US title: Lessons from the Fatosphere), 616.398, I bring up 19 titles, 17 of those are weight loss/diet help guides or titles about the “obesity epidemic”.  The other fat-friendly title is Prof. Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth.

The next search I ran was a subject search for “eating disorders”.  I got 279 hits, only one of which could be considered fat-friendly, and that is Harriet Brown’s Brave Girl Eating.  A search on “body image” brings up 64 titles, almost all of these focus on “looking good” or “you’re not as fat as you think you are” subjects (which excludes anyone who actually is fat).  There is a very high focus under this subject heading on “flattering” clothing and “what not to wear”.

Next I decided to search the term “fat”.  Over 450 titles came up, and most of these were diet books, low-fat cookbooks and “weight loss journey” stories.  No fat acceptance/fat-friendly titles came up under “fat” at all.  And don’t get me started on what comes up under “obesity” as a subject search.  Aye! Aye! Aye!

So it goes to show that the prevailing message being sent is fat = bad/unhealthy.

But!  Just by having these titles by Linda Bacon, Paul Campos, Harriet Brown, Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding, there is at least some alternative perspective available in the public library.  Of course, read one and they refer you on to other titles.

The real magic though is these titles sitting on the shelves of libraries, quietly lurking in amongst the fat loathing titles.  Along comes the humble borrower, hunting that “Lose the Fat and be Rich for Life”* title, and there it is.  Health at Every Size.  Or The Obesity Myth, or any of the other titles.  So innocent looking but inside those covers… RADICAL AWESOMENESS!

If one person picks one of those titles up instead of the “Purple Food to Skinny Jeans!”** book, imagine the difference that could be made to their lives!

So, if you want to read any of the awesome books Cat has compiled in her list, get thee to your local library!  If they don’t have it, request it.  Many public libraries rely on customer requests to drive their collections.  Plus every one they add, thanks to your suggestion, gets borrowed by other people to discover the fat acceptance message too.  The same goes for fat positive fiction.  It doesn’t just have to be non-fiction.

You can also ask your library about Inter-Library Loans as well.  Many library services share their collections amongst each other, quite often for free, sometimes for a small fee.  Plus if you’re a member of a public library, you can often get access to academic papers and journals as well through the library’s subscription.

Besides, libraries are definitely fat friendly spaces.  Librarians care about your reading, not your body size.  And libraries are accessible, have comfortable, solid furniture and are free!

What are you waiting for?

*Yes, I made this book title up.
**Ok I made this one up too.

Mini Review: Fat! So? by Marilyn Wann

So on my “un-post” the other day when I was feeling quite uninspired, I asked you what kind of subjects and posts you’d like to see.  I got some good suggestions (and if you have some more, please feel free to leave them) and I’ll start to have a go at some of them soon.

I thought that since Paponda suggested Marilyn Wann’s “Fat!  So?” to a new visitor to my blog, and I’ve not long finished reading it, I might give a bit of a mini review so that those of you who have yet to read it might feel inspired to do so.

I actually had a bit of trouble getting a copy of the book, because it’s a few years old now and my library service deemed it too old to add to the collection, and I couldn’t find it locally.  So I turned to The Book Depository and ordered a copy from there.

It’s taken me longer than it would normally take to read a book, mostly because life has been so chock full over the past few months, but I managed to finish it a few days ago and closed the book very happy that I’d read it.  I love the friendly, matter-of-fact tone, the anecdotes from fatties of all kinds, the little illustrations peppered throughout the book (I’ve picked one that I’d like to get tattooed on me one day in the future), and the poetry that pops up from time to time.

There is a lot of practical advice, from how to deal with medical professionals, family and strangers on the street, to how to find clothes and to rock them with confidence, how to face the dating world as a flabulous fatty, and how to negotiate your way through situations that generally just crop up for we fats that non-fats don’t really have to deal with.

One of my favourite things about the book is that at the bottom of each page there is a little tidbit of advice for the reader on a whole myriad of subjects relating to fat.  Plus in the top, right hand corner, there is one of those little flick cartoons of a very cute fat lady (the same as on the cover) dancing.

Plus the whole book is served up with a delicious sense of humour and fun, that makes it a breeze to read.

Awesome Fatties Volume 1: Marilyn Wann

I just have to share this video:

I am currently reading Marilyn’s book, Fat! So? and loving every single page.  What an amazing, inspirational woman.  Marilyn is a prime example of living with fattitude if I ever found one.

I will blog more about the book when I’ve finished reading it, but until then, check out her website www.fatso.com There are photos of butts as the icons to each section of the website people!!  BUTTS!!

Share Your Fat Acceptance Reading!

Lightning post folks.

Discussion on Twitter about fat acceptance reference reading has got me thinking that as the librarian, I need to compile these into a handy reference list.

So, in the comments, please leave me any good fat acceptance reference books and I will compile them into a nice easy reference list with links for purchase and such.

Personally I have read or am reading:

• Screw Inner Beauty/Lessons from the Fatosphere by Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding
• The Fat Girls Guide to Life by Wendy Shanker
• The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos
• Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon

So these are all already on my list.

Go to it folks – share your FA reading!

Fabulous Fat Friendly Fiction

Y’all know I’m a librarian right?

Well, if you didn’t, you do now.  Which means I love to read.  But all my life I’ve read books where the heroine was some impossible ideal woman – ie… thin.  So I’ve always been on the hunt for a good novel with a fabulous fat female as the central character.

A few years ago, pre-fat acceptance days for me and back when I had crappy self esteem, a friend recommended Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series to me, and I read the first three straight away.  I loved them to bits.  I kind of forgot them for awhile, but recently while browsing a bookstore I came across the first in the series, Earthly Delights, and decided to buy it for my permanent collection.

I read it again last week and it was with fresh eyes, as life has changed in many ways for me.  I came to realise just how a) ahead of her time Kerry Greenwood is in writing a fabulous fat heroine and b) just how much wisdom this book imparts.  I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Let me tell you a little about Corinna Chapman.  She’s a successful businesswoman who owns and runs a bakery in central Melbourne.  She has a wicked sense of humour, lots of friends, sexy, lives in a gorgeous apartment, is a well-liked employer, is intelligent, takes no shit from anybody and has a boyfriend who I would wager is the hottest man in fiction.  Oh, and she’s fat.  Not just a bit chubby, a size 12 or 14, but pure plus sized big girl fat.  And she’s gorgeous.

And the descriptions of the delights she bakes in her bakery are breathtaking.  There are even recipes at the end of the book.

I have a couple of my favourite quotes from Earthly Delights that I’ve copied down for you.

I can’t afford to spend days in self loathing as everyone expects fat women do. Self loathing eats your life. Being fat isn’t my fault or even my sin, despite what all those TV ads say. I was myself and that was what I was…

This book was first published in 2004 – a good six years ago now.  Even for 2010 it’s a radical statement for a female character in fiction.

Or how about this one:

The first thing anyone thinks about a fat woman is, disgusting creature, I bet she stuffs herself with Mars Bars before breakfast and eats her own weight in chocolate every day and we don’t, generally. My mantra is that I am fat because I am fat and there is not a lot I can do about it. And I have the example of Gossamer and Kylie always before me. I could not get that thin if I starved for ten years, and that is a fact. We are famine survivors, we fat women, and ought to be valued for it. We must have been very useful when everyone else collapsed with starvation. We would have been able to sow the crop, feed the babies and keep the tribe alive until spring came. If you breed us out, what will you do when the bad times come again?

Isn’t it just a delicious paragraph?  She goes on to say:

There was a reason why the oldest depiction of a human is the Venus of Willendorf, a huge fat woman.  We were genetically designed to keep your tribe alive so that the thin people could be born.  So be nice.  Or at least shut up about it.  Every time I turn on a TV I see (1) a car ad and then (2) some simpering female telling me how easy it is to lose weight by some new means and how wonderful she feels now she’s thinner, just send lots of money.  Then I snort and turn on cable.

Such wisdom!  I love the no bullshit style of narrative that Kerry gives Corinna, the kind of “Here’s how it is folks.” voice.

I will be purchasing the rest of the series and reading them each in turn, and I promise I will nab some of the best quotes to share with you all here on this blog.

However I do heartily recommend that you go out and get yourself copies and read them.  Buy them for your permanent collection (or at LEAST read the library copy first!) and even highlight the bits that make you feel good about yourself.

I’m pretty sure you will feel good about yourself when you read this series.

P.S. I have just found a website for this series: Earthly Delights