Unshrinking Audiobook By Kate Manne cover art

Unshrinking

How to Face Fatphobia

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Unshrinking

By: Kate Manne
Narrated by: Kate Manne
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About this listen

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled

“An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

A NEW YORKER AND NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.

Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except one: body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential.

In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity”—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.©2024 Kate Manne (P)2024 Random House Audio
Biographies & Memoirs Racism & Discrimination Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

“Manne’s argument draws on personal experiences . . . and on trenchant analyses of the ways in which fatness has been regarded throughout history.”—The New Yorker

“[Unshrinking] blew my mind right from the start. . . . At least once, I cried from painful realizations and memories. I couldn’t stop talking about this book with fellow parents at school drop-off or at home with my spouse—and I gave a copy to my mom when I finished reading it.”—NPR

“Kate Manne tears down the fortress of Western fatphobia. . . . Unshrinking is a project of deconstruction, archaeology, and care.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Manne] writes in harrowing detail of her own experiences of discrimination and the cycle of shockingly disordered eating. . . . Claiming total ownership of one’s own body ought not to feel radical, but perhaps it is.”—The New Statesman

What listeners say about Unshrinking

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Fantastic

Not only did Kate educate me in an intellectual way but made it easy to comprehend

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Revolutionary

I was compelled by the author’s reasoning, statistics and conclusion. It blew my mind. I would recommend it to anyone who has dieted.

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Very grateful for this book

This book saves lives. Not just the lives of fat people but all of us long-term dieters. We diet not for health reasons but for the relentless pressure of being thin. I will read this again and again whenever the fatfobia culture threatens me.

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outstanding takedown of diet culture

I have a fantasy of buying 100 copies of this book and littering doctor's offices, waiting rooms, and little free libraries with them. This message deserves to be spread like napalm burning through entrenched misogynist structures. Way to Go Kate Manne. Sign me up for your revolution.

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All! The! Yes!!

This is an exceptional book, revealing so many of the deeply embedded, insidious beliefs that have made so many people hate and destroy our bodies, cast aspersions on others and destroy the mutuality and respect required for healthy enough community.

Her understanding of the intersectionality of racism, genderism and transphobia is pivotal in truly excavating, breaking up and destroying the culturally accepted erasure of people whose wrappers “fail” to accommodate someone else’s comfort.

Thank you, Kate Manne! Let’s burn Fat Phobia and Diet Culture to the ground so that we may rise from the ashes and live in the whole of our lives with authenticity and joy.

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An Incredible Encouragement in a World that Criticizes

The book is well-researched and written in a format that interweaves story and fact quite seamlessly. It will leave you with the encouragement and knowledge that ALL bodies matter and deserve loving care.

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Skimmed the Surface

Not much depth here, which is surprising considering the author is a philosopher. Also, was struck by the odd emphasis throughout the book on trans issues not related to weight and multiple appeals to wear masks and get vaxed. Didn’t learn anything new and don’t feel the author helped the cause much.

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