October 23 – 27, 2023 is Body Acceptance Week. We are partnering with CHAW to raise awareness about this important week, and to suggest some thought-provoking books related to this theme for your reading list!
Body Acceptance week is a new initiative from the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and the goal is to promote body acceptance while also providing resources, education, and support for those who are experiencing body dissatisfaction.
When we think of body acceptance, the first thing that might come to mind is body positivity. While this can be a part of body acceptance practice for some, feeling positively toward our bodies is certainly not a requirement. Body acceptance can also include the practice of body neutrality, which gives us space to feel positively, negatively, or even neutral about our bodies while also striving to respect and take care of them.
An essential aspect of body acceptance is body liberation. While we may strive individually toward our personal meanings of body acceptance, we can collectively work toward body liberation. This means co-creating a world where all bodies are free from oppression, including weight stigma and size discrimination, and working toward creating safety for everyone.
Check out the reading list below for CHAW’s top picks that explore a variety of perspectives related to body acceptance. From graphic novels to young adult fiction to memoirs, there is a read for everyone. All books are available through FSU Libraries!
Additionally, join FSU Libraries and CHAW Wednesday, October 25th on the main floor of Strozier Library from 1-3pm for our Postcards to My Future Self event! Grab a snack to fuel your studies and write your future self an encouraging or kind message on a postcard. Your message will be mailed to you before the semester ends. Taking time to do kind things for yourself is an important way to practice body respect and acceptance. We hope to see you there!
Be sure to follow @fsuchaw to learn how else you can engage with the FSU community during Body Acceptance Week.
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach
by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
When it was first published, Intuitive Eating was revolutionary in its anti-dieting approach. The authors, both prominent health professionals in the field of nutrition and eating disorders, urge readers to embrace the goal of developing body positivity and reconnecting with one’s internal wisdom about eating—to unlearn everything they were taught about calorie-counting and other aspects of diet culture and to learn about the harm of weight stigma. Today, their message is more relevant and pressing than ever.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Barned and Noble.
The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce
edited by Angie Manfredi
Chubby. Curvy. Fluffy. Plus-size. Thick. Fat.
The time has come for fat people to tell their own stories. Editor Angie Manfredi’s The (Other) F Word combines the voices of Renée Watson, Julie Murphy, Jes Baker, Samantha Irby, Bruce Sturgell, and more in a relatable and gift-worthy guide about body image and fat acceptance. This dazzling collection of art, poetry, essays, and fashion tips is meant for people of all sizes who desire to be seen and heard in a culture consumed by a narrow definition of beauty.
Image and description courtesy of Abrams Books.
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
by Sabrina Strings
There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor Black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat Black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by NYU Press.
Disability Visibility
edited by Alice Wong
Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It’s an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again.
Image courtesy of Penguin Books. Description provided by the Chicago Tribune.
Fat Angie
by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo
Angie is broken—by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. Having failed to kill herself—in front of a gym full of kids—Angie’s back at high school just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance, a girl who knows too well that the package doesn’t always match what’s inside. With an offbeat sensibility and mean girls to rival a horror classic, this darkly comic anti-romantic romance will appeal to anyone who likes entertaining and meaningful fiction.
Image and description courtesy of Amazon.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
by Roxane Gay
New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description via roxanegay.com.
Wow, No Thank You
by Samantha Irby
Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. This is the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “tv executives slash amateur astrologers” while being a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person,” “with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees,” who still hides past due bills under her pillow.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Penguin Random House.
Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes From a Trap Feminist
by Sesali Bowen
Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Harper Collins.
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness
by Da’Shaun L. Harrison
To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.
Da’Shaun Harrison–a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer–offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad,” and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Penguin Random House.
Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine
by Kelly Sue DeConnick
Eisner Award-nominated writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Captain Marvel) and Valentine De Landro (X-Factor) team up to bring you the premiere volume of Bitch Planet, a deliciously vicious riff on women-in-prison sci-fi exploitation.
In a future just a few years down the road in the wrong direction, a woman’s failure to comply with her patriarchal overlords will result in exile to the meanest penal planet in the galaxy. When the newest crop of fresh femmes arrive, can they work together to stay alive or will hidden agendas, crooked guards, and the deadliest sport on (or off!) Earth take them to their maker?
Image and description courtesy of Amazon.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
by Nedra Glover Tawwab
Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them–in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do “healthy boundaries” really mean–and how can we successfully express our needs, say “no,” and be assertive without offending others? In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Penguin Random House.
Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman
by Lindy West
With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy West boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.
Image and description courtesy of Amazon.
I’ll Be the One
by Lyla Lee
The world of K-Pop has never met a star like this. Debut author Lyla Lee delivers a deliciously fun, thoughtful rom-com celebrating confidence and body positivity–perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Julie Murphy.
Image courtesy of Amazon. Description provided by Harper Collins Publishers.
This post was written by Samantha Thoms, Registered Dietitian for CHAW.
Leave a Reply