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Fat Talk

Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
3 of 4 copies available
3 of 4 copies available

This program is read by the author.
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 don't 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 adulthood—and 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 America's 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 society's 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 audiobook 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 world—because it's not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 6, 2023
      This compassionate manual by journalist Sole-Smith (The Eating Instinct) suggests ways parents can help their children “recognize and reject” anti-fat bias. She explores how messaging that devalues fat bodies damages children’s health, self-esteem, and sense of bodily autonomy through accounts of parents and their kids. “We need to separate weight and health,” she contends, telling the story of an eight-year-old girl who received compliments from strangers about the weight she lost due to undiagnosed type 1 diabetes while her heavier and healthier younger sister received only disapproving comments. Critiquing the overlooked environmental factors that contribute to fatness, Sole-Smith reports on research that found childhood asthma to be associated with adolescent weight gain and calls for public health strategies to focus on alleviating poverty, which leaves many families unable to afford healthy food. She urges parents to talk with teachers, doctors, and their kids about pushing back on anti-fat stigma and encourages parents to tell their children that their value isn’t tied to their weight: “Your body is never the problem.” The eye-opening research upends conventional assumptions about what a healthy body looks like, and readers will appreciate the affirming tone. The result is a striking challenge to fatphobia.

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  • English

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