How Understanding Racism and Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy and Build Collective Freedom
January 1, 2023
King's book is a guide to moving past body positivity and acceptance into body liberation, a concept that explores the connection between body shaming, racism, and white supremacy. King, an educator and strength coach, breaks down concepts with easy-to-understand language, so the book feels more accessible than academic. She also mixes in personal anecdotes to underscore her points, and the end of every chapter includes questions for readers to ponder or answer regarding their own relationships with their bodies, racism, social media, diet culture, and privilege. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers, particularly women, who are familiar but not extremely well-versed in topics of or relating to diet culture and social justice--issues that have become much more widely and frequently discussed in recent years. Readers who are already familiar with these concepts may find the book too simplistic and repetitive, but many will likely find it interesting and helpful.--Heather Sheahan
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2023
The racist underpinnings of the diet industry. A blogger and creator of anti-racism courses for fitness and wellness professionals, King makes her book debut with an impassioned argument urging women to liberate themselves from a culture of "thin privilege" that validates thinness and Whiteness as markers of beauty. The disdain that many women of color feel about their bodies, she asserts, comes from our "white supremacist society that is inherently fatphobic, homophobic, and transphobic." Women face demeaning stereotypes that equate being fat with being undisciplined, slovenly, or stupid, resulting in disparities in income, medical treatments, and even access to clothing. King speaks from experience when she reveals her own struggle to remake her body. Even as a child, she was taller than other kids, and she stood out as a Black girl at an affluent White school. Longing to fit in, King looked around at magazines, TV, and ads and decided she needed to be thin. At 13, she began calculating her caloric intake; at 17, she discovered the restrictive Atkins diet; at 24, she joined a gym and told a personal trainer that her goal was to be skinny. After decades of suffering body dysmorphia and striving for an unrealistic image of perfection, King argues convincingly that body love and body acceptance are not enough to transcend a prejudiced diet culture and racist attitudes about Black women's bodies. Instead, she advocates for body liberation--i.e., the belief that "at our essence we are so much more than our bodies." The author calls out women who claim to promote inclusivity and diversity while still holding racist views, and she decries the pretense of "performative allyship." Following each chapter, King presents a list of questions and exercises that she calls "From Principle to Practice," asking readers, for example, "When was the first time you were made to believe something was wrong with your body?" A fervent message about self-worth.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
March 1, 2023
Diet culture has become so ubiquitous that it's almost impossible to avoid, writes King, with children as young as six regularly expressing a wish to be thinner. The former strength coach shares her own rocky journey to breaking up with diet culture by gaining a better understanding of fatphobia's deep entanglement with racist beauty standards and ultimately, white supremacy. After years of exercising iron control over her own diet and exercise routine, King started to realize that getting thinner did not bring the happiness she expected. More than that, she became increasingly aware that her struggles to love her body did not arise from a failure on her part, but were rather a symptom of living within a society shaped by systemic anti-Blackness. King's frank, funny writing unpacks complicated ideas without ever veering into didacticism, making the book accessible to readers who are just beginning to learn about the toxic and prejudiced underpinnings of diet culture. Each chapter ends with questions to help readers think critically about how they relate to privilege, wellness, food, and their own bodies.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.