Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

by Virginia Sole-Smith

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids believe that “fat” is bad. By middle school, more than a quarter of them have gone on a diet. What are parents supposed to do?

Kids learn, as we’ve all learned, that thinness is a survival strategy in a world that equates body size and value. Parents worry if their kids care too much about being thin, but even more about the consequences if they aren’t. And multibillion-dollar industries thrive on this fear of fatness. We’ve fought the “war on obesity” for over forty years and Americans aren’t thinner or happier with their bodies. But it’s not our kids—or their weight—who need fixing.

In this illuminating narrative, journalist Virginia Sole-Smith exposes the daily onslaught of fatphobia and body shaming that kids face from school, sports, doctors, diet culture, and parents themselves—and offers strategies for how families can change the conversation around weight, health, and self-worth.

Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and groundbreaking book that will help parents learn to reckon with their own body biases, identify diet culture, and empower their kids to navigate this challenging landscape. Sole-Smith draws on her extensive reporting and interviews with dozens of parents and kids to offer a provocative new approach for thinking about food and bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250831217
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/25/2023
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	35,525
Product dimensions:	9.50(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Virginia Sole-Smith is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Slate, and Elle. She is the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America and also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, two daughters, a cat, a dog, and way too many houseplants.

Editorial Reviews

03/06/2023

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. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2023

A 2012 study shows that nearly 80 percent of Americans may have some level of bias toward people with larger bodies, and that prejudice may have started when they were children. Journalist Sole-Smith (The Eating Instinct) deliberately uses the word "fat" in this work, as she believes that the stigma surrounding it needs to be removed. In this well-researched book, the author examines historical models and policies that don't take into account normal variations in growth. The "childhood obesity epidemic" is addressed at length, with the caveat that weight loss in a child could lead to an eating disorder and dietary restrictions may result in incidents of sneaking food. The effects of racial discrimination and poverty, with the expense of fruits and vegetables (particularly organic) being cost-prohibitive in some communities, are also explored. The book ends with a chapter called "How to Have the Fat Talk," which includes a list of additional resources, but this title would've benefitted from even more of the author's take on how to effect change. VERDICT Overall, this book shines in its look at policy and historical views of this topic. Parents concerned about their child's weight and body image will appreciate it.

Library Journal

2023-02-24
A freelance journalist and parent navigates the murky waters of raising children in a fat-biased society.

As her daughters grew up, Sole-Smith, author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America, began to notice how often others commented on their bodies, and she understandably worried about the consequences of such superficialities. “Unlearning [a] core belief about the importance of thinness,” writes the author, “means deciding that thin bodies and fat bodies have equal value….You have to believe that being fat isn’t a bad thing. And that means you have to challenge a lot of what you thought you knew about health, beauty, and morality.” Beginning with her personal reflections, the author expands her narrative into a broader sociological exploration, which includes the details from her interviews with families (all struggling with body image and food) and pertinent data and analysis. Sole-Smith is an accessible, concise writer, largely avoiding academic jargon. Even though she explains that everyone has some measure of an ingrained bias, she refrains from making readers feel guilty; rather, she is instructive and encouraging. While digesting hard-hitting comments from children grappling with diet culture, many readers will be able to recognize themselves in similar situations. Sole-Smith provides well-rounded discussions of eating disorders, puberty, calorie counting, fitness influencers, and the myth that a fat child necessarily means that they have lazy or disengaged parents. The author also deconstructs racism and classism endemic to her topic, tracing the historical roots of a variety of prejudices. After highlighting the data and recounting her personal story, Sole-Smith closes with a section entitled “How To Have the Fat Talk,” and she adds a list of further resources notable for the way in which the author divides up relevant books into such categories as memoir, fiction, books on eating, and books on fatness, bodies, and bias.

A thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents.

Kirkus Reviews

I am extremely grateful to Virginia for writing Fat Talk. It’s a fearless and game-changing addition to the conversation about kids, food and weight, and a book that all parents need to read.”
—Emily Oster, author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet

“If you have ever held a piece of food or briefly glimpsed a part of your body and felt a complicated thing, you need to read this book. Fat Talk is about parenting—but also about living—within and outside of the nefarious stories we’ve been told about food and bodies and how and why they relate to health; about the dangers of restriction and the freedom and the power that can come from loving ourselves and one another on new and better terms.”
—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight and Want

“Fat Talk is the book I wish my parents had when I was growing up.”
—Julia Turshen, New York Times bestselling author

“Making meaningful social change—especially when it comes to America’s insidious diet culture—can feel like slow, Sisyphean work. It requires not only questioning the complex systems we live within but also imagining new, better solutions. Lucky for all of us with bodies, Virginia Sole-Smith is a visionary. In Fat Talk, she generously guides grown-ups toward unlearning everything we’ve been taught about weight and worth and teaches us to show young people that they are always enough just as they are. Everyone should read this book.”
—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother

“With Fat Talk, Virginia Sole Smith hasn’t just given us a great book for parents of fat kids. She’s given us an indispensable resource for adults preparing kids of all sizes to navigate a world full of bodies, biases, and appearance-based judgment. If you’ve ever longed for a conversation about fat kids that’s rooted in facts, candor, and empathy, this is it. Fat Talk is a must-read for any adult who wants to build a kinder, more accepting, and more just world for the kids in their lives.”
—Aubrey Gordon, cohost of Maintenance Phase and author of “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People

“If you’ve ever struggled in your relationship with food and your body—and especially if you’re trying to raise kids to be resilient in the face of diet culture—this book is essential reading. Virginia offers a nuanced and deeply reported look at the many unintended consequences of the rhetoric around ‘childhood obesity,’ and presents a powerful case for rethinking the conventional wisdom about weight and health. At a time when the world feels increasingly cruel to fat kids, this book will be a beacon of hope to many.”
—Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS, author of The Wellness Trap and Anti-Diet

“This paradigm-shifting book…flip[s] the script on diet culture and anti-fat bias…With its message of trusting our kids’ bodies (and everyone else’s) as they are as both a social-justice issue and an act of love, this is a great place to begin.”
—Booklist, *starred*

“[Sole-Smith] refrains from making readers feel guilty; rather, she is instructive and encouraging. …Sole-Smith provides well-rounded discussions of eating disorders, puberty, calorie counting, fitness influencers, and the myth that a fat child necessarily means that they have lazy or disengaged parents…A thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[C]ompassionate…[Sole-Smith’s] 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.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher