Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black women are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to a diagnosis of heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.

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Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black women are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to a diagnosis of heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.

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Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

by Evette Dionne
Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

by Evette Dionne

eBook

$7.99 

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Overview

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black women are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to a diagnosis of heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780063076389
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 12/06/2022
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Evette Dionne is a journalist, an editor, and a pop-culture critic. She is the National Book Award–nominated author of Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box, a middle- grade nonfiction book about Black women suffragists. Her work has appeared in Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Time, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Teen Vogue, among other publications. A graduate of Bennett College, Dionne is based in Denver, where she works as the executive editor of YES! Media.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

No Country for Fat Kids 1

Doctors, Get Your Shit Together 23

In the Land of Princesses, All We Do Is Catfish 49

I Want a Love Like Khadijah James 67

All Hail the Queens of Not Giving Two Fucks 91

Turn Off the Lights 111

The Skinny Boyfriend Trope 127

Yes, Mothers Can Be Monstrous 145

The Impermanent Prototype 165

Celebrities, Weight Loss, and Us 187

Our 600 lb. Obsession 195

Your Life Is Disposable 209

Back to the Fat Future 223

Acknowledgments 243

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