Psychology & Counseling
![Virginia Sole-Smith - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B07FTTMVQ1.jpg)
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
"Along with moving stories of the families she has interviewed, Sole-Smith offers data…Fat Talk also questions the received narrative of the ‘obesity epidemic' and traces a far more complicated relationship between health, weight, diet, disease and mortality."
―The Washington Post
"Through dozens of interviews, Sole-Smith gathers and shares the experiences and observations of people in the trenches…She weaves these stories together with findings from published research, her keen observations of social media and cultural trends, and her own experience as a mother and as a woman in a changing body who inhabits the same weight-focused world we all do. If she's left a stone unturned, I can't find it…The day I started reading this book was the day I started recommending it."
―The Seattle Times
"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...
―The Washington Post
"Through dozens of interviews, Sole-Smith gathers and shares the experiences and observations of people in the trenches…She weaves these stories together with findings from published research, her keen observations of social media and cultural trends, and her own experience as a mother and as a woman in a changing body who inhabits the same weight-focused world we all do. If she's left a stone unturned, I can't find it…The day I started reading this book was the day I started recommending it."
―The Seattle Times
"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...
Readers Top Reviews
S.H.JenBill B.Rob
This book brings sanity back to our relationship to food and our bodies! Well-written with evidenced based themes. This book has relieved me already of disordered thinking about this topic.
Erica RobinsonS.H
Virginia Sole-Smith shines a light on how fatphobia and diet culture insidiously undermine our children's physical, mental, and emotional well being at every turn. Our cultural focus on weight has caused endless suffering and done worse than nothing for our actual health and hasn't even made anyone skinnier! We need to raise a generation that can eat and move and love their bodies because they want to, not because they're *supposed* to. (Nothing drains the joy of of life like being told what to do and what not to do.)
JoanErica Robinso
This is good reading for anyone with a body, but especially for people interested in body liberation, people raising kids, and people who end up talking to their own parents about food/bodies/fatness more often than they would like. Sole-Smith does a compelling job of pulling the science together with personal stories from the people she interviewed. There are so many things that popular culture has us “knowing” that are actually unanswered or flat-out wrong. Sole-Smith manages to enlighten us while remaining compassionate to the way individuals make their choices. This book will change lives for the better.
Laura CiottiJoanE
This book is essential reading for anyone with children in your life. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in a larger body and my family’s and doctor’s attempts to shrink me resulted in an eating disorder and a lifelong unhealthy relationship with food and my body. As a mother of two young girls, I want to change this narrative and offer a fuller picture of health, one that includes a healthy relationship with food and dispels anti-fat myths. This book goes a long way in helping support me in this lifelong effort. Thank you for writing it!
BTLaura CiottiJoa
This book should be required reading for all - not just parents. As someone working in the nutrition industry and a parent myself, it’s incredibly refreshing to see Fat Talk break down myths of diet culture, the “childhood obesity epidemic” and so much more. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to take a closer look at their fat bias, the wellness industry’s shady underbelly, and the health implications associated with size (or lack thereof).
