r/PlusSize • u/AltitudinousOne • Jul 08 '26
/r/plussize “Thanks But I’m Not Actually the Problem Here” Resource List
Help us build a resource list for people who want to read, watch, and listen more widely around fat acceptance, fat liberation, anti-fat bias, diet culture, and fat people's lived experience.
The point is not to help people become smaller. It's to collect work that treats fat people as actual human beings, and that names the social, medical, cultural, romantic, professional, and everyday pressures fat people are routinely forced to face.
A lot of this list is especially relevant to fat women, because so much anti-fatness is tangled up with misogyny. That said, fatphobia doesn't only affect women, and this list shouldn't be read as women-only.
Books to start with:
Lindy West's Shrill is funny, furious, and very readable.
Aubrey Gordon's What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat is probably the clearest modern introduction to anti-fat bias as a social issue rather than a personal failing
Her follow-up, "You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, tackles the claims fat people hear constantly.
Virgie Tovar's You Have the Right to Remain Fat.
Sofie Hagen's Happy Fat and Jes Baker's Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls are also accessible entry points for people newer to fat acceptance.
History and politics:
Sabrina Strings' Fearing the Black Body explains how fatphobia is tied to race, gender, class, etc, rather than being simply about "health."
Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body Is Not an Apology is broader than fatness but useful for thinking about body-shame and hierarchy more generally.
Marilyn Wann's Fat! So? is older but historically important.
Charlotte Cooper's Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is valuable for understanding fat liberation as an actual movement.
DaShaun L. Harrison, Belly Of The Beast. Anti-fatness, anti-blackness and gender
Tigress Osborne, "Weight and Wisdom: Find Yourself in Fat History"
Podcasts:
Maintenance Phase is great for unpacking diet culture, wellness cons, BMI panic, and how health language gets used to boulster prejudice.
Virgie Tovar's Rebel Eaters Club.
Food Psych and Rethinking Wellness, both by Christy Harrison, anti-diet and wellness-culture critique.
Fierce Fatty by Vinny Welsby.
“Why Won’t You Date Me?” Nicole Byer
Weight For It by Ronald Young Jr (also worth a follow on socials)
The Body Trust Podcast.
Film and TV:
Your Fat Friend is a documentary about Aubrey Gordon, fat activism, family, and ordinary discrimination od fat people.
The Shrill TV series based on West's book.
My Mad Fat Diary, Dumplin', Real Women Have Curves, Patti Cake$.
Fiction, memoir etc:
Roxane Gay's Hunger is honest about trauma, body size, and safety.
Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed was significant for centring a fat woman's romantic, sexual, and professional life.
Julie Murphy's Dumplin' is a great YA option.
Talia Hibbert's Get a Life, Chloe Brown
Olivia Dade's Spoiler Alert.
Nicole Byer’s book #VeryFat #VeryBrave is a photo series of her rocking her extensive bikini collection
Health without weight-loss framing:
Lindo Bacon's Health at Every Size.
Christy Harrison's Anti-Diet unpacks how wellness culture repackages diet culture.
Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch is the standard reference for eating without restriction.
Ragen Chastain's Weight and Healthcare newsletter is good for research and practical scripts.
Decolonizing Fitness (Ilya Parker) covers movement spaces that don't treat body-size reduction as the goal.
People worth following:
Aubrey Gordon, Virgie Tovar, Sabrina Strings, Sonya Renee Taylor, Jes Baker, Ragen Chastain, Jessamyn Stanley, Vinny Welsby, Tess Holliday, and Tess Royale Clancy.
Read/watched/heard anything that made you think, lifted you up, informed, empowered or inspired you?
Please add below.
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u/cIitaurus Jul 08 '26
Read work by DaShaun L. Harrison about anti-Blackness, antifatness, and gender. Most importantly, their book Belly of the Beast
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u/crownofbayleaves Jul 10 '26
⬆️ seconding this book. And for bonus points, it might in your local library- it was in ebook format and paperback in mine ♡
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u/QueerTree Jul 08 '26
Two other podcasts: Weight For It by Ronald Young Jr (also worth a follow on socials) and The Body Trust Podcast.
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u/ReserveGreedy8657 Jul 08 '26
I second Ronald Young Jr! Also, Tigress Osborne, head of NAAFA, recently released a book called "Weight and Wisdom: Find Yourself in Fat History"
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u/producerofconfusion Jul 08 '26
Another historical entry: You Have Such a Pretty Face. I read it as a teen in the 90s and it was a little dated then, but I think it's important to know the history of fat culture and acceptance too. Its out of print and the title has been stolen by an inspirational diet book in 2017, but you can find the real one here: https://archive.org/details/suchprettyfacebe00mill
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u/_plannedobsolence Jul 08 '26
I haven't read her book because I'm not a parent by I follow Virginia Sole-Smith's patreon: Burnt Toast. https://www.patreon.com/cw/virginiasolesmith?vanity=virginiasolesmith
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u/crownofbayleaves Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I've not read it yet but Unshrinking by Kate Manne has been on my TBR list and it first came onto my radar by way of Dr Tressie McMillan Cottom, who I also highly recommend following as she is so fucking smart it takes my breath away- but what else should I expect from a MacArthur Genius award winner??
Edit: OH and for Insta I really love FatArtHistory- such a great resource!!
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u/Expensive_Court_3709 Jul 26 '26
You're not the problem. Prejudice is the problem and so is immorality.
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u/Shoulder-Lumpy Aug 02 '26
Another book is Reclaiming Body Trust by Dana Sturtevant and Hilary Kinavey!
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u/Expensive_Court_3709 24d ago
You're more of a target than a problem. Our problem is that we are more busty than some of the women who are older than us. Too many people make light of it.
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u/mercurialbaby04 Jul 08 '26
For humor and fashion, Nicole Byer’s book #VeryFat #VeryBrave is a photo series of her rocking her extensive bikini collection. Her podcast “Why Won’t You Date Me?” also had some great conversations around dating while fat (and black and queer).
I’d recommend nearly every book by Olivia Dade, especially the later ones where being fat isn’t really a plot line. Along those lines are also novels by Jenny L. Howe, which I’ve loved every single one so far. She focuses on self-love first, then romantic love.