Kate Manne

In Unshrinking, Manne, a well-known feminist commentator and Cornell philosophy prof, makes some great points about diet culture and body obsession. She ends with an explication of her philosophy which she names "body reflexivity." With this philosophy, Manne moves away from "body positivity," which marks people as less than if they cannot love their bodies. She also moves past "body neutrality" because what even is that? How can we be neutral about our physical selves? Body reflexivity, as Manne frames it, is the philosophy that our bodies are no one else's damn business. I like that. You are free to decide if you find me attractive, and that is your deal, but it is no more than your opinion, My attractiveness to you is all that stems from that opinion, it says nothing else about me, my attributes, or my life. I am not less because you do not find me attractive and other people are not less for finding me attractive because you do not. As it is we live in a world where a person's body is seen as a sort of sandwich board that supposedly tells people that fat = less credibility, less power, less intellect, less drive, and less worth overall. Fat people are jokes and people who look slim and toned months after child-bearing are paragons, exemplars of all that is good. There are lots of studies that back this up, and I can tell you based on mountains of anecdotal experience and observation that it is true.

I am not sure it is relevant, but certainly the circumstances of my own life impact how I view this tract so I will discuss that briefly. I am fat, not fat enough that people want to tune into basic cable to gawk at me so they can feel better about their own lives or fat enough to have to buy two airplane seats, but fat enough that airplane seats leave me little room to move around and I can't sit cross-legged on the ground. I am comfortable in my body. Well, that is not completely accurate. I am no less comfortable in my fat body than I was when I had a bmi in the "normal" range. I am more comfortable in my fat body than I was during the years I was binging and purging and occasionally had a bmi below "normal." It took me a long time and a whole lot of work to believe that the size of my body was not the thing that determined my intrinsic worth as a human, but I did actually get there. All that said, my weight does have actual impact on my life mostly because it impacts how others perceive me, but also because of physical limitations, mostly man-made but others physical. The physical part of that is where I have a problem with Unshrinking.

Manne spends a lot of this book claiming that excess weight does not impact health and that is where the construction of her position fails. First, to build her body reflexivity framework Manne does not need to go there. Her position (which I agree with completely) is that our bodies are our own business. It stands to reason that should be so even if we know what we are doing is unhealthy. Serious athletic pursuit is unhealthy too, but we don't tell people to stop pushing their bodies to improve performance on the court/field/mat/track. Why shouldn't fatness be the same as physical overwork? The toll on the body is something we can choose to accept. Health impacts have no relevance to body reflexivity as set forth here. The many pages spent arguing that obesity does not impact health take Manne's theory off course. Perhaps more problematic is that her position is false so it casts a pall over the meaningful and true parts of Manne's book. The assertion that there are no proven health impacts stemming from fatness is crap. It has about the same merit as the claim that evolution is not proven. Research overwhelmingly shows that fatness does negatively impact health. Common sense should tell us that the body is a machine, and excess weight puts more stress on the machinery. We should also know that shoving more mass into a limited space affects everything in that space. I can tell you from personal experience that as I age my knees and hips particularly cause me pain and I am far less flexible and agile than my family members who are not fat and who also have osteoarthritis, as I do. I also have high LDL and which triglycerides, both linked to being overweight and both of which are part of overall heart health. More generally, obesity is tied to Type 2 diabetes, many types of cancer, circulatory issues, stroke, dementia, and other potentially deadly illnesses. These are facts, but it is also a fact that these are my problems, my risks, and no one but my doctor and I should be able to have an opinion. The discussion of the very real personal health impacts of fatness doesn't belong in a discussion of body reflexivity as I understand it.

Manne makes related arguments about the science of fatness that are important and do support her overall position. Like Manne I am genetically predisposed to fat and people like us who "run to fat" (her term) often do or have done things to stay slim that are more unhealthy than being fat. I know thin people in terrible health, often but not always as a result of the things they do to stay slim, and fat people in pretty good physical condition. Both Manne and I had eating disorders, and she has had a lot of major weight fluctuations up and down (I have not had a lot of that, but some), and those fluctuations have been tied to many negative health outcomes. She also notes generally unhealthy eating in connection with "diets" and discusses the adverse health effects of bariatric surgery. For naturally fat people staying slim absent the use of things like restrictive diets or surgery is nearly impossible (new drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro may change this.) Her discussion of predisposition to fatness (origin rather than impact), and the clear statistical evidence that weight loss "diets" do not work in the long term and in fact can cause metabolic damage that leads to more weight gain is important to validate her theory. Proper analysis of any philosophical argument accepts that we ought not to hold people responsible when they do not have the power to change their circumstances or behaviors to affect better ends. I am the first to admit I am no philosopher and Manne is a good one. But here, to my eye, she misstepped with the health impacts discussion, and it muddies the science of fatness discussion. She discusses how she is (like me) in a constant battle to be at peace with her body and the world's perception of it, and I think that is what led her to fixate on the denial of health impact. It feels very defensive to me. I get that she wants to answer all the people who claim to "just be worried about your health" or that their real concern is that obesity is driving up health costs for everyone and so everyone bears the burden. Those arguments though are easily dealt with. The first is BS and the second would tax all sorts of behaviors that "drive up health costs" but that no one rails against.

(Manne also makes an absurd argument about the movie The Whale, which completely misperceives the point of that film -- which was that this man's grief led him into despair and he was trying to kill himself without killing himself. Her thoughts on shows like My 600 lb Life were on point, though. And now I will shut up about this because I have gotten as off-point as Manne did.)

In the end, three cheers for the work toward destigmatizing fatness. and for identifying the race and gender-based history and cultural cues behind the dehumanization of fat people And the biggest cheers for the philosophical framework for the radical notion that our bodies are no one's business but our own, that the problem here is with people's reaction to fatness, not with the fat. Thanks to Manne for building a structure around that position. The significant flaws in execution do not dent the value of what she achieves here.… (plus d'informations)

Thank you to #NetGalley and Crown for providing an ARC of Kate Manne’s new book, #Unshrinking.

There are many books, websites, and social media accounts where you can learn about the research on weight gain and loss, dieting, and weight stigma. What Kate Manne brings to this material is the lens of a philosopher; she organizes this information into a philosophical, moral argument with carefully cited evidence to persuade readers that it is WRONG to discriminate against fat people. She also argues against body positivity and even body neutrality, promoting body reflexivity instead. In other words, we need not love our bodies, nor will our happiness and authenticity be found in simply accepting our bodies. We must internalize our bodies as our own, for ourselves, not for the admiration or satisfaction or use of others.

Manne integrates memoir of her own embodied experience throughout the argument, which probably makes the book more accessible for many readers. I personally did not think it works and would prefer fewer personal stories of hemming and hawing over her ‘small fat’ status. It arguably undermines her conclusion: if our bodies are for ourselves, writers do not need put their own embodiment and humanity under the microscope to prove a point. How does that get us closer to fat liberation?

These shortcomings won’t prevent me from recommending the book. I’m sure it will benefit many readers.… (plus d'informations)