Ok. Skimmed most of the essays after the first. ( )

As much as this book tries to show many different sides of fat, it suffers from the conflation of fat (the substance) to fat (the body type). This conflation may be ubiquitous in our culture, but that doesn't stop it from being probably wrong, and a more skeptical attitude towards this particular presupposition would have greatly improved the book. ( )

Fat isn't a book to gobble up all at once. It's the kind of book you ought to read slowly, giving your brain time to savor and digest the new ideas. As its title suggests, the book is a collection of essays examining what "fat" means around the world. It investigates not only different geographic areas but also different subcultures, like gay fat fetishists and the pornography of extreme obesity. In so doing, it dissects where our culture's fat fears originate from as well as the hypocrisy behind them. Much more than a feel-good treatise on body acceptance, the book examines the issue of size from angles you likely haven't considered before, like the hypocrisy of a culture that idolizes over-consumption of just about everything...except food. Most fascinating is a chapter devoted to pishtacos, Bolivian vampires that suck the fat from the bodies of unsuspecting victims. Not only is the analysis intriguing, most of it is written in an engaging, readable way. The ideas do get a little repetitive after awhile which is why it's not a good choice for your main reading book. In spite of the repetition, I was glad to have finished the whole thing; each piece contributed a new idea, or made me see an old one in a new light. ( )