Charis welcomes Aubrey Gordon in conversation with Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd for a discussion of “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People. The co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and creator of Your Fat Friend equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice.

The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance “glorifies obesity.” The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive.

In “You Just Need to Lose Weight,” Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people. Bringing her dozen years of community organizing and training to bear, Gordon shares the rhetorical approaches she and other organizers employ to not only counter these pernicious myths, but to dismantle the anti-fat bias that so often underpin them.

As conversations about fat acceptance and fat justice continue to grow, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” will be essential to ensure that those conversations are informed, effective, and grounded in both research and history.

Aubrey Gordon writes under the pseudonym of “Your Fat Friend,” illuminating the experiences of fat people and urging greater compassion for people of all sizes. Her work has reached millions of readers and has been translated into 19 languages. She is co-host of the Maintenace Phase podcast and a columnist with SELF magazine. Her work has also been featured in Health magazine, Vox, and Gay Mag, among others. She lives in the Northwest, where she works as a writer and organizer. Connect with her at yourfatfriend.com, and as YrFatFriend on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd is a writer, editor, and consultant whose published work lies at the intersection of bodies, selves, and cultures.  Publishing under the name Hanne Blank, she is the author or editor of ten books that include Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press), Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury), and most recently FAT (Bloomsbury, 2020).  Formerly on the faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies department at Denison University, she lives in Decatur with her spouse, a liberal distribution of dogs and cats, and ever-expanding collections of books, fountain pens, lipstick, and yarn. You can find her on Twitter at @hanneblank; she publishes a Substack at https://hanneblankboyd.substack.com/

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“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People--Aubrey Gordon in conversation with Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd