Overall, this is a very interesting book that is easy to read and engage with. Farrell's use of visual information (showing some of the cartoons, post cards, and posters that she discusses in text) is compelling and adds to her arguments
Amy Erdman Farrell offers a wide-ranging and significant contribution to the relatively new but now substantial contribution on the history of the body.
As part of an actual campaign against weightism, as opposed to Colbert's satirical one, Fat Shame allows us to see how discrimination against fat people became a central feature of American life. Armed with this history, we can better imagine a day when the declaration Farrell made on The Colbert ReportI like the word 'fat'"won't be greeted with laughter.
S.K. Hall:
[Farrell's] historical account of shifting social response to overweight people is interesting...[her] observation about stigma related to overweight people is correct.
Deborah McPhail,Teachers College Record:
Farrell's explorations of fat primitivism in mainstream and feminist cultures are invaluable to understanding the contemporary stigmatization of fat that has become nearly ubiquitous in America today...a soon-to-be classic text in the field of Fat Studies.
The strength of this text is the fascinating range of intersectional perspectives it provides concerning the historical linkages between hierarchies of citizenship and fat stigmaFarrells important work to expose the 'cultural baggage that has fueled a fat-hating perspective'generates an intriguing historical intersectional framework [Fat Shame] illuminates a troubling, discriminatory social landscape framing American body politics and industry with far reaching influences, including present day food movements.
Elaine Tyler May,author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril and Liberation:
In this bold and powerful book, Amy Farrell uncovers the history, meanings, and consequences of fat stigma. With passion, insight, and eloquence, she condemns the many institutions that denigrate fat people, from the medical establishment and diet industry to the popular culture. Fat Shame challenges Americans of all sizes to accept each other without judgment.
Kathleen LeBesco,author of Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity:
An eye-opening history about how fatness obtained its stigma in the US. Provocative and illuminating, Farrell unearths fats associations with whiteness, citizenship, feminism, and civilization. Fat Shame will interest scholars of the history and sociology of body politics and those involved in projects of the self, as well as readers who can't help but wonder, & When did we start hating fatness? And why? Farrell has penned a new classic.
Amanda Cosco:
In this groundbreaking and fascinating text, Farrell repositions the fat body within a political framework...a must-read for feminists, body theorists, and anyone interested in understanding our cultural obsession with fat
Anna E. Ward:
Farrell's Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture [is] an exciting and much-needed addition to fat studies. Carefully researched and well written, Farrell's book investigates the history of fat stigma in the United States, arguing that negative associations with fat existed long before weight became inextricably tied to notions of health.
Jill Salsman:
Fat Shamecan serve as a go to" resource for historical examples of discrimination against fatness. The book appears especially relevant for the fields of sociology, women's studies, or history and could readily serve as an additional resource for course work focused on multiculturalism, obesity, weight management, or body image.
