Fat
Published on 12. November 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-1-5013-3328-6 (ISBN)
Description
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Public enemy. Crucial macronutrient. Health risk. Punchline. Moneymaker. Epidemic. Sexual fetish. Moral failing. Necessary bodily organ. Conveyor of flavor. Freak-show spectacle. Never mind the stereotype, fat is never sedentary: its definitions, identities, and meanings are manifold and in constant motion.
Demonized in medicine and public policy, adored by chefs and nutritional faddists (and let's face it, most of us who eat), simultaneously desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry, for so many people "fat" is ironically nothing more than an insult or a state of despair.
In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, "feeling fat" and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Public enemy. Crucial macronutrient. Health risk. Punchline. Moneymaker. Epidemic. Sexual fetish. Moral failing. Necessary bodily organ. Conveyor of flavor. Freak-show spectacle. Never mind the stereotype, fat is never sedentary: its definitions, identities, and meanings are manifold and in constant motion.
Demonized in medicine and public policy, adored by chefs and nutritional faddists (and let's face it, most of us who eat), simultaneously desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry, for so many people "fat" is ironically nothing more than an insult or a state of despair.
In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, "feeling fat" and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Reviews / Votes
Throughout Fat, Blank beautifully disrupts and destabilizes the notion of fat and, in doing so, challenged me to think deeper about the category as a whole. * Fat Studies * Hanne Blank's characteristically honest, creative, wickedly funny, and sharply insightful voice comes through on every page of this eminently readable book. Blank reveals fat as polysemic, at once mundane and hidden, sexually charged, and socially vexed. Fat is a scholarly ethnography of an everyday object that manages to be a genuine page-turner. * Quill Rebecca Kukla, Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, USA *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 165 mm
Width: 123 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
137 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-3328-6 (9781501333286)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Dr. Hanne Blank is a cultural historian who works in the intersections of gender and sexuality, history of medicine, bioethics, and politics. Her books include Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (2014) and Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury, 2007). She currently serves on the faculty for Women's & Gender Studies at Denison University, USA.
Content
Frontispiece
1. Fact
2. Friend
3. Foe
4. Fetish
5. Figure
Index
1. Fact
2. Friend
3. Foe
4. Fetish
5. Figure
Index