Landwhale
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
"In Landwhale, Jes Baker delves into her coming-of-age--including her 6 ways to hate your body (#2: Worship teen periodicals), her top tactics for reframing the malicious animal comparisons hurled repeatedly at fat women (see "Elephant: Everyone knows elephants are basically the coolest animals ever. Try again."), and as a bonus, Jes answers the Internet's most pressing question of all time: "So, have you ever thought about dieting?" With biting wit and arresting vulnerability, Baker also covers living with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and feeling like a hobbit, fat sex, Harry Potter roller coasters, the problematic effects of online heroism, and the complicated conversation around weight-loss surgery. For anyone who grew up as a fat kid (or didn't, for that matter), who has traveled while fat, or who has simply lived in a fat body, Landwhale is a truthful and powerful account of the unforgiving ways our culture treats fatness--and how to live happily and freely anyway."--Page [4] of cover.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
A whole bunch of ideas I'm taking away from this humorous memoir/body manifesto. “The bulletproof fatty” and the requirement that disadvantaged people be individually resilient in the face of terrible systemic injustice is striking me deeply.
Oh, I'm struggling to review this book. First, the positives: I knew NOTHING about the body positive movement before picking up this book. I've since learned some stuffs; and Jes Baker has a fun voice that's fun to read. I think that is why I continued to read and not put it down.
Here's the thing, I'm a big proponent of people writing memoirs AFTER they have lived through or done a thing. Baker writes she's been at this for “half a dozen years”. Hmm, hmm. I'd be more interested in hearing about what she has to say in 20 or 25. The majority of the book reads like one big, long blog post. And, spoiler alert, the ending is Baker has not yet figured out how to feel about her body or how anyone should feel about their body because we are all works in progress. Truth. However, that lends itself to maybe we should hold off writing a memoir until we HAVE come to a conclusion.
Sigh. I know publishers are doing what they have to do to stay in business and that jumping on the popularity of a blogger to make quick sales of books may be a tactic. While you wouldn't catch me picking up Grumpy Cat's Life Advise, I did pick this up hoping to see how someone of a larger size makes a great life by owning it. This is not that book. I come out of this wiser, but feeling a little burned.
