A caveat to this review: I'm thin. I'm sure that influences how I experienced this book.

I didn't go into this book expecting it to be straight body positivity and all about acceptance. I expected some of that, but mostly I thought it was going to be fat authors discussing their experiences. That is kind of how it was described on the back. It was partially like that, but so much of this book was just actively unpleasant. I was kind of okay to sit through that when it was fat writers discussing their own unpleasant thoughts and experiences, but there were a number of essays by thin authors that were horrible to read.

The standout was "Fat Like Him" by Lori Gottlieb. She is a thin woman who once dated a fat man and basically just treated him horribly because of his weight for the entire 40 pages of the essay until they broke up. And then she expressed no remorse and said her friends were full of shit for calling her closed minded. I'd like to give that particularly essay negative stars because it's one of the most vile things I've ever read.

There was also an essay about men who dehumanize and have sex with fat women and talk about how gross it is afterward and another essay written by a therapist who was incredibly fatphobic toward a patient. One essay was by a doctor about gastric bypass surgery and while the information about the surgery was interesting, his personal prejudice was woven throughout it.

But it seemed like a disservice to some of the other authors to rate this book lower than three stars because for every awful essay, there was an interesting one that actually did hold some insights for people's experiences. Some were really lovely to read. Pam Houston's and Donna Jarrell's essays ("Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing" and "Fat Lady Nuding" respectively) were both standouts. They made the book worth it, along with a few others that I found worthwhile.

I honestly picked up this book because I like essays and specifically noticed David Sedaris and Anne Lamott were among the authors, but Sedaris's essay was fine while forgettable. Anne Lamott's was beautiful, as is most her writing, and mostly focuses on her history of eating disorders, but doesn't really have anything to do with fatness.

But I couldn't recommend this book just for the awful essays. They, and Lori Gottlieb specifically who I looked up so I can be sure to never read her again, tainted this whole book for me. Which is disappointing because I do think a number of the essays were worth reading. If you can find Jarrell's or Houston's essays elsewhere, I'd recommend them if nothing else.