This book sets out to explain the racial origins of fatphobia, but does not exactly do this. It's challenging at times to tell if the book is actually well-researched because the research and evidence are not always well-handled. In fact, the book is primarily structured as a series of biographies, mostly of White men (with occasional White and Black women thrown in). In addition, and as other reviewers have noted, there is a general lack of analysis, so evidence is provided but connections are not always made.

This book focuses primarily on Europe and the US. A major takeaway in this book is that throughout the ages (in Europe and the US), assessments of body size, shape, and proportion have almost always been men's assessments of women's bodies (and sometimes of other men's bodies). In this sense and based on the evidence provided, the book actually traces the patriarchal origins of fatphobia in various White communities. This is a major finding! With added analysis, the book could demonstrate how different White men at different points in time were given social recognition as experts on what counted as "good" feminine bodies (e.g. at one point, these were artists; then socialites; then social scientists; then doctors and medical scientists... that is a significant finding). Given that, and based on the current evidence provided in this book, it's not that fatphobia has racial origins; it's actually that men have used preference about feminine presentation and "good bodies" as a driver in pushing forward racist agendas (like white supremacy), as well as capitalist, ableist, patriarchal, and other agendas.

A few things that surprised me about this book: (a) the author distinguishes between different groups of White people and shows how they used agendas around body size to demonstrate superiority among each other--in fact, the author describes relationships between these White groups as "interracial," and that becomes one of the primary demonstrations of racialized fatphobia; (b) because of the biographical structure of evidence, people of color are often left out of certain chapters completely; (c) it seems like there are lots of missed opportunities to examine evidence of fatphobia in non-White cultures (e.g. the connections between starvation and spirituality show up in other religions and regions); (d) there is a lot of fatphobic language in the book without much qualification or clarity on why it is chosen (and at times, fat people are not given the same dignity in the retelling as thin people), and in that way, it's challenging to know whether the book problematizes fatphobia or weaponizes it.