Body Loving Book Review #1: Hot and Heavy

Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion

Edited by Virgie Tovar

When I think of this book, I want to clutch it to my chest and never let it out of my sight. Quite simply, it's wonderful. 

The editor of this anthology is Virgie Tovar, a body image expert and coach with a Masters degree in Human Sexuality. You can check out her website here. 

A collection of 31 triumphant stories written by "fierce fat girls" who have gone from body loathing to body loving. The writing is vivid, genuine, hilarious and tear-inducing, with moments of clarity found on every page. The book is separated into three sections entitled Life, Love and Fashion, which might give an idea of the varied topics covered inside.

Some of the contributors may be familiar to those who are aware of the international fatshion and fat acceptance communities (Margitte Kristjansson of RiotsNotDiets and Golda Poretsky of BodyLoveWellness, for instance). Many others were more or less unknown to me, since I'm fairly new to the body acceptance movement. Contributor April Flores (plus size porn star) is featured on the front cover. Throughout the anthology, the women reflect on experiences that have influenced how they feel about their bodies (negative and positive) and their journeys of becoming fat revolutionaries. 

The purpose of the book is to reexamine fatness and "recast it as a tool for empowerment". It is also about refusing to apologise for your body and to start living a fulfilling life now (not when you lose X amount of weight). It's about "unleashing the fierceness" and confronting the demons we must fight in a body shaming culture.

There were moments reading this book when I burst out laughing. During others, I cried. Although, mostly I wanted to jump up and do the running man in sheer joy. It really had that effect on me. 

In the book, Charlotte Cooper wrote of a session she gave at an academic conference in England about feminist cultural activism. During the session, she split the group up and gave them various activities. For one of the groups, she drew up a BMI chart, symbol of fat people's oppression, and called upon the group to spit on it with flamboyance and style. She writes, "There's an image of a spit-covered BMI chart that now lives in my subconscious, an image that perfectly represents my view of BMI and what it stands for...I'll call on this image whenever I need it. It will give me strength when I am vulnerable. It already makes me cackle."

Another story that stood out to me was Emily Anderson's article "Fat at the Gym" where she discusses the paradox of being fat at the gym: the fear that if you are fat, you don't belong there, but if you don't go, you will never become unfat and finally worthy - "Being a fat woman at the gym is in itself an act of social disobedience. I shouldn't be there, taking up the space of the lithe-bodied, unless it's with a face of sincere penance and shame. But I have claimed the gym as my own. I celebrate being visible and fat all over the gym...I want to be seen. I am fat and happy in places where I should be fat and shameful, and denying this stereotype is a political action in my eyes."

Then there's the section on Love, a myriad of stories told by fat women about their experiences with love, sex and relationships. The narratives are interestingly varied and the topics wide (speed dating, fat sex, body image, pornography).

Oddly enough, I found the Fashion section of least interest to me (strange because that's the focus of my own blog). Probably because I've devoured so many fashion blogs that I felt like I'd heard it all before. Still, it was intriguing to read more detailed stories of women confronting the idea of "flattery" and breaking fashion rules that apply to plus size women (horizontal stripes, for instance). Kirsty Fife writes, "Fatshionista taught me that there was no such thing as bad bodies or bad parts of my body. There was no need to conform to this doctrine of flattery and acceptability if I didn't see my fattest parts as inferior to the rest of me....Now I wear clothes as a form of resistance...because I want to see a variety of body shapes in public spaces....To you, it might just be an outfit, but to me it's performance, care, support, resistance, survival, and fighting." AMAZING. 

Do yourself and favour and buy this book. It will change your life. It changed mine.