Fat by Hanne Blank

Fat by Hanne Blank

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.

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

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781501333286
ISBN 10	1501333283
Title	Fat
Author	Hanne Blank
Series	Object Lessons
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Year published	2020-11-12
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.