Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Donât miss outâpurchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowFat Talk
This audiobook uses AI narration.
Weâre taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreThis program is read by the author.
In this illuminating narrative on the daily onslaught of body shame that kids face from peers, school, diet culture, and parents themselves, journalist Virginia Sole-Smith offers a compelling, reported look at how families can change the conversation around weight, health, and self-worth.
By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids have learned that âfatâ is bad. As they get older, kids learn to pursue thinness in order to survive in a world that ties our body size to our value. Multibillion-dollar industries thrive on consumers believing that we donât want to be fat. Our weight-centric medical system pushes âweight lossâ as a prescription, while ignoring social determinants of health and reinforcing negative stereotypes about the motives and morals of people in larger bodies. And parents today, having themselves grown up in the confusion of modern diet culture, worry equally about the risks of our kids caring too much about being âthinâ and about what happens if our kids are fat. Sole-Smith shows how the reverberations of this messaging and social pressures on young bodies continue well into adulthoodâand what we can do to fight them.
Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of âfat,â which is not synonymous with âunhealthy,â âinactive,â or âlazy.â Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how Americaâs focus on solving the âchildhood obesity epidemicâ has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our societyâs internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop âpreventing obesityâ and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.
Continuing conversations started by works like Girls & Sex, Under Pressure, and Essential Labor, Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and groundbreaking audiobook that will help parents learn to reckon with their own body biases, identify diet culture messaging, and ultimately empower their kids to navigate this challenging landscape. Sole-Smith offers an alternative framework for parenting around food and bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive worldâbecause itâs not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.
Virginia Sole-Smith is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harperâs Magazine, Slate, and Elle. She is the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America and also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter. She lives in New Yorkâs Hudson Valley with her two daughters, a cat, a dog, and way too many houseplants.
Virginia Sole-Smith is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harperâs Magazine, Slate, and Elle. She is the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America and also writes the Burnt Toast newsletter. She lives in New Yorkâs Hudson Valley with her two daughters, a cat, a dog, and way too many houseplants.
Reviews
âI am extremely grateful to Virginia for writing Fat Talk. Itâs a fearless and game-changing addition to the conversation about kids, food and weight, and a book that all parents need to read.â
âEmily Oster, author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet
âIf you have ever held a piece of food or briefly glimpsed a part of your body and felt a complicated thing, you need to read this book. Fat Talk is about parentingâbut also about livingâwithin and outside of the nefarious stories weâve been told about food and bodies and how and why they relate to health; about the dangers of restriction and the freedom and the power that can come from loving ourselves and one another on new and better terms.â
âLynn Steger Strong, author of Flight and Want
âFat Talk is the book I wish my parents had when I was growing up.â
âJulia Turshen, New York Times bestselling author
âMaking meaningful social changeâespecially when it comes to Americaâs insidious diet cultureâcan feel like slow, Sisyphean work. It requires not only questioning the complex systems we live within but also imagining new, better solutions. Lucky for all of us with bodies, Virginia Sole-Smith is a visionary. In Fat Talk, she generously guides grown-ups toward unlearning everything weâve been taught about weight and worth and teaches us to show young people that they are always enough just as they are. Everyone should read this book.â
âAngela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother
âWith Fat Talk, Virginia Sole Smith hasnât just given us a great book for parents of fat kids. Sheâs given us an indispensable resource for adults preparing kids of all sizes to navigate a world full of bodies, biases, and appearance-based judgment. If youâve ever longed for a conversation about fat kids thatâs rooted in facts, candor, and empathy, this is it. Fat Talk is a must-read for any adult who wants to build a kinder, more accepting, and more just world for the kids in their lives.â
âAubrey Gordon, cohost of Maintenance Phase and author of âYou Just Need to Lose Weightâ: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People
âIf youâve ever struggled in your relationship with food and your bodyâand especially if youâre trying to raise kids to be resilient in the face of diet cultureâthis book is essential reading. Virginia offers a nuanced and deeply reported look at the many unintended consequences of the rhetoric around âchildhood obesity,â and presents a powerful case for rethinking the conventional wisdom about weight and health. At a time when the world feels increasingly cruel to fat kids, this book will be a beacon of hope to many.â
âChristy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS, author of The Wellness Trap and Anti-Diet
âThis paradigm-shifting bookâŚflip[s] the script on diet culture and anti-fat biasâŚWith its message of trusting our kidsâ bodies (and everyone elseâs) as they are as both a social-justice issue and an act of love, this is a great place to begin.â
âBooklist, *starred*
â[Sole-Smith] refrains from making readers feel guilty; rather, she is instructive and encouraging. âŚSole-Smith provides well-rounded discussions of eating disorders, puberty, calorie counting, fitness influencers, and the myth that a fat child necessarily means that they have lazy or disengaged parentsâŚA thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents.â
âKirkus Reviews
â[C]ompassionateâŚ[Sole-Smithâs] eye-opening research upends conventional assumptions about what a healthy body looks like, and readers will appreciate the affirming tone. The result is a striking challenge to fatphobia.â
âPublishers Weekly