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On Being Fat

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Sara Benincasa’s essay “ Why Am I So Fat? ” was one of our top five reads last week, and with good reason — it was honest and cutting in all the right ways. It was brash and unapologetic and funny as hell (and also suggests that perhaps  Fader was slightly premature in declaring, earlier this year, that “ fat shaming is dead ”).

It was also problematic, and many fat women applauded the piece while also wishing it had pushed harder and skirted some problematic tropes. Luckily, many other writers, scholars, and activists have also been publishing wonderful pieces on fatphobia: their experiences, the cultural and institutional ways it is entrenched, and more. They might not have gone viral, but their voices are important — and just as honest, cutting, brash, and funny.

First, Sara Benincasa is conventionally pretty. She has an hourglass figure, which is the “acceptable” way for a woman to be fat. She may not be stick-thin, but she certainly isn’t what a medical professional might call “morbidly obese;” this gives her a kind of social capital that most fatter women, who are simultaneously invisible (read: unattractive by conventional standards) and profoundly visible (read: physically large) do not. In “ Fat Shaming Is Not an Individual Problem, It’s a Cultural One ” longtime fat activist and author Lesley Kinzel uses Benincasa’s piece as a springboard for discussing why, precisely, the essay was both important and also not enough:

All of this is to say that when an indubitably average-sized woman is praised for writing about the terrible injustice of being called fat by a stranger, I have a very complicated suite of feelings to go with that. I agree wholeheartedly that it is bullshit that she should have to suffer such nonsense. I validate her ferocious refusal to apologize for her body. And I also feel angry, because I know the same perspective written by an obviously, visibly fat woman, a woman who is not sorry for being fat and who is not attempting to become smaller — in short, a woman who looks like me — would not get anywhere near as much praise and support. Because I am the woman who should be sorry about my body. I am the woman who doesn’t get to rail against the injustice of being called fat, because that is what I am. I’m actually fat, the kind of fat that makes some people not want to look me in the eye; the kind of fat that makes some people assume I am dying of obesologizing disease, like, right now, dying ; the kind of fat that makes me embarrassing, or weird, or gross. Meanwhile, in that other oft-repeated situation, where a woman in a size 10 dress is castigating the establishment that finds her body unacceptable, many of those people who wouldn’t make eye contact with me? They’re cheering for her.

How fat is Kinzel? Three hundred pounds and not afraid to state it publicly , squashing the stigma by owning the reality. She not just plus-sized, or curvy, or “fluffy,” she’s fat — as is Meg Elison,  whose friends would rather cut themselves open than look like her :

More than once I inherited someone’s favorite outfit in its entirety, replete with the story of how it made her feel. I would wear that outfit later and remember that she wanted to stop being this so badly that she let someone cut out a large section of her intestines. She had an anchor-shaped scar across her entire abdomen. She vomited every day and shit herself at least once a week, but at least, thank god, it was all worth it because she wasn’t fat anymore.

Extending support to a chubby but attractive, not-obese woman who seems not to have dealt with major fat discrimination in her life? Doable. To a fat woman, the kind whose headless photo might grace a CNN article about the “obesity epidemic”? Harder.

Second, Sara Benincasa’s essay makes it too easy to continue conflating “fatness” and “poor health.” Near the end of her piece she mentions losing weight to stave off the Type 2 Diabetes to which she’s genetically inclined, and some of her weight-gain story is related to mental health — both truths for her but troubling for fat activists, who work hard to separate out the ways thinness and health are often unnecessarily conflated, to see in such a bandied-about piece of writing.

For those interested in the research, Marilyn Wann, in a section from her book  Fat!So?  offers a point-by-point takedown, backed with copious citations, of the popular myths around fat and poor health markers. The larger (ha!) point: you can’t tell someone’s health status from their size. This is the crux of an excellent piece on Medium, “ On Your Concern for Your Fat Friend “:

It hurts me as a fat person because of the message it sends. Well-intentioned advice, day after day, week after week, year after year, shows me that I am seen first — and sometimes only — as a fat person. It is a tidal wave of reminders that I am, despite everything else, failing the one measure that matters. No matter how hard I try, how much money I spend or how many calories I ration, no matter how strong my mettle, it doesn’t matter. It can’t be seen. I don’t have the luxury of an uninterrupted day. Every day someone finds a way to show judgment, disdain or concern for the maligned vessel that carries me through the world. Fat people learn quickly and deeply that our bodies are not our own. They are public property, to be commented on, judged, prodded, rejected. Others are always entitled to our bodies, and they are never our own. … You asked if you should care about my health. Of course you should. I would want you to care if I fell ill, or if I were struggling with a health condition. But I’m not. And looking at me won’t tell you how strong I’ve become, the contents of my doctor’s files, the oceans of blood that my sturdy heart pumps through me. My dress size isn’t my medical chart. My body — all of our bodies — are too complex and wonderful to be reduced to that.

(For those truly concerned about the health of fat people, consider the risks of the drastic measures some people attempt in pursuit of thinness: earlier this year, the New York Times devoted considerable (virtual) column inches to the latest research on America’s favorite fat-shaming entertainment,  The Biggest Loser. Most contestants have not only regained the lost weight, but are coping with permanently compromised metabolisms.)

For the few, the proud, the special snowflakes — for that is what they are — who manage to maintain a weight loss, it’s a lifetime commitment. This Alana Massey piece in  The New Inquiry is over two years old, but no less painful in the reading for its age. Behold the work of thinness and the risks of revealing just how much work it is, unmasked:

As relationships advance, romantic partners become visibly disappointed and even annoyed that maintaining thinness is not a matter of a quick jog and 100 crunches. When he goes to find a refrigerator staple like butter, I can claim I simply ran out the first time but I must eventually admit that I don’t keep it in my home. My getting up to run eight miles the morning after sleeping together is admirable in the beginning but becomes frustrating when it means he almost always wakes up alone. I fool no one when I claim that really, this salad made of translucent iceberg lettuce is my favorite menu option at the diner. Meals are never skipped but they are rarely thoroughly enjoyed either. Despite taking care never to mention the cycle of calculating, scheduling, and calibrating, there is a mountain of damning physical evidence. The revelations are slow but they come. A calorie tracking mobile app has better real estate on my smartphone than my calendar. The sudden realization that I’ve never been “that hungry” when we go out. The suspicious number of claims I make about simply not  liking  universally popular foods. I’ll let the cable bill wait but my gym membership is on time, every time. But these symptoms do not aggregate into the appearance of a disease but rather, into a certain temperament. It makes them exclaim, “Relax!” rather than, “Get help.” The level of control the symptoms reveal hovers close to illness but doesn’t cross far enough over the line so as to become sad, merely unattractive. And it is easier to walk away from someone who is unattractive than someone who is sad.

Amy Stephenson takes a longer view in “ What Does My Body Actually Look Like? ,” sharing 31 years’ worth of vignettes from a life largely organized around avoiding fat and finding and hanging on to thin. “I’m 18, I’m 21, I’m 25, I’m 27, and I have dreams about being thin. I’ll catch a glimpse of a body I know to be mine, and dream-me is lithe, strong. The yearning for thin-me is as sharp as my dream hipbones, as the cheekbones framing hollows carved by X-Acto knives. These dreams are aspirational.”

Rather than reading all this, I could have just commended you to Roxane Gay’s 2011 analysis of the novel  Skinny  on  Bookslut ; although a review, it does a masterful job of unpacking so many of these ideas: the in/visibility of fatness, the amount of mental and physical energy devoted to disliking and trying to change the body, the challenges of reading about the experience of fatness as written by a non-fat woman. (Sorry about that!) And to expand the conversation further (and shrink the overall whiteness of most of this even more), Ashleigh Shackelford’s “ Bittersweet Like Me: When the Lemonade Ain’t Made for Fat Women and Femmes ” is worth the reading; representation of fatness is important among and across many identities.

(I should also say, at the risk of speaking for her: I don’t know that Benincasa would actually disagree with any of this — we can welcome her piece while we also ask for more — and she’s been sharing Kinzel’s response piece on Twitter.)

One wonderful thing Benincasa does show us, and that we need to see more often, is that it’s possible to be fat and happy — for the merely chubby, yes, but also for the fat-fat. From “ I Choose to Be Fat ,” by Laura Bogart:

Some argue that classifying obesity as a disease — as the American Medical Association has recently done — destigmatizes it, but the language of disease is unremittingly aggressive: We say “Fuck Cancer” and “Beat Diabetes.” We speak of people in treatment as “fighting a battle.” I have fought against myself for so very long, against everything I’d internalized: everything my father told me I was, everything my mother told me I couldn’t do; everything the kids at school told me I looked like, everything my (supposed) care providers swore I should be. I’ve laid down my arms. I will simply be. I am not a pathology. I am breasts and belly that bounce softly with my every step, thighs that sweep each other, and a rear end that rolls along behind me like that final note after a song has ended.

When I need reminding of this — for I too am fat-fat! — I return often to the writing of Lindy West. I recommend her book , Shrill , with the greatest gusto, and love the celebratory Guardian  column she published after her nuptials, “ My wedding was perfect — and I was fat as hell the whole time “:

Choose your rituals, but make them yours. If you want to look like a flower market ate fat Betty Draper and then barfed her up in the middle of a haunted forest (YEEEESSS!), great choice. If you want to get married to a burrito while wearing a barrel with suspenders, I’m cool with it. If you think the very concept of marriage is hot garbage, that’s legit. But regardless, remember that you absolutely do not have to “fix” your body, chase after “flattering,” be somebody’s dark secret, or beg for permission to be happy.

Hear, hear.

Stories discussed:

•   Why Am I So Fat?  , Sara Benincasa (Medium, August 18, 2016)
• How Plus-Sized Women Are Constructing a New Normal , Carly Lewis (Fader, March 30, 2016)
• Fat Shaming is Not an Individual Problem, It’s a Cultural One , Lesley Kinzel (Lesley Was Here, August 22, 2016)
• I Weigh 300 Pounds And I’m Cool With Everyone Knowing It: Thoughts On Zoe Saldana’s Allure Cover And The Radical Possibilities Of Disclosing Your Weight , Lesley Kinzel (xo jane, May 17, 2013)
• My Friends Would Rather Have Their Guts Cut Open Than Be Like Me , Meg Elison (The Establishment, May 11, 2016)
• But What About Your Health? , Marilyn Wann (from the book  Fat?So! , available on feminist-reprise.org)
• On Your Concern for Your Fat Friend’s Health , yrfatfriend (Medium, March 28, 2016)
• After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight , Gina Kolata (The New York Times, May 2, 2016)
• You’re Right, I Didn’t Eat That , Alana Massey (The New Inquiry, May 29, 2014)
• What Does My Body Actually Look Like? , Amy Stephenson (The Establishment, April 29, 2016)
• Reaching for Catharsis: Getting Fat Right (or Wrong) in Diana Sprechler’s  Skinny , Roxane Gay (Bookslut, August 2011)
• Bittersweet Like Me: When the Lemonade Ain’t Made For Fat Black Women & Femmes , Ashleigh Shakelford (Wear Your Voice, April 27, 2016)
• I Choose to Be Fat , Laura Bogart (Salon, July 25, 2013)
• The Fat and the Furious: 2 Fat 2 Furious , Michelle Weber (King of States!, July 9, 2016)
• My Wedding Was Perfect — and I Was Fat as Hell the Whole Time , Lindy West (The Guardian, July 21, 2015)

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19 Memoirs From Fat Authors Sure To Make You Feel Less Alone

Looking for a story about someone’s life that may reflect your own? These memoirs by fat authors will resonate with readers who have experienced bullying, internalized fatphobia, and what it’s like to develop self-love that turns into a fight for body positivity and plus size lives everywhere. Some authors are known fat activists, like Lindy West and Roxane Gay. Some are known for other reasons, like acting in famous television shows, but the stories we’ve shared here involve their bodies. Funny, heartbreaking, smart, and familiar—these memoirs will resonate.

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

2018 | View on Amazon

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby

Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., “bitches gotta eat” blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.

2017 | View on Amazon

Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing by Jennifer Weiner

Jennifer Weiner is many things: a bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and an “unlikely feminist enforcer” (The New Yorker). She’s also a mom, a daughter, and a sister, a clumsy yogini, and a reality-TV devotee. In this “unflinching look at her own experiences” (Entertainment Weekly), Jennifer fashions tales of modern-day womanhood as uproariously funny and moving as the best of Nora Ephron and Tina Fey. No subject is off-limits in these intimate and honest essays: sex, weight, envy, money, her mother’s coming out of the closet, her estranged father’s death. From lonely adolescence to hearing her six-year-old daughter say the F word—fat—for the first time, Jen dives into the heart of female experience, with the wit and candor that have endeared her to readers all over the world.

2016 | View on Amazon

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know by Retta

In So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know, Parks and Recreation star Retta takes us on her not-so-meteoric rise from roaches to riches (well, rich enough that she can buy $15,000 designer handbags yet scared enough to know she’s always a heartbeat away from ramen with American cheese). Throwing her hardworking Liberian parents through a loop, Retta abandons her plan to attend med school after graduating Duke University to move to Hollywood to star in her own sitcom – like her comedy heroes Lucille Ball and Roseanne. Say what? Word. Turns out Retta might actually be on to something. After winning Comedy Central’s stand-up competition, she should be ready for prime time – but a fear of success derails her biggest dream.

Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, & Fashion edited by Virgie Tovar

In this fun, fresh, fat-positive anthology, fat activist and sex educator Virgie Tovar brings together voices from an often-marginalized community to talk about and celebrate their lives. Hot & Heavy rejects the idea that being thin is best, instead embracing the many fabulous aspects of being fat – building fat-positive spaces, putting together fat-friendly wardrobes, turning society’s rules into personal politics, and creating supportive, inclusive communities. Writers, activists, performers, and poets – including April Flores, Alysia Angel, Charlotte Cooper, Jessica Judd, Emily Anderson, Genne Murphy, and Tigress Osborn – cover everything from fat go-go dancing to queer dating to urban gardening in their essays, exploring their experiences with the word fat, pinpointing particular moments that have impacted the way they think and feel about their bodies, and telling the story of how they each became fat revolutionaries.

2012 | View on Amazon

Am I Ugly?: One Woman’s Journey to Body Positivity by Michelle Elman

In today’s world of supplements, celebrity diets and social media, it’s very easy to be hard on ourselves about the way we look. With all this pressure to strive for ‘perfection’ aesthetically, it is easy to forget how damaging this can be psychologically. Michelle Elman is a leading part of the body positivity movement that has been gathering momentum to liberate people from these unrealistic standards, recognise that all bodies are equally valuable and broaden the billboard definitions of beauty. Am I Ugly? is this inspiring woman’s compelling and deeply personal memoir that describes her childhood experiences of life-threatening health problems, long stays in hospital and fifteen complex surgeries that left her scarred, both mentally and physically. The narrative follows Michelle’s journey from illness to health, and from childhood to adulthood as she deals with her body-confidence issues to embrace both her scars and her body – and help others to do the same. This remarkable book grapples with the wider implications of Michelle’s experiences and the complex interplay between beauty and illness.

Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller

At twenty-nine, Kelsey Miller had done it all: crash diets, healthy diets, and nutritionist-prescribed “eating plans,” which are diets that you pay more money for. She’d been fighting her un-thin body since early childhood, and after a lifetime of failure, finally hit bottom. No diet could transform her body or her life. There was no shortcut to skinny salvation. She’d dug herself into this hole, and now it was time to climb out of it. With the help of an Intuitive Eating coach and fitness professionals, she learned how to eat based on her body’s instincts and exercise sustainably, without obsessing over calories burned and thighs gapped. But, with each thrilling step toward a healthy future, she had to contend with the painful truths of her past.

This Is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today by Chrissy Metz

When This Is Us debuted in fall 2016, a divided America embraced a show that celebrates human connection. The critically acclaimed series became America’s most watched—and most talked about—network show, even building on its fan base in the drama’s second season. As Kate Pearson, Chrissy Metz presents a character that has never been seen on television, yet viewers see themselves in her, no matter what they look like or where they come from. Considered a role model just for being her authentic self, Chrissy found herself on magazine covers and talk shows, walking red carpets, and as the subject of endless conversations on social media “I don’t know what you’ve been through to play her,” she is often told by fans, “but it was something.” In This is Me, Chrissy Metz shares her story with a raw honesty that will leave readers both surprised but also inspired. Infused with the same authenticity she brings to her starring role, Chrissy’s This is Me is so much more than your standard Hollywood memoir or collection of personal essays. She embraces the spirit of Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes, and shares how she has applied the lessons she learned from both setbacks and successes. A born entertainer, Chrissy finds light in even her darkest moments, and leaves the reader feeling they are spending time with a friend who gets it.

I Do It With the Lights On: And 10 More Discoveries on the Road to a Blissfully Shame-Free Life by Whitney Way Thore

Whitney Way Thore stands five feet two inches tall and weighs well over three hundred pounds, and she is totally, completely, and truly . . . happy. But she wasn’t always the vivacious, confident woman you see on TV. Growing up as a dancer, Whitney felt the pressure to be thin, a desire that grew into an obsession as she got older. From developing an eating disorder as a teenager, to extreme weight gain in college, to her ongoing struggle with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), Whitney reveals her fight to overcome the darkest moments in her life. She holds nothing back, opening up about the depths of her depression as well as her resilience in the face of constant harassment and mistreatment. Now Whitney is on top of the world and taking no BS (Body Shame, of course). And she’s sharing the steps she took to get there and the powerful message behind her successful No Body Shame campaign. She even reveals her favorite “F” word (it’s probably not what you think), the thrill of doing it with the lights on, and the story behind the “Fat Girl Dancing” video that started it all.

My Mad Fat Diary by Rae Earl

It’s 1989 and Rae Earl is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint green bathroom and a refrigerator Rae can’t keep away from. She’s also just been released from a psychiatric ward. My Mad Fat Diary is the hilarious, harrowing and touching real-life diary Rae kept during that fateful year and the basis of the hit British television series of the same name now coming to HULU. Surrounded by people like her constantly dieting mum, her beautiful frenemy Bethany, her mates from the private school up the road (called “Haddock”, “Battered Sausage” and “Fig”) and the handsome, unattainable boys Rae pines after (who sometimes end up with Bethany…), My Mad Fat Diary is the story of an overweight young woman just hoping to be loved at a time when slim pop singers ruled the charts. Rae’s chronicle of her world will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever been a confused, lonely teenager clashing with her parents, sometimes overeating, hating her body, always taking herself VERY seriously, never knowing how positively brilliant she is and keeping a diary to record it all. My Mad Fat Diary – 365 days with one of the wisest and funniest girls in England.

Landwhale: On Turning Insults Into Nicknames, Why Body Image is Hard, and How Diets Can Kiss My Ass by Jes Baker

In Landwhale, Jes Baker delves into her coming-of-age—including her 6 Ways to Hate Your Body (#2: Worship teen periodicals), her top tactics for reframing the malicious animal comparisons hurled at fat women repeatedly (see “Elephant: Everyone knows elephants are basically the coolest animals ever. Try again.”) and as a bonus, Jes takes the time to answer the Internet’s most pressing question of all time: “So, have you ever thought about dieting?” For anyone who grew up as a fat kid (or didn’t for that matter), who has traveled while fat, or who has simply lived in a fat body, Landwhale is a truthful and powerful account of the unforgiving ways our culture treats fatness and how to live happily and freely anyway.

Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin: Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons

Brittany Gibbons has been a plus size her whole life. But instead of hiding herself in the shadows of thinner women, Brittany became a wildly popular blogger and national spokesmodel—known for stripping on stage at TedX and standing in Times Square in a bikini on national television, and making skinny people everywhere uncomfortable. Talking honestly about size and body image on her popular blog, brittanyherself.com, she has ignited a national conversation. Now in her first book, she shares hilarious and painfully true stories about her life as a weird overweight girl growing up in rural Ohio, struggling with dating and relationships, giving the middle finger to dieting, finding love with a man smaller than her, accidentally having three kids, and figuring out the secret to loving her curves and becoming a nationally recognized body image advocate. And there’s sex, lots of it!

2015 | View on Amazon

Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression by Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Wieser

With a foreword by Vivian Mayer. SHADOW ON A TIGHTROPE is a collection of articles, personal stories, and poems by fat women, about their lives and the fat- hating society in which they live. Topics include: exposing the myths concerning fat; what it’s like to grow up fat; a description of the medical crimes committed against fat women; stories of the daily hassles, verbal and physical harassment in the lives of fat women; inaccessibility to clothing, jobs, and public places for exercise and sports; effects on the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual selves of fat women living in a society that hates them, and how they have learned to survive. This anthology also collects material previously distributed separately by Fat Liberator Publications, plus many new writings solicited over the past two years from women all around the country.

1983 | View on Amazon

No Way! Okay, Fine: A Memoir of Pop Culture, Feminism and Feelings by Brodie Lancaster

From the small town in regional Australia where she was told that ‘girls can’t play the drums’ to New York City and back again, Brodie has spent her life searching screens, books, music and magazines for bodies like hers, girls who loved each other, and women who didn’t follow the silent instructions to shrink or hide that they’ve received since literal birth. This is the story of life as a young woman through the lenses of feminism and pop culture. Brodie’s story will make you re-evaluate the power of pop culture in our lives – and maybe you will laugh and cry along the way.

Meaty by Samantha Irby

Irby laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood: chin hairs, depression, bad sex, failed relationships, masturbation, taco feasts, inflammatory bowel disease and more. Updated with her favorite Instagramable, couch-friendly recipes, this much-beloved romp is treat for anyone in dire need of Irby’s infamous, scathing wit and poignant candor.

2013 | View on Amazon

This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibi

In This Is Just My Face, Gabourey Sidibe—the “gives-zero-effs queen of Hollywood AND perceptive best friend in your head” (Lena Dunham)—paints her unconventional rise to fame with full-throttle honesty. Sidibe tells engrossing, inspiring stories about her Bed-Stuy/Harlem/Senegalese family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway, her first job as a phone sex “talker,” and her Oscar-nominated role in Lee Daniels’s Precious. Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, celebrity, weight, haters, fashion, race, and depression (“Sidibe’s heartfelt exploration of insecurity . . . makes us love her” —O Magazine). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.

Wake Up, I’m Fat! by Camryn Manheim

Camryn Manheim, Emmy Award-winning costar of The Practice, chronicles her journey from a self-hating, “overweight” teenager, who desperately wanted to fit in, to a self-loving, fat activist who is proud to be a misfit. Wake Up, I’m Fat! shares her intelligent, candid, poignant, and often hilarious stories of being fat in a society obsessed with being thin. Camryn takes us from her days as a motorcycle-riding hippie in Santa Cruz to her enrollment at New York University’s prestigious school of drama–where Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner broke the unspoken theater rules of size by casting her in the role of the ingenue–and finally to Hollywood, where she dispelled the fallacy that large women can’t be portrayed as sensual, sophisticated, and confident.

2000 | View on Amazon

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We Need to Talk About Fatphobia

Excited to be out of our class that normally runs late on Wednesday night, my friends and I happily walked through Harvard Yard. We were completely engrossed in conversation as we moved along one of the zigzagging sidewalks. It was fairly dark, but I saw an older man coming through one of the gates, walking in our direction. Just as my friends and I passed the man, he slowed down to say to us “fat hobbit girls.” Completely shocked by what had happened, my friends and I continued walking, briefly maintaining small talk until we went our separate ways.

Even though we had separated and that strange moment had passed, that collection of words stuck in my head. Fat. Hobbit. Girls. As a girl who has been short and overweight her entire life, I have heard similar words, but never that bizarre and specific grouping. And yet, no matter the context, the word “fat” always has the power to completely shatter me.

But, why? Why should a stranger’s application of the word “fat” leave me feeling utterly broken? How and why can a single word have that much power?

In truth, I have always implicitly understood the power of the word “fat” and its many proxies. Whether a bully or a family member uttered the word, it symbolized the reality that I did not look how the world expected me to, that I did not reflect the ideal tall and slender feminine form. While looking different is not inherently bad, the meaning of “fat” assured me otherwise. The word was delivered as a punishment that ultimately intended to make me feel disgusting, ashamed, and guilty.

And it always worked, even if that punishment was carried out by a stranger in Harvard Yard, because most people, myself included, have internalized the idea that there are horrible implications of being fat. We are conditioned to believe that being fat means you are ugly, unproductive, lazy, unathletic, slobby, and clumsy, and we willingly buy into “fatphobia.”

Although people of all sizes are capable of exhibiting these characteristics, people perceived as fat must actively work to refute such accusations. Even at Harvard, I have subconsciously been affected by this. I never get an extra side of fries or a second dessert at the dining hall. I carefully navigate the rows of seats in lecture halls. I never shirk opportunities to help in a group project. I have always worried that if I did not do these things, it could simply confirm the assumptions people make about me based on my appearance.

For all of Harvard’s activism and wokeness, I was initially surprised that fatphobia rarely, if ever, comes up in conversation here, but the reality is that Harvard students are image-obsessed. Perhaps acknowledging fatphobia here chips away at the persona of perfection some students attempt to cultivate.

But fatphobia is a cause worth discussing. Besides the personal psychological effects I enumerated above, fatphobia has profound, wide-reaching ramifications. Overweight people, especially women, are paid less and have a harder time finding a job . People who are overweight often receive worse medical care because doctors are likely to attribute unrelated symptoms to obesity. Young adults who perceive themselves as overweight have an increased risk of suicidal ideation .

The power we give to the word “fat” creates these issues, and we turn a blind eye. We cannot ignore the damage we create. In order to dismantle fatphobia, we need to unlearn the assumptions we make about fat people. Rather than “fat” as a moral condemnation, it should simply be a visual descriptor.

This might sound idealistic and naive, but I firmly believe that we are all capable of this on an individual scale. Since that Wednesday night at Harvard Yard, I have vowed to never let “fat” control my life. I will look how I will look, and if others judge me for that, it is not my responsibility to prove them wrong. I will never assume a person’s character or work ethic based on their appearance. I implore you to do the same to begin to atone for the trauma and injustice we have inflicted.

Libby E. Tseng ’24, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Pforzheimer House.

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Essays About Obesity: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Obesity is a pressing health issue many people must deal with in their lives. If you are writing essays about obesity, check out our guide for helpful examples and writing prompts. 

In the world we live in today, certain diseases such as obesity are becoming more significant problems. People suffering from obesity have excess fat, which threatens their health significantly. This can lead to strokes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and even death. It also dramatically alters one’s physical appearance.

However, we must not be so quick to judge and criticize obese people for their weight and supposed “lifestyle choices.” Not every obese person makes “bad choices” and is automatically “lazy,” as various contributing causes exist. Therefore, we must balance concern for obese people’s health and outright shaming them. 

To write insightful essays about obesity, you can start by reading essay examples. 

5 Best Essay examples

1. obesity as a social issue by earnest washington, 2. is there such a thing as ‘healthy obesity’ by gillian mohney, 3. problems of child obesity by peggy maldonado, 4.  what is fat shaming are you a shamer by jamie long.

• 5. ​​The Dangerous Link Between Coronavirus and Obesity by Rami Bailony

Writing Prompts for Essays About Obesity

1. what causes obesity, 2. what are the effects of obesity, 3. how can you prevent obesity, 4. what is “fat shaming”, 5. why is obesity rate so higher, 6. obesity in the united states, 7. your experience with obesity.

“Weight must be considered as a genuine risk in today’s world. Other than social issues like body shaming, obesity has significantly more to it and is a risk to human life. It must be dealt with and taken care of simply like some other interminable illness and we as people must recollect that machines and innovation has progressed to help us not however not make us unenergetic.”

Washington writes about the dangers of obesity, saying that it can significantly damage your digestive and cardiovascular systems and even cause cancer. In addition, humans’ “expanded reliance on machines” has led us to become less active and more sedentary; as a result, we keep getting fatter. While he acknowledges that shaming obese people does no good, Washington stresses the dangers of being too heavy and encourages people to get fit. 

“‘I think we need to move away from using BMI as categorizing one as obese/overweight or unhealthy,” Zarabi told Healthline. “The real debate here is how do we define health? Is the vegetarian who has a BMI of 30, avoiding all saturated fats from meats and consuming a diet heavy in simple carbohydrates [and thus] reducing his risk of cardiac disease but increasing likelihood of elevated triglycerides and insulin, considered healthy?

Mohney, writing for Healthline, explains how “healthy obesity” is nuanced and should perhaps be retired. Some people may be metabolically healthy and obese simultaneously; however, they are still at risk of diseases associated with obesity. Others believe that health should be determined by more factors than BMI, as some people eat healthily and exercise but remain heavy. People have conflicting opinions on this term, and Mohney describes suggestions to instead focus on getting treatment for “healthy obese” people

“The absence of physical movement is turning into an increasingly normal factor as youngsters are investing more energy inside, and less time outside. Since technology is turning into an immense piece of present-day youngsters’ lives, exercises, for example, watching TV, gaming, messaging and playing on the PC, all of which require next to no vitality and replaces the physical exercises.”

In her essay, Maldonado discusses the causes and effects of childhood obesity. For example, hereditary factors and lack of physical activity make more children overweight; also, high-calorie food and the pressure on kids to “finish their food” make them consume more. 

Obesity leads to high blood pressure and cholesterol, heart disease, and cancer; children should not suffer as they are still so young. 

“Regardless of the catalyst at the root of fat shaming, it persists quite simply because we as a society aren’t doing enough to call it out and stand in solidarity against it. Our culture has largely bought into the farce that thinness equals health and success. Instead, the emphasis needs to shift from the obsession of appearance to promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors for all, regardless of body size. A lean body shouldn’t be a requisite to be treated with dignity and respect. Fat shaming is nonsensical and is the manifestation of ignorance and possibly, hate.”

Long warns readers of the dangers of fat shaming, declaring that it is reprehensible and should not be done. People may have “good intentions” when criticizing overweight or obese people, but it does not, in fact, help with making them healthier. Long believes that society should highlight a healthy lifestyle rather than a “healthy” body, as everyone’s bodies are different and should not be the sole indicator of health. 

5. ​​ The Dangerous Link Between Coronavirus and Obesity by Rami Bailony

“In a study out of NYU, severe obesity (BMI >40) was a greater risk factor for hospitalization among Covid-19 patients than heart failure, smoking status, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease. In China, in a small case series of critically ill Covid-19 patients, 88.24% of patients who died had obesity versus an obesity rate of 18.95% in survivors. In France, patients with a BMI greater than 35 were seven times more likely to require mechanical ventilation than patients with a BMI below 25.”

Bailony’s essay sheds light on research conducted in several countries regarding obesity and COVID-19. The disease is said to be “a leading risk factor in mortality and morbidity” from the virus; studies conducted in the U.S., China, and France show that most obese people who contracted the coronavirus died. Bailony believes obesity is not taken seriously enough and should be treated as an actual disease rather than a mere “lifestyle choice.”

It is well-known that obesity is an excess buildup of body fat, but what exactly causes this? It is not simply due to “eating a lot,” as many people simply understand it; there are other factors besides diet that affect someone’s body size. Look into the different causes of obesity, explaining each and how they are connected.

Obesity can result in the development of many diseases. In addition, it can significantly affect one’s physique and digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems. For your essay, discuss the different symptoms of obesity and the health complications it can lead to in the future.

It can be safely assumed that no one wants to be obese, as it is detrimental to one’s health. Write an essay guide of some sort, giving tips on managing your weight, staying healthy, and preventing obesity. Include some dietary guidelines, exercise suggestions, and the importance of keeping the balance between these two.

“Fat shaming” is a phenomenon that has become more popular with the rise in obesity rates. Define this term, explain how it is seen in society, and explain why it is terrible. Also, include ways that you can speak about the dangers of obesity without making fun of obese people or making them feel bad for their current state. 

The 21st century has seen a dramatic rise in obesity rates worldwide compared to previous decades. Why is this the case? Explore one or more probable causes for the increase in obese people. You should mention multiple causes in your essay, but you may choose to focus on one only- explain it in detail.

The United States, in particular, is known to be a country with many obese people. This is due to a combination of factors, all connected in some way. Research obesity in the U.S. and write about why it is a bigger problem than in other countries- take a look at portion size, fitness habits, and food production. 

If applicable, you may write about your experience with obesity. Whether you have struggled or are struggling with it in the past or know someone who has, discuss how this makes you feel. Reflect on how this knowledge has impacted you as a person and any lessons this may have taught you. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .If you’re looking for more ideas, check out our essays about bullying topic guide !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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• Social Issues

Argumentative Essay On Fat Shaming

From receiving praise from hundreds on social media to backhanded compliments and harsh criticism, fat shaming and thin praising have become increasingly prevalent in this day and age. Well what is fat shaming? Fat shaming is defined as the action of humiliating someone judged to be fat or overweight by making mocking or critical comments about their size. Thin praising is defined as the opposite. Well-known names like Jonah Hill, Mo'Nique, and Lizzo have all been victims of the issue. This is because people view skinny as healthy and fat as unhealthy. The problem with this mindset is that health is not the true goal, achieving the ideal body type is. And this all stems from the beauty standards that are pushed onto people, specifically women. Instead of motivating them to lose weight, it is mostly doing the opposite. The main issue is the more we praise and reward people for maintaining their diet and having a thin body, the more we’re going to continue to denounce having a bigger body. While some think they are doing the right thing by praising thin people for their looks and trying shame fat people to lose weight, I believe that neither of the two should be used because they cause thinner people to be looked at as healthier than bigger people, they are not effective with helping lose weight, they cause increases depression, and they prioritize looks over health.

So where does this mindset come from? Some think that thin praising and fat shaming are essential in helping a person lose weight and maintain their skinny lifestyle. But why do people think like this? I think that the people who have these opinions are people who have never had to experience being that size. The people who grow up skinny their entire lives are taught that being skinny is a good thing. This mindset ties into weight discrimination and beauty standards. When a person is constantly complimented on their appearance because it fits the beauty norm, they start to look at people who are not as morally inferior. Insecurity also plays a big role. Someone who is not comfortable with their body finds someone who they perceive as overweight, so they can make themselves feel better by shaming them. Some do it as a form of bullying, and some don’t even think they are doing anything wrong. Thin praisers just think that they are just giving a normal compliment, but they are doing the same as fat shamers. I do not think that fat shamers and thin praisers all fall into one generalized category, but they all share the same idea.

Because skinny people are viewed as healthier than bigger people they are often discriminated against in healthcare. People are often pushed to be skinny rather than pushed to be healthy. Afshan addresses this issue in her article “Not a Fan of Fat Shaming? Stop Thin Praising.” She talks about how people associate thin as being healthy and fat as being unhealthy. This in turn leads to “medical professionals misdiagnosing fat people, whose medical problems are misattributed to their weight, and under-diagnosis of serious illnesses for thin people who are assumed to be healthy” (Jafar 41). I have experienced this type of discrimination during my doctor visits. I would go in for my asthma, which I have had since I was three months, but since my BMI is above 30, my doctor would look at my weight as the problem. Weight is looked at as the go-to problem, when some may have more serious underlying health. In her article “The Injustice in Fat Stigma” Rekha Nath claims “the vast majority of doctors and nurses report endorsing negative stereotypes about fat patients and looking down on them” (Nath 580). In extreme cases, people with more serious cases are misdiagnosed. In her article, “The Fat Misdiagnosis Epidemic,” Ragen Chastain describes a “64 year old woman named Ellen Maud

Bennett, who had cancer for several years. When she sought medical intervention, no one offered suggestions beyond weight-loss treatments. When her cancer was discovered, she had only days to live” (Chastain). This goes to show that even medical professionals fall victim to that same type of thinking. Is this thinking even effective?

Well, fat shaming and thin praising do not even serve one of their intended purposes. Although some may think they can shame someone into losing weight, it does the opposite. Research says that in some cases fat shaming may be as harmful as having a poor diet or being physically inactive. In his article “The Harmful Effects of Fat Shaming,” Kris Gunnars claims “people with obesity who experienced weight discrimination were 3.2 times more likely to remain having obesity” (Gunnars). This is because constant fat shaming leads to copious amounts of stress, which causes people to use food as a coping mechanism. Thin praise is just as bad because it pushes the mindset that “if thin bodies are the result of hard work and good choices, then fat bodies are the result of laziness and bad choices” (Jafar 41). Body shamers do not care about your health. They look at it as if you’re bigger, it was your fault and your responsibility to do something about it. It is even proven that people who are constantly fat shamed tend to have weaker mental health.

Victims of fat shaming are at an increased risk of depression and thoughts of suicide. Kris Gunnars takes aim at this in his article “The Harmful Effects of Fat Shaming.” His article talks about the effects that fat shaming has on a person’s mental health. He mentions a study in which “2,436 people, who were associated with severe obesity were 21-times of a greater risk of suicidal behavior and 12-times of a greater risk of attempted suicide” (Gunnars). This is the result of the constant criticism that is supposed to act as a form of motivation. It instead acts as a constant reminder of something that they probably can’t control or don’t want to change. They try to force the thinking of “Maybe if I lose weight, then I’ll be happy.” This can lead to a person to succumb to large amounts of stress. Amy Roeder talks about, in “The Scarlet F”, how “ongoing stress in daily life can lead to cellular wear and tear and increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and premature death” (Roeder). Research says fat shaming may be as harmful as having a poor diet and being physically inactive.

Beauty norms in society have become the new “normal.” If you are skinny and pretty, you are considered normal regardless of your health. When you fit into that mold, people start to admire you. Not because you have not been sick in almost two years or your cholesterol and blood sugar are normal, but because you have the ideal body. And people are more inclined to do this because “both punishment (shaming) and positive reinforcement (praising) reinforce beauty norms that value thin, flawless, usually white or light-skinned bodies” (Jafar 42). I relate to this quote because I have seen different women change their appearance to fit this “beauty norm.” My cousin went through different surgeries to “fix” her appearance because she did not like what other people thought about her body. Although she now has complications with her health, she still receives compliments on her weight loss now. Jane Schmid talks about her experience with this issue in “Why We Need to Stop Praising Thin.” After losing the weight she says that everyone thought she looked better than she did before she lost weight. Even though her “eyes looked dead and sunken in, and her skin was yellowing and losing hair. She was thinner, and that was all that mattered to people” (Schmid). This goes to show that people don’t care what health issues you have.  Michelle Konstantinovsky talks about this in her article “We Know The Dangers of Eating Disorders--So Why Are We Still Celebrating Weight Loss at Any Cost?.” She claims that as a society “we all make assumptions rooted in the premise that weight loss is the ultimate sign of success, and the logic is just flawed and ungrounded and keeps many of us sick, mentally and physically” (Konstantinovsky) This is because we are quick to dish out compliments as long as they have the ideal body type or they are no longer big.

I think people should value a person’s overall health and well-being, instead of worrying about the shape of their body. People should be praised for being healthy, not for what body shape they have. Losing weight should not be newsworthy or praiseworthy. Health should be the main priority. Not someone weighing 300 pounds or someone losing 120 pounds. People should not have to worry about facing depression or being discriminated against in doctor’s offices because they are “too big.” Thin praising and fat shaming are not useful. They bring more harm than they do good. As long as you are healthy and happy, beauty norms are irrelevant.

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After Years of Writing Anonymously About Fatness, I'm Telling the World Who I Am 

By Aubrey Gordon

I was in an argument with a friend.

In an otherwise unremarkable conversation about our relationships to our own bodies , I held that the relationship I have to my own body was always formed first by others’ perceptions of it, and that thin people’s struggles with body image, while real and understandable, were less of a fait accompli than that of their fat peers. My friend insisted this was minimizing to thin women , like her, who had eating disorders. (I did not tell her that fat people, too, get eating disorders; that a persistent hunger bloomed into disorder in my ribcage even as we spoke.)

It was a respectful conversation, never personal or acrimonious. But we both left that conversation feeling profoundly unheard.

So I wrote her a letter. I wrote it passionately, pleadingly, painfully, hoping desperately to convey just how different our worlds were, how much I wanted to be there for her, and just how much I needed her solidarity. Once I was finished, I sent it to another friend with one question: Am I being a total bitch?

He read the letter and asked if I’d be willing to post it online.

“I’d like to share it with my networks on social media, and I bet a few other people would, too. We don’t talk enough about this stuff. You could do it anonymously,” he suggested, knowing that I’d just started a new and higher-profile job, and knowing me to be risk averse when it came to my professional reputation. I was a longtime community organizer, working with organizations built by and for historically marginalized communities. He knew, as I did, that even in progressive, social justice-oriented spaces , defending fat people could make some colleagues think twice about working with me.

Deciding to publish was a struggle. I reasoned with myself that publishing one letter anonymously on the internet would likely wind up the way most blog posts do: seen by a handful of followers, then left to gather dust. So I published the letter under a pseudonym, calling myself Your Fat Friend.

Within one week, 40,000 people had read that letter. So I just kept writing.

I anchored each essay in personal experiences of being on the receiving end of the relentless bias that follows fat people nearly everywhere. I started revisiting experiences I’d long since blocked out, too absurd to address in the moment, and too frightening and painful to remember now. I wrote about the stranger who took a cantaloupe from my shopping cart, tut-tutting that it was too high in sugar for me. The man who asked to be reseated on a plane rather than endure the fate of sitting next to a fat person. The perfect stranger at a work event who asked me, without so much as learning my name, when I started eating, and if that was when my dad left.

As I wrote, my perception of the life I’d lived began to shift. I had long thought of myself as living a charmed life, and for the most part, I did. But that perception was contingent on continuing to ignore experiences that were the direct result of anti-fat bias . These were experiences that I had excused at the time, passively accepting them as a natural consequence of daring to live in a body that was so inexcusably fat. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that I had spent a lifetime haunted by a Greek chorus of strangers, eagerly foretelling my death, proudly insisting upon what they saw as my inevitable future illness, failure, loneliness. In their eyes, I wasn’t trustworthy to manage my own body. After all, I’d already trashed the place.

In the face of such overwhelming and uniform rejection, the only path to being tolerated was to join them. They had rejected my body, so I had to, too. As I waded through my own past, I came to look at old memories in a new light. At the time of these experiences, I hadn’t done anything in the moment, not really. What could I do? According to everything I knew at the time, they were right. I was unlovable. I must be unhealthy. I couldn’t be tolerable to sit beside for two hours on a regional flight. Shame was the only option made available to me. I had internalized the logic of abuse: This is for my own good. They wouldn’t do this if I didn’t make them. Their actions are my responsibility. It’s my fault.

I had never interrogated those beliefs. I had never felt their fissures, found their weak spots. Anti-fatness was the Great and Powerful Oz, all-knowing and all-seeing. And only through the project of writing about these experiences could I peek behind the curtain, and see all that bluster and force for what it was: a desperate attempt to contain bodies that look like mine, and a sad and limiting insistence that people my size and larger simply don’t deserve to be seen, to be loved, to be respected, or even to be left alone.

By Alexis Berger

By Grace McCarty

By Anna Borges

So I started to look closer at the life I’d already lived.

I reexamined my schooling. I had attended a mix of public and private schools, following my educator mother wherever she taught. When I entered middle school, she got a job at a private college prep academy that afforded an 85% tuition break to children of faculty members. I remembered running the mile and reliably finishing last in my class, while the rest of my classmates looked on with disdain (or worse, encouragement), irritated that they wouldn’t be dismissed until the last student had finished. At the time, I blamed myself. As an adult, looking back, I wondered why our gym teacher had created a theater for such public humiliation.

I revisited my career in community organizing. I remembered countless coalition meetings, when progressive organizations pitched their upcoming ballot measures as a way to stem the tide of the obesity epidemic , not realizing that mine was the body they were seeking to eradicate. I thought about the years my colleagues and I spent working to make our home state of Oregon one of the first in the nation to require insurers to provide inclusive health care to transgender people. My fat trans colleagues and I spoke to lawmakers and insurance carriers, public committees and private businesses. Lifesaving health care for trans people was frequently written off as “cosmetic,” reliably pitted against something decision makers saw as more urgent: weight-loss surgery. Then, for what felt like an eternity, a room full of thin people discussed how bodies like mine should be cut up and put back together, regardless of what we wanted, so that we could look more like them. My trans colleagues’ health care—the health care we’d gone there to discuss—was consistently overshadowed by policy makers’ insistence on correcting fat bodies .

I combed back through old relationships. Dates who had said terrible, judgmental things. The uninvited men who told me too eagerly about their rape fantasies, recounting in detail everything they wanted to do to me. And I thought back on the relationships I’d ended prematurely because I believed their affection was a kindness, not a truth: that they’d taken pity on a fat girl, not that they loved or desired me.

Nearly every aspect of my life, it turned out, had been colored by anti-fat bias —often more prominently than the homophobia and misogyny I faced as a queer woman. While I had trained countless volunteers and organizers on systems of oppression and theories of change, I’d absented this, one of the most pervasive biases I face. And in so doing, I’d absented myself.

The more I wrote, the more I was willing to interrogate. Unsolicited diet advice wasn’t help, it was an act of surveillance: I see your body, I notice that it is fat, and I need to tell you that I disapprove. Correcting fat women for calling ourselves fat wasn’t an act of mercy, it was an act of supremacy. My discomfort with that word matters more than your autonomy. Doctors who refused to examine fat patients, or coldly insisted on weight loss before treatment, weren’t doing it for our health, they were acting on their own bias . Time and time again, institutions and individuals blamed fat people for their own biased beliefs and behaviors. The harder I looked, the more the logic of anti-fatness fell apart, revealing itself to be motivated by profit, disgust, or simple bigotry.

As I put my writing out into the world, always anonymously, I was consistently met with strong responses. Fat readers emailed pages at a time, pouring out the pain and trauma that anti-fat bias had wrought in their lives. Thin people sent lengthy and pained mea culpas, seeking some kind of absolution for every fat person they’d stared at gratefully, thinking at least I’m not that fat.

There was an army of trolls too. Some would proudly self-identify as trolls; others eschewed the label. It’s not trolling, it’s common sense. It’s science. But however they thought of themselves, they all wished me harm, either at their own hand, or at what they saw as the natural consequence of living in a body as horrifyingly fat as mine. Some sought to take away my self-respect. Others sought to take away my life. There were threats of physical assault, sexual assault, even murder. My anonymity moved from a simple preference to an urgent need.

But over time that simple shield of anonymity grew heavy, became too much to bear. Despite feeling more at peace with myself than ever , clearer and more surefooted in my beliefs, I found myself struggling to maintain a burgeoning second life that grew larger every day. And while my lifelong dream of writing for a living became more real, the anonymity that kept me safe became a barrier. It was a barrier to publishing what and where I wanted to publish, and to living the proud and honest life that I wanted for all fat people, including myself. The privacy I had long relied upon wasn’t just cumbersome—it was holding me back.

Even as I write this, on the eve of publishing my first book and revealing my face to readers for the first time, I am afraid.

I’m afraid of what those trolls might do. I’m afraid of the classic troll technique of swatting: calling in false reports of criminal activity to police, so that they will send a SWAT team to raid my home. I’m afraid of being hurt, being killed. On some days I remember the remoteness of this possibility. On others, the fear of it consumes me.

I’m not afraid of the silent judgments of my body from others, but of the ways they may wield those judgments to disengage from this crucial conversation about the basic needs and dignity of fat people . I’m afraid of the response from fat people, some thinking that I am not fat enough, others finding me unthinkably fat, both balking at ever having listened to me. I am afraid of thin people too—afraid that they will use their response to my body to disengage from this urgent, important conversation.

Some of those fears will come to pass. Some won’t.

Just after signing the contract to write What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat , I reached out to another fat writer for advice on how to weather reporters’ prying questions and readers’ inevitable disgust at the sight of me. “You’ve already lived in the world as a fat person,” she responded. “There’s nothing anyone can say or do to you that hasn’t already been said or done to you.”

She was right, of course. As fat people, we’ve already heard the worst of what nearly everyone thinks of us. After all, anti-fat bias is so normalized and ubiquitous that most of us don’t even try to conceal it. I’ve already heard and experienced it all.

So it’s time to tell you who I am. I’m Aubrey Gordon, I’m 37 years old, and I weigh 350 pounds. I’ve been waiting to meet you.

• Please Don’t Call Fat People ‘Brave’ Just for Existing
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• Example of a great essay | Explanations, tips & tricks

Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Table of contents

Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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How to Trim the Fat From Your Writing

Aug 8, 2019

Reading is hard work. The typical businessperson has only so much brainpower they are willing to give to deciphering an email, text, memo, letter or report. Your job is to convey your message in the clearest and simplest way possible so readers don’t have to struggle to read it, and are able to understand it the first time through.  

Construct crisp and clear sentences    

If you think you need to impress people by stringing together a bunch of fancy words in one long sentence, forget it. Brevity is truly a virtue—especially when it comes to writing sentences. Writing long sentences is a habit you can get into without even realizing it.

However, help is on the way. It’s a handy punctuation mark called the period. Put a period at the end of your sentences. Stop when you’ve said enough. Like this.

In business writing, try to keep sentences no longer than 12 words. And be sure to mix in some short sentences to add emphasis. Your writing will be clear and readable if you do.

Here are eight tips for trimming the fat from your writing:   

1. Limit each sentence to one idea. Simple sentences are easy to understand. Usually, a simple sentence contains one subject and one verb. If you write a sentence that’s too complex, it’s going to be difficult to understand without effort on the reader’s part. 

2. Avoid long sentences. Break long sentences into shorter ones. Beware of stringing thoughts together with “and.” 

3. Vary the length of sentences. Don’t bore your readers by structuring every sentence in the same way. Or writing sentences all the same length. Spice it up.

4. Do not start with “There are.” Sometimes it’s effective to begin a sentence with “there” or “there are.” However, use this approach sparingly because it makes writing clumsy. Begin each sentence strong. 

BEFORE: “There are many employees who donated to the fund.”

AFTER: “Many employees donated to the fund.” 

5. Use the active, not passive, voice. In sentences written in the active voice, the subject performs the action expressed in the verb. Sometimes writing in the passive voice causes awkward sentences. Overuse of the passive voice makes writing dull and uninteresting.

BEFORE: “The prize was won by Linda.”

AFTER: “Linda won the prize.”

6. Don’t back into the sentence. The end of the sentence is where the most important information should appear. 

BEFORE: “The lack of sales in the first quarter of the year and the suggested remedies are the subject of this meeting.”  

AFTER: “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the lack of sales in the first quarter of the year and suggested remedies.”

7. Use parallel construction. In parallel construction, words and phrases are used in like ways within the same sentence.

BEFORE: “Tom enjoys supervising employees, training new hires and project management.” 

AFTER: “Tom enjoys supervising employees, training new hires and managing projects.”

8. Make sure every sentence adds something new. In fact, every phrase and clause should add something new. Unless you’re writing your conclusion to a more formal memo or report, say your idea once and then move on.

Business writing doesn’t have to be a stressful thing—even for those who don’t believe they can write. If you know people who aren’t confident writers, you know that with just a little work, some easy-to-remember tips and tricks, and a little practice, they can become good writers. Point them in our direction at the SkillPath blog. If you’re the person that isn’t confident, relax. If all you do is use the eight tips above, you’ll be a better writer than half the people you work with and your co-workers, bosses, customers and more will appreciate how you always write so clearly. And, that’s not a bad thing at all, is it?

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I Love To Eat Fat Essay

We all love to eat. However, we want to lose fat and enjoy what we eat as well. Is it possible? Are you a kind of skeptical when you hear there are foods that burn fat or “fat-burning food”? If yes, no worries. Most people outside are doubtful too whether they can eat theyr favorite food and lose weight at the same time. There are certain types of foods that burn fat, due to their thermogenic effect, while others have fat-fighting nutrients which maintan your body’s metabolism and help make you feel full longer. Before we discuss on foods that burn fat, there are two types of fat that have good and bad impacts on our body. They are: • Essential fat: It is a positive fat we need to help the functioning of our body. This fat is mostly stored …show more content…

You can cook it for soup, blend it as smoothies, or add to your salad bowl. Eating spinach helps you control your appetite. Choose the organic spinach for a better result as ordinary spinach may contain lots of chemicals that may harm your health . • Olive Oil Olive oil can help shed extra fat and give a more balanced eating habit. Consider replacing your cooking oil with olive oil to make delicious dishes. In addition, you can use olive oil for your salad dressing too. • Cucumbers Cucumbers are easily found in groceries. But not only that, cucumbers are rich in anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory elements. Moreover, its vitamin C and magnesium gives you some extra energy. The best thing is cucumbers are also good for your skin’s and eyes’ health. • Whole-wheat bread Whole-wheat bread or brown bread contains low calories and some of the most important nutrients such as copper, iron, magnesium and so on. According to a research, people who eat brown bread are lighter than white-bread eaters. • Hot peppers Do you like eating spicy food ? There is a good news for you. Hot peppers can speed up the process of burning your body fat. It is an amazing antioxidant source and contains nil cholesrol and nil saturated

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“Fat Is Not A Fairy Tale” is a lyric poem by Jane Yolen. A poem that criticized princesses that are “Anorexic and wasp-waisted.” It makes it seem like there will never be a princess who would be fat. Yolen tries to address to adolescents that they should not view themselves as anything less because they are not as perfect as princesses. She portrays this by altering the classic name of various fairy tales.

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Obesity In America Essay

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According to the latest statistics from various sources, 1 out of 3 kids are obese in America and obesity is gradually becoming more and more common as it affects 37 percent of all adults and nearly 18 percent of all children in America (Yaniv and Rosin, 2009). The problem of obesity is also rising in parts of the developing world, as income levels rise and people have access to fattier products. In fact, the percentage of adult obesity has more than doubled while children’s obesity rates have more than tripled within the past thirty years around the globe (Yaniv and Rosin, 2009). However, despite the rise in global obesity rates, an alarming estimate of about 112,000 deaths are associated with obesity each in the U.S. alone. One of the chief causes is many people suffering from obesity do not make healthy food choices (Sturm, Powell, Chriqui and Chaloupka, 2010).

Phentemine375 Research Paper

Capsaicin-1.12 helps the body easily absorb the other ingredients, aids in the intake of chemicals and boosting their effects by motivating certain receptors whose function is to increase blood flow. By increasing blood flow to small blood vessels within fat capsaicin-1.12 greatly improves the effectiveness of Phen375 where fat is stored. Capsaicin ensures active ingredients are carried throughout your body by increasing blood flow in smaller or restricted flow vessels very common in fatty tissue. Capsaicin also increases your body’s temperature allowing you to burn up to 270 calories more per day than you normally would, this process is called thermogenic burn as the body increases temperature it requires more energy to burn thus eliminating fat

Rhetorical Analysis Of Being Fat Is Ok By Paul Campos

Take Off of The Obesity Crisis Being overweight has been a concern of the US government and citizens for a while now. Many people have been debating about how the obesity crisis has been affecting people and businesses. Who's fault is it and how can we solve the problem are questions often asked by concerned citizens, the government and most importantly overweight people.

Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes Essay

In the book, Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes,Throughout the book Eric had shown tremendous amounts of moments where he shows that he was devoted to Sarah. He is devoted to Sarah Byrnes in many ways. One of the ways would be when Eric started swimming and started to lose weight, but he didn't want to lose weight because he thought Sarah was going to think that he was going to leave her. Since Sarah was ugly and got made fun of a lot he wanted people to have something to make fun of him for so Sarah wasn’t alone. When Eric did start to lose a little weight he notice right away and wanted to change just for Sarah.

NCOA BACKGROUND PAPER ON SUSTENANCE AND HEALTH 1. Who wants a whopper? Obesity affects close to 35% of all Americans leading to 216,000 deaths annually compared to Japan where obesity affects 3.2%1. Will you be one? This is why I find it imperative that I write about how I believe fast food is a contributing factor of obesity in America and the Health issues that come along with being obese.

Ketogenic Diet Disadvantages

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Obesity Epidemic Analysis

The obesity epidemic has been growing at an outstanding rate for some time. Some assume it is problematic, yet some contradict. Meanwhile, not plenty of masses understand what the obesity epidemic is and how it actually affects humans. Quite a bit of questions and debates have emerged on the topic of what humans must accomplish to end it. After numerous sessions and debates and multiple years, scientists have gathered enough information to know the existing causes, effects, statistics, and the impact on society.

Fat American Informative Speech

Losing weight is never an easy journey to jump start. With all the fad diets and new workout programs found at gyms and even ones you can do in your own home it can make it very stressful to start the process of losing weight. Basic lifestyle changes can help you shed some pounds although, if you are looking at more than 10 to 15 pounds there are many other things you must commit to in order to be successful in your weight loss journey. How Did We Become the "Fat America?"

Essay On Binge Eating Disorder

Effects of the Binge Eating Disorder toward a person’s emotional state The Binge Eating Disorder is one of the main issues of our society nowadays. This disorder is suffered by a variety of people. It is not exclusive to people of a specific age or sex, but it attacks anyone who might be undergoing depression, has unhealthy and unsupervised dieting plans, and coping skill problems.

Essay On Poor Eating Habits

The consumption of low fat in the body reduces the process of absorption of vitamins in the body. • Changing of moods- A sufficient amount of good oils in the body plays a critical role in helping us maintain a good mood. Fat facilitates the production of feel good chemicals. Fitness instructors, state that people in a good mood are always looking forward towards

Essay On Fast Food And Obesity

According to Centres of Disease Control and Prevention more than one-third (34.9% or 76.6 million) of U.S adults are obese. In this fast moving world, may it be people from the corporate world or even students no one really have the time to wait to get their food done. So the only way is that they buy themselves fast food. However, awareness is being created these days about the effects of fast food people are also starting to blame fast food for increasing rate of obesity.

More about I Love To Eat Fat Essay

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Fat Disorders: The Role Of Fat In The Human Body

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Milk Fat Experiment

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Saturated Fats

In the article “Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link” by Anahad O'Connor in the New York Times research was conducted to determine if saturated foods actually had a negative effect on the human body. For years, it was believed that saturated fats cause many problems to people. Health officials promote that saturated fats are unhealthy and cause problems like cholesterol, heart disease, and even obesity. Saturated fats are believed to have many calories and lipoproteins in it. Recent studies

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The SAT Writing Section (Essay): Here’s What You Need to Know

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The SAT recently revamped itself to more accurately test what students learn in school. The new version is less deliberately tricky and confusing, but it’s still a challenging, exhausting test. Let’s say you’ve taken both the ACT and the SAT and you perform better on the SAT. Now that you’ve chosen it as your go-to test, how do you get through the essay portion, especially if you hate writing?

Fun fact: the SAT has plenty of new practice tests , which include essays. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be working from this practice essay , so it might be useful to have it open as you read. We’ll go through what’s expected, what scoring looks like, and how to go about writing the best essay you can.

Understand What You’re Being Asked to Do

The new SAT no longer asks you to make up ideas and references from scratch (which, honestly, is probably for the best). Instead, it provides you with an essay and asks you to analyze it, much in the same vein as an in-class analytical or an AP English Language essay.

The Assignment

The assignment reads as follows. At the top you’ll see a generic introduction for what to look for as you read:

As you read the passage below, consider how (the author of the passage) uses:

• evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims.
• reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence.
• stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed.

Then, at the bottom, the instructions get specific. For this essay, they read like this:

Write an essay in which you explain how Bobby Braun builds an argument to persuade his audience that the US government must continue to invest in NASA. In your essay, analyze how Braun uses one or more of the features listed in the box above (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage. Your essay should not explain whether you agree with Braun’s claims, but rather explain how Braun builds an argument to persuade his audience.

What does this mean? Essentially, as you read, pick out the techniques the author uses to make his or her point, then write a detailed essay that covers a couple of the main ones. Brush up on your knowledge of literary terms and devices well in advance of writing the SAT essay. You don’t have to know them all, but know the most commonly used ones really well (tone, diction, imagery, simile/metaphor, allusion, rhetorical question, anecdote, and symbolism, to name a few) so you can rely on those. In an argumentative essay, like this one, an author will always use tone, diction (choice of words), and some kind of persuasion technique (Logos? Pathos? Ethos? Anecdote? etc.).

How is the essay scored? Two testers will read your essay and will provide a score of 1-4 on three different benchmarks: reading, analysis, and writing.

Did the writer understand the content? Did they quickly summarize the argument/point and then move quickly into their interpretation of it? Did they paraphrase and directly quote?

Did the writer not only identify the right literary terms/devices but assess their uses effectively? In other words, did the writer understand why the author used those devices and say so? Did the analysis integrate into the rest of the essay?

Is there a strong thesis, body paragraphs for each device, and a quick conclusion? (More on organization below.) Is the writing “strong,” i.e., sentence variety, no unnecessary words or repetition, strong words, and sophisticated reasoning?

The testers’ scores are then added together for an aggregate final score. So, a top score would be 8/8/8.

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Final Thoughts

Unless you’re being given extra time, you have exactly 50 minutes to complete the essay. This sounds like a lot (and it’s more than it used to be), but don’t be fooled. You’ll use the time.

Students with special accommodations might be able to take the test on a computer, but otherwise it’s a written test. Your test booklet will be scanned into a computer. If you make a mistake, don’t erase your work, because it causes smudges and can make it hard for the tester to read. Simply cross out and rewrite. The testers are trained not to read crossed-out material. If you’ve been told your handwriting is impossible to read, write a little more slowly than you might otherwise. Choose the style that’s more legible for you: print or cursive. When you write practice tests, give it to someone and ask if they can read it.

You’ll take the SAT essay last, after every other section has been completed. So you’ll be exhausted. There’s no way around that, unfortunately, beyond bringing snacks and water on test day and walking around during breaks to take the focus off your brain for a couple minutes. Practice is key; you’ll want to be able to read an essay quickly, pull out devices, and write a straightforward essay with a minimum of confusion and anxiety. Only practice and memorization of the right information will get you there.

As you prepare to take the SAT, take a look at some example essays that scored highly. It won’t be the same subject matter, but the structure and language will be aspects you can emulate.

Read with the Assignment in Mind

Imagine that your proctor has told you to turn to the essay section. You already know the basic assignment, so you can actually skip the top introduction and dive right in to the essay. Don’t get bogged down with unfamiliar words or the most complex sentences. You don’t need to absorb every single word of the essay. Read to find devices you can use. Circle them and ID them as you go. Don’t be picky right away—just observe and note what you see.

Go ahead and skim the bottom instructions, but even then the first sentence is the only really important one. In this case, the gist is: how does Braun persuade his audience to invest in NASA? Then, go back to the devices you found, and pick out the three strongest and/or most used devices to structure your essay. Can’t find three? Remember, an author always uses tone (point of view) and diction (word choice) so those are two easy ones if you’re stuck.

The process of reading and pulling out devices should take no more than eight minutes.

Make a Quick Outline

I know this one sound counterintuitive, given what I said about time limits, but bear with me. Just starting to write without a clear path is hugely problematic for timed essays. Even the best writers make a mental note of their general direction. Without planning, you might change directions mid-essay, forget your thesis and end up arguing something else, or wander off completely without realizing it.

The outline can be short and sweet. For example, with this practice essay, it could look like this:

Intro: Braun argues that continuing to invest in space tech and research keeps us competitive in the world economy. Devices: logos, imagery, allusion

Body 1: Logos (logic): paragraph 3, 5, 7

Body 2: Imagery: paragraph 4, 6

Body 3: Allusion: paragraph 8

Don’t even bother to include your conclusion in your outline. It’s pretty much the same content as your intro. Also, remember that you don’t need to tackle every aspect or device in the essay. Highlight where your devices are, then focus your analysis to those sections. In the outline above, I’ve structured the devices so that you’re going through the essay in almost chronological fashion. You don’t have to do this, but it makes the essay-writing a bit easier.

The process of outlining should take no more than two minutes.

Write Quickly but Methodically

Don’t waste a lot of breath with a big, drawn out introduction. State the argument of the author in one sentence, then your thesis, which should be a list of the three devices you plan to use. Keep it simple and easy, then move on.

For each body paragraph, make a quick topic sentence explaining which device you’re analyzing. Spend one sentence (ONLY one) summarizing how the author is using the device. Begin to use quotes or paraphrase; after each example, analyze why the author uses the device and the effect it has. About three quotes or examples are usually standard. Then, at the end of the paragraph, use one sentence to sum up the effect the device has on the whole essay. Use sample essays for examples of this structure.

See the numbers at the side of each paragraph? When you quote directly or summarize directly, put the number of the paragraph in parenthesis afterwards to cite where you’re getting the information from.

For your conclusion, simply restate what you’ve said before. If you’re feeling extra-confident, feel free to add a key takeaway from the analysis, but it’s not necessary. So, your conclusion can be two sentences just like your intro.

What if your writing style isn’t advanced or similar to the example essays? Work with a teacher or tutor who can help you develop your skills if you have the time. If not, just write simply and clearly. Don’t use overly technical words. Don’t make really long sentences just for the sake of doing so. Even simple, forceful language can be effective so long as your argument is good. So focus your attention on ensuring that you know what good analysis is and how to replicate it.

You’ll have 35 minutes to write. Keep an eye on the clock, but mostly just focus on writing quickly and clearly.

Leave a Few Minutes for Proofreading

Again, I know you’ll be flying through this essay at lightning speed to get everything done effectively. But this one’s important too. When you write quickly, grammar and spelling can fall by the wayside. That’s totally normal, so don’t freak out. But you will be graded on such aspects in your final score, so leave 5 minutes max at the end to skim through your essay, pinpoint where you made mistakes, cross out the word or phrase, and write the correct word or phrase above it. Try to make corrections clearly so that the tester knows which version to read.

And that’s it! Easy, right? (Totally kidding.) As with everything else, practice will help. If you’re not already doing this kind of essay in class, do a few practice essays at home. Make sure you do the EXACT process start to finish: time yourself, write an outline, and so on. Part of success is building the muscle memory to go into the essay with a solid base of experience and confidence that you’ll succeed.

Want to know how your SAT score impacts your chances of acceptance to your dream schools? Our free Chancing Engine will not only help you predict your odds, but also let you know how you stack up against other applicants, and which aspects of your profile to improve. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to gain access to our Chancing Engine and get a jumpstart on your college strategy!

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International Edition

Will the new Bridget Jones movie finally shed the weight obsession?

New film slated to be released in 2025 with renée zellweger back in title role.

Social Sharing

It's been over 20 years since Bridget Jones, weighing 136 pounds, insisted she was fat on the silver screen.

The classic 2001 romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary,  starring Renée Zellweger in the title role, captivated a generation of movie-goers. Bridget was awkward, self-deprecating, single, had messy friends, embarrassing parents, an even more embarrassing love life and was — as she told us before the opening credits even started to roll — fat.

"I suddenly realized that unless something changed soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine and I'd finally die fat and alone," Zellweger says, sitting in rumpled pyjamas, drinking vodka and smoking a cigarette, as the song All By Myself blasts in the background.

It was funny. It was dark. And as  many fans  have since pointed out , for a generation of women, it was, ultimately,  damaging . 

• Fat representation onscreen is finally starting to improve — but there's still a long way to go
• Opinion On screen and in real life, we pathologize fatness, even as we pretend to accept it

"I was 13 when I first watched this film, and I weighed at least a stone more than that. I remember feeling a hot flush of panic and disgust when I realized this, and silently vowed to stick to my diet better," body confidence advocate Alex Light wrote in a viral 2020 Instagram post .

She's describing the moment Bridget writes her weight, 136 pounds — just over 9.5 stone in U.K. measurement — in her diary. 

As in the books by Helen Fielding, Bridget frequently records her weight in her diary and is continuously referred to as overweight throughout the first two films. In the third, where she's pregnant, her mother reacts to the news by saying, "Wonderful, we thought you'd just got all fat again."

Meanwhile, Zellweger's own weight was the repeated subject of scrutiny by media as she famously gained 30 pounds twice for Bridget Jones's Diary and 2004's  Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. In Bridget Jones's Baby, the fact that the actor didn't gain weight made headlines . (In the 2016 movie, Bridget says she has finally achieved her "perfect weight.")

Now, 23 years after the first film was released, there's a fourth movie in the works , which according to reports will reprise Zellweger in the title role and be released on Valentine's Day 2025. But as excitement builds about  Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy , many fans of the beloved series want to know: will the fat-shaming finally stop?

"I'm not entirely optimistic," said Shana MacDonald, an associate professor in communication arts at the University of Waterloo who studies pop culture, social media and feminist politics.

MacDonald notes there's been a shift in a younger generation toward body positivity, inclusivity and neutrality, but that Hollywood — and the general population's reaction to Hollywood movies that do push the needle — isn't quite there yet. She points to the recent remaking of Mean Girls as an example, where actress Reneé Rapp was criticized for her body . 

"We have this regressive conversation happening where we're seeing the casting of women who have much more fulsome, healthy figures in main roles, and getting massive backlash for that," MacDonald said.

The 'heroin chic' ideal

The original Bridget Jones movies came out during a complex time that media scholars refer to as  peak post-feminist cinema , MacDonald explained.

Around the turn of the millennium, TV shows like Sex and the City and Ally McBeal  embraced female empowerment, but within a relationship to capitalism and consumption. And part of that was a very specific standard of weight and femininity, she said. 

"We were working through the idealization of 'heroin chic.' There was a really explicit emphasis on a deeply skinny idealization of femininity," MacDonald said. 

Today, a younger generation of women is pushing for a healthier body image , valuing a body's abilities and a person's non-physical characteristic more than appearance. People call out body shaming on TikTok  and embrace self love . Major clothing brands such as Joe Fresh and Gap  use more models who are plus-sized or have limb differences, although it's worth noting the fashion industry has been accused of " fat-washing " or " curve-washing " to give off the illusion of being inclusive.

But the ideal in Hollywood has barely budged, according to a 2022 report by The Representation Project , which found only 6.7 per cent of characters in the decade's most popular films were fat, and none of them were in lead roles. The report's authors note that they use the word fat "because it's not an insult." 

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• First Person The fashion industry's 'plus-size' label shames women to fit an unhealthy standard

They also found that fat characters are more likely to be portrayed as funny or "stupid."

"This finding reinforces the common 'Comic Relief' trope of fat people in media," the report noted.

'Perfectly normal weight'

Zellweger, for her part, has been critical about the focus on Bridget's weight. In a 2016 interview with Today about the third movie and Bridget's appearance,   Zellweger said, "I never thought she had a weight issue."

The same year, she told Vogue magazine she never understood the scrutiny of her own weight gain to play the role.

"Bridget is a perfectly normal weight and I've never understood why it matters so much," she said. "No male actor would get such scrutiny if he did the same thing for a role."

• Q&A Barbie movie draws attention to fat phobia, dietitian says
• Move over, body positivity: It's time to start normalizing our bodies as they are, these Canadians say

But for some who grew up loving the 2001 rom-com heroine, Bridget's obsession with her weight was harmful.

Writer Sophie Vershbow wrote in a 2021 essay in Vogue that the 2001 movie came out when she was 11 "and just learning that hating your body was a normal part of being a woman."

"How many times had I watched this movie as a teenager and internalized that my body needed fixing, too?

The careers of actors like Amy Schumer and Rebel Wilson show how our culture is still fixated on women's bodies in Hollywood.

In February, around the time season two of her show Life and Beth  was released, Schumer was criticized for having a puffy face  (she later explained she has a hormonal disorder ).

Meanwhile, Wilson, who often played the role of the funny friend in movies such as Pitch Perfect, has been widely praised for losing 80 pounds .

• Renée Zellweger slams media speculation about plastic surgery
• Bridget Jones navigates social media in new novel

MacDonald, with the University of Waterloo, says the recent resurgence of Hallmark-style romantic comedies doesn't make her hopeful that attitudes are shifting in the right direction. These films lean in to that same early-2000s post-feminist narrative, she explained, with the same attractive and thin leading characters.

But MacDonald also sees an exciting opportunity with the new Bridget Jones movie, which is based on Helen Fielding's third book where Bridget is a single mom in her 50s: the experience of menopause.

"In a perfect world that will be integrated into the conversation."

Helen Fielding brings Bridget Jones back with Mad About the Boy

About the author.

Senior writer and editor

Natalie Stechyson is a senior writer and editor at CBC News. She's worked in newsrooms across the country, including the Globe and Mail, Postmedia News, Calgary Herald and Brunswick News. Before joining CBC News, she was the Parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award.

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Msu target, 3-star lb charles white to announce college decision this month, share this article.

A big-time Spartans’ target in the 2025 recruiting class will announce his college commitment in a few weeks.

Three-star linebacker Charles White of Orchard Lake, Mich. will reportedly announce his college decision on April 27. White is down to considering only four schools — Michigan State, Kansas, Boston College and Purdue. White is currently crystal ball predicted to end up a Spartan.

White ranks as the No. 66 linebacker and No. 594 overall prospect in 247Sports’ composite rankings for the 2025 class. He’s also listed as the No. 10 player from Michigan in the class.

Click on the link below to read more on White and his recruitment:

Orchard Lake (Mich.) St. Mary’s LB Charles White will announce his college commitment on April 27th: https://t.co/RLo9ek05qU — Allen Trieu (@AllenTrieu) April 12, 2024

Contact/Follow us @ The SpartansWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Michigan state news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Robert Bondy on Twitter @ RobertBondy5 .

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Projecting the 2023-24 michigan state basketball rotation after roster finalization, every transfer msu basketball has contacted ... so far, gallery: photos from mark dantonio's hall of fame career with michigan state football, report, michigan state basketball reaches out to star oakland transfer, msu football reportedly has 'interest' in unlv transfer cb ricky johnson, michigan state basketball makes george mason sf transfer keyshawn hall's top four, assistant coach candidates for michigan state basketball.

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‘Pretty Big Bunny, Huh?’: Biden Hosts White House Easter Egg Roll

Even before the skies opened up on children rolling eggs down a soggy South Lawn, the 146-year-old tradition was caught up in the latest partisan storm.

By Erica L. Green

Reporting from the White House

Bunny ears. Rain slickers. Sixty-four thousand hard-boiled eggs.

Under rainy skies, President Biden on Monday hosted the White House Easter Egg Roll, a tradition so wholesome and old-fashioned that it often simply transcends Washington politics.

“Easter reminds us of the power of hope and renewal, sacrifice and resurrection, but mainly, love and grace toward one another,” Mr. Biden said from the White House balcony, where he stood between two enormous Easter Bunnies.

But this year, even before the skies opened on the children who were gleefully rolling eggs down the White House lawn, the 146-year-old tradition was caught up in a partisan storm.

In the days leading up to the event, Republicans seized on guidelines for the annual egg decorating contest that prohibit religious symbols on the entries — even though the rule has existed for decades and was enforced by Mr. Biden’s predecessors.

Mr. Biden’s political opponents also slammed the White House for commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday. The day of visibility has been held on March 31 for the past 15 years; this year, that date happened to be Easter Sunday.

Mr. Biden briefly addressed the controversy when asked about House Speaker Mike Johnson saying that it was “outrageous and abhorrent” for the White House to observe the day on Easter.

“He’s thoroughly uninformed,” Mr. Biden said.

For the most part, the Republican-stoked culture war meant little to those who turned out for the event. Before he joined the crowd on the lawn, Mr. Biden welcomed everyone and introduced the big attraction.

“Say hello to our Easter Bunnies,” he said. “Come on up, bunnies. Get up here so they can see you. Come on, get in there. Pretty big bunny, huh?”

The White House estimated that roughly 40,000 people would attend, its highest attendance ever.

Asked what she was looking forward to most at this year’s Easter Egg Roll, Kylie Hughes, a 7-year-old from Waldorf, Md., said, “I like hearing Joe Biden talk.”

The president took pictures with children and families, and even helped console a young girl who, frustrated by her form, began to cry until the president joined her in rolling her egg.

“It’s really about kids, and Easter and celebrating,” said Nikki Santos, a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe who lives in Washington, D.C., with her 7-year-old daughter. “And you definitely feel that positive, happy energy today.”

Jill Biden, the first lady and a teacher of 30 years, made the theme of the event “EGGucation” and transformed the South Lawn and Ellipse into a school community, including hot air balloons and activity stations. She hosted families in a “reading nook,” where she read “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”

“I’m a teacher, so I love any time when we can turn the White House into a classroom,” Dr. Biden said. “And that’s what we’re doing today.”

Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent, covering President Biden and his administration. More about Erica L. Green