Best Books for addressing poor Body Image
As an eating disorder dietitian, the subject of body image comes up almost daily. In a culture which sets unattainable body expectations, body dissatisfaction is at an all time high. Beauty should never be a one size fits all, despite what social media may want you to believe. How we love and treat ourselves should never be based on society’s expectations of how we should look, how wide our hips should be, how flat our stomach is. Arriving in that place of self love, self-acceptance and blocking out the societal noise is not easy and certainly does not happen overnight. The journey to bodily self-love can be guided by a HAEs dietitian, a body positivity specialist or a therapist, but the bulk of the work has to come from within. Only we can decide to stop seeing ourselves as the world tells us to and walk into the space of self acceptance.
Luckily for us, there are many authors out there who have done much of the leg work and championed the way for bodies of all shapes, sizes and colors. Here is a short list of some of the best body positivity books to guide you on your journey to, as Sonya Taylor would say, “radial self-love”.
The Body is not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love by Sonya Taylor
This is an excellent book written by an author who has used her personal experiences as a black women in America to disrupt the status quo and champion self-love. Taylor notes that self-love is one of the most radical decisions we can make in a society which constantly strives to make us feel insignificant. The book can be coupled with the Your body is not and apology workbook and The Radical Permission Journal to assist in guiding you along your way.
Reclaiming Body Trust: A path to healing and liberation by Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC and Dana Sturtevant MS, RD
In this book the authors acknowledge now much society benefits from our disembodiment, how many industries profit from our self-disatisfaction. Reclaiming Body Trust offers as a guide to welcoming ourselves back home to our body. It breaks down larger ideas into smaller actionable steps toward detangling society’s constant babble and returning to our innate self trust. The workbook can act as a helpful guide through the process.
What we dont talk about when we talk about Fat by Aubrey Gordon
The reality is we live in a fat phobic culture, one which couples morality with physical appearance. What we don’t talk about when we talk about Fat provides an in-depth discourse to the societal injustices which are perpetuated by anti-fatness. At the root of all body dissatisfaction is a history of perpetuated disembodiment through the lens of racism, ableism, diet culture, anti-fatness…the list goes on. Gordon dives into the nuances of our fat phobic culture and the negative effects is has on society as a whole.
This short list is just a few of the amazing authors writing books from varying angles addressing body image, slowly guiding society to a more accepting place of all bodies no matter their size. If you have a book you have benefitted from or would like us to feature on a blog post or read, shoot us an email!
