Editorial Content for Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
I first started following Evette Dionne on social media when she was named the editor of BITCH magazine, a publication devoted to feminist critiques of pop culture (sadly now shuttered). She also wrote an award-winning history for young readers about Black women’s struggles for voting rights. But only recently have I become aware of her role as an activist for fat people’s rights, a long-overdue movement aiming to combat one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination.
"WEIGHTLESS both opens and closes with some very positive action items that readers can take.... Dionne’s brilliance and candor will carry readers along with her."
In WEIGHTLESS, Dionne provides plenty of personal history as context for her activism. She opens by discussing her diagnosis, while she was still in her 20s, of pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. These conditions were likely caused, or at least exacerbated, by medical professionals’ repeated inability or refusal to see her as anything more than a fat body that needed to lose weight. Dionne’s chronic conditions are not a consequence of her fatness. Rather, they were most likely caused by earlier doctors’ failures to address a different (non-weight-related) condition until their only choice was to use a powerful medication with toxic side effects --- again, because her size blinded them to the need for any action beyond weight loss.
Indictment of the medical profession is a theme that runs throughout several of Dionne’s chapters, which include considerations of celebrity weight loss and the public portrayals of fat celebrities, the challenges of online dating as a fat person, and the dearth of serious roles for fat actors. Her chapters --- which for the most part could exist as stand-alone essays --- also delve into more personal topics, such as the shame she experienced as a young girl publicly humiliated by a (supposedly) well-meaning gym teacher, and the anxiety she felt when disrobing for sex or donning a form-fitting bathing suit on a cruise.
Dionne addresses complicated and perhaps controversial topics when she admits to tension between herself and her mother (a fellow fat person, but one keen to adopt every new diet or weight loss technique). She also acknowledges the extent to which even she has internalized society’s fatphobia, such as when she relates feeling uncomfortable while dating an equally fat man or when she admits to relishing shows like “My 600-Pound Life” with a feeling of superiority: “Fatness is intertwined in my very being; I don’t know who I am if I’m not fat. But I’ve also prided myself on not being that fat.”
WEIGHTLESS both opens and closes with some very positive action items that readers can take. These include techniques for finding doctors who won’t default to weight loss as the first (or only) solution and, later, ideas for how to combat discrimination against fat people via legal and political actions. At times, given the book’s relatively narrow focus and its mixture of the personal and the political, it can begin to seem slightly repetitious. But Dionne’s brilliance and candor will carry readers along with her.
Teaser
In WEIGHTLESS, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields that fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chat rooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age 29, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture and self-image. Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.
Promo
In WEIGHTLESS, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields that fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chat rooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age 29, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture and self-image. Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.
About the Book
A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race and gender --- and toward a brighter future --- from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne.
My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.
In this insightful, funny and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chat rooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age 29, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture and self-image.
Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.
An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, WEIGHTLESS holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.
Audiobook available, read by Evette Dionne
