Ruth's Recommended Reading

and watching and listening

Here's a list of my core influences in my journey with fat liberation, body acceptance and size inclusivity. There's a mix of podcasts, theatre, books and articles.

I'll pop a little context by each of them. Also I'll update it when I can and add the date at the bottom so you can see how up to date it is.

Got your own recommendations? Drop them in the comments and I'll add to the community section.

BOOKS

• Happy Fat, Sofie Hagen (2019) - by comedian Sofie Hagen, accessible, easy reading, funny - explores fat lib, body acceptance through the personal lense

• Health At Every Size, Lindo Bacon (2008) - core reading on HAES framework, useful understanding around health and fitness from a body acceptance framing

• Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins Of Fat Phobia, Sabrina Strings (2019) dense read but fascinating and essential for understanding racist history of fatphobia (Also available as audio book on spotify)

• The Fat Studies Reader, Esther Rothblum, Sondra Solovay (2009) - collection of essays and studies around fatness. Useful for statistics and real world examples of fatphobia such as in employment, medical bias, performance

• Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, Jes Baker (2016) - emotive, emotional, call to arms

• Your Body Is Not An Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor (2018) - comes with accompanying workbook, great for personal journey and starting points

• "You Just Need To Lose Weight "And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon (2022) - really useful info especially chapter on obesity epidemic, short chapters so nice to work through in chunks

PODCASTS

She's All Fat: A Positive Podcast

The Maintenance Phase 

The Fab Fatties

Is it a fat thing? - FatLib London

Other useful resources

• Report - All Bodies Representations Of Fat Women & Girls In Hollywood, The Rep Project (2022)

• Article - “Why BMI is inaccurate and misleading” by Christian Nordqvist,  Medical News Today

• Article - “Seen but not heard: an embodied account of the (student) actor's aesthetic labour” by Roanna Mitchell, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (2014)

• Article - “The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI” by Your Fat Friend (Aubrey Gordon),

• Tedx talk - “The fear of fat - The real elephant in the room” by Kelly Jean DrinkWater, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXGwJevjOfs

• Playscript - “Fatty fat fat”, Katie Greenall (2020)

Last updated: 12th May 2026

You can also find this as a free resource to share or put up in your space.

Resources for size inclusivity.pdf

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