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Chapter 1 The Straitjacket of Fatphobia When Jen Curran, thirty-eight, went to see a kidney doctor, she was prescribed weight loss. “Can you start dieting and exercising? Try to lose some weight,” she was counseled. Jen played along, despite serious misgivings. “Okay, yeah. I can do that.” Jen had a five-month-old baby at home. The doctor continued, “Take the baby out for walks, eat less salt, nothing from a box, eat plants.”Jen noted that she didn’t need the instructions: she was already “painfully well-versed” in weight loss. She had lost some 115 pounds earlier in her life, not for the sake of her health, but for the sake of her appearance. She had since decided, some years earlier, to let go of her self-described obsession with her weight and to embrace her body as it was. She felt strong and resilient, despite the high levels of protein in her urine that her ob-gyn had flagged with concern during her pregnancy, along with high blood pressure. She had been put on bed rest during...

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