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A review by pushingdessy
Body Phobia: The Root of the American Fear of Difference by Dianna E. Anderson
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for providing this title in exchange for an honest review!
“Body Phobia: The Western roots of our fear of difference” (2024) by Dianna E. Anderson is an exploration of the divide of body and mind that permeates culture and politics, particularly in USAmerican society, and seeks to categorize certain bodies as good or bad and impart moral judgement on the minds accordingly.
The book’s chapters are thus divided to focus on fatphobia, disability, race, queerness, the impacts of religion and capitalism on the notions of the body, our relationship to aging and dying bodies, and the body-mind integration. It’s woven throughout with the author’s life experiences as a non-binary person in a large body who was raised in evangelical Christianity and struggled with severe anxiety in their relationship with their own body.
While I’m not USAmerican, I think many of us in the Western world have a complicated relationship with bodies and the Otherness inscribed in those bodies, so I was very interested in this.
It was definitely a valuable book and it made me feel seen in some ways, even if my experiences have little in common with the author’s. However, it seemed more like a long essay blended with memoir than the socio-historical account I was expecting. In addition, religion was front and center here. That makes sense to a certain extent, because the roots of our complicated relationship with the body definitely lie with Christianity, and of course Protestantism in particular has a huge influence in USAmerican society even today, but the analysis felt narrowed down to religion, which the author admits is their area of expertise and interest, as at some points it veered out beyond Christianity.
So I would recommend it, but mostly if you have a particular interest in theology or don’t mind reading about it.
“Body Phobia: The Western roots of our fear of difference” (2024) by Dianna E. Anderson is an exploration of the divide of body and mind that permeates culture and politics, particularly in USAmerican society, and seeks to categorize certain bodies as good or bad and impart moral judgement on the minds accordingly.
The book’s chapters are thus divided to focus on fatphobia, disability, race, queerness, the impacts of religion and capitalism on the notions of the body, our relationship to aging and dying bodies, and the body-mind integration. It’s woven throughout with the author’s life experiences as a non-binary person in a large body who was raised in evangelical Christianity and struggled with severe anxiety in their relationship with their own body.
While I’m not USAmerican, I think many of us in the Western world have a complicated relationship with bodies and the Otherness inscribed in those bodies, so I was very interested in this.
It was definitely a valuable book and it made me feel seen in some ways, even if my experiences have little in common with the author’s. However, it seemed more like a long essay blended with memoir than the socio-historical account I was expecting. In addition, religion was front and center here. That makes sense to a certain extent, because the roots of our complicated relationship with the body definitely lie with Christianity, and of course Protestantism in particular has a huge influence in USAmerican society even today, but the analysis felt narrowed down to religion, which the author admits is their area of expertise and interest, as at some points it veered out beyond Christianity.
So I would recommend it, but mostly if you have a particular interest in theology or don’t mind reading about it.