Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body [Paperback]

If you've never read anything fat acceptance related, this is an excellent introduction. It's fun, light, and easily approachable without watering down the core tenants. Lesley never apologizes for her fatness (or anyone else's), and does a fine job of both showing and telling why fat acceptance is important and needed and why you ought care and join our team. If you're a fat-acceptance regular, fret not; I assure you, this book is also for you.

Two Whole Cakes is a small, friendly book. It's a paperback of about 160 pages. Neither an academic text nor a neatly logical refutation of anti-fat hate, reading it feels like I'm chatting with Lesley over dinner (or cake!). She tells stories from her childhood and grad school intermixed with passionate culminations of a manifesto. There is no index, no table of contents, and it's not chronological. It meanders, but not aimlessly. There are sentences and even paragraphs that I would expect to find in gradate school rather than a cute paperback. Rather than distracting from the intimacy of Kinzel's voice, they add a depth and complexity that is so often the hallmark of her work. She's thoughtful and reflective, both of herself and our culture at large (pun always intended). Kinzel has the ability to both take topics seriously while also conveying how absolutely absurd they are. When Kinzel discusses the side effects from a diet pill, I had to put down the book because I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I couldn't keep my eyes open. Only Lesley could get me to laugh so hard about diet pills and literal crap. And it's more than the absurdity of our culture that got to me. She talks about her involvement in fat community, a flourishing community full of self acceptance and love. Though I'm sure this was not her goal, she reminded my why I also do fat academic work and fat activist work. In the face of diet culture, I want everyone to be able to opt out of hate and self-loathing. And in order to do this, I need a community of others who get it. I need to know that I'm not alone in my fear, my love, and my rage. Two Whole Cakes renewed my love for my body and my work-- and that's the highest praise I can give any writer.

I bought this book because I am such a fan of Lesley's writing on XoJane.com. I was disappointed to see that this book is just a disjointed collection of her essays from that Web site, which I have read, for free, already.

A previous review described this book as part manifesto, part memoir. I totally agree with that assessment, but I don't think that's a positive thing. Her political leanings about fat culture mixed in with her own personal experiences made for an uneven read. I will pass this book along, maybe the next person who reads it will like it more than I did?

This is a quick read in size, but the book is not short on insights. Lesley shares a series of reflections on experiences living in a fat body, some humorous, some excruciating, but none of them feel pointless, which is a rare gift. The story she recounts about being stared at in a department store, or overhearing someone call out a body-based insult that wasn't even aimed at her but still produced a reaction, reminded me all too much of my own life. The thing I value the most about Lesley's writing in general is that she has her own coping methods but she seems to have a solid understanding that being who she is (and how she looks) is okay, and it's not necessary to try to find a positive label for your body or your personality in order to be a full human being. That's definitely something the world needs more of.

I want to stress that this is not "only for fat chicks" - anyone who has experienced feeling like their body will never be "right" can probably relate to a lot of this book. At the same time it's a valuable point of view work from a fat person that talks frankly about being fat and what that is like on a daily basis, something that is not talked about nearly enough in the media.