The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

I was so excited for this book! I have been on a self love journey for a while but found it difficult to love my body. The clip I heard of the book almost made me cry. I ordered it immediately. The section I read was just in the beginning of the book. The book sets this up as a journey for you but as the book goes on, it definitely is not that. This is a book about combatting bigotry towards racist, transphobic, homophobic, fatphobic, hatred towards those with disabilities, and other types of oppression. It felt very much like this book is aimed at middle aged white straight cis women that are in charge of how their workplace runs. I am definitely NOT that. I am all too aware of the hatred and bigotry in this world and I am just a low level worker in human services where these realities hang like a dark cloud above everything we do. Sadly, this felt like the book was saying the reason you can\’t love yourself is because society is messed up and YOU have to change it. This only made me felt worse! It made me feel like I\’ll never love myself because I can\’t change all of society and I am not in charge of changing all the policies in my workplace and community. I feel like I do so much already but I am only one person. There were very few techniques to value your body more. It really was almost all about how you have to recognize how terrible the world is. Getting this book was supposed to be something I was doing to finally help myself for once and I\’m honestly disappointed. I think this book has compiled so much useful information about the realities of prejudice but I don\’t think it\’s description should be about loving your own body.

I was so psyched for the first 40 pages of this book. I was telling everyone about it, posting on Insta stories about it, etc. But by page 90, it plateaued for me. As someone who has been doing critical analysis of systems of oppression and radical self-love work for a decade, this book feels more like a great primer for people who haven\’t thought about this stuff before. It goes on and on about systems of oppression, in an accessible way, but I am left feeling disappointed by how little there is by way of the meat of what the book is supposed to be about: radical self-love. There is precious little information on how we get there, practices, rituals, or ideas to combat the internalization of oppression. Alok Vaid-Menon said once that one of the traps of white supremacy is that we keep talking to and about whiteness. I think this book falls into that trap. Perhaps the workbook addresses more of the positive side of this journey–as in what we are wanting to move toward rather than away from–but, after being so pumped for the early part of the book, I finished it feeling disappointed. I don\’t know if editors allow major changes, but I hope that the author considers condensing the first 90 pages into 40, and then lets the rest of the book be an exploration and offering of the ways she and others have engendered radical self-love in themselves. The most exciting moments in the text for me were the glimpses we get of conversations with people, where she actually practices radical self-love and we get to see it in action. However, they are very few and far between in the second revised edition.

This book was recommended to me by a friend of mine. It had never come up on my radar before, Id never seen it on my timeline, heard quotes from it, or heard of the author, Sonya Renee Taylor before. Im so glad I have now. This book is one I will, as my friend did with me, recommend to everyone. It is worth your time, and your work. This isnt a body positivity book, but it does have aspects of that. This is a present day and historical account of straight up body terrorism and how we are all both steeped in it and accountable for it. Taylor walks us through a journey to self-awareness using the body. We all have one, and it makes the messaging digestible for all. The endgame: radical self-love in the face of white supremacy, capitalism, and our own implicit bias.

I want my money back! Whining, self pity, justification. Comparing being fat which is self inflicted to a physical disability is just sad. Using sexism, racism, and every other ism to justify being fat and blaming society but telling ur readers they have to change?? WHAT?

Honestly, I just don\’t agree with her on several points. Example, by her standards, I was apparently body shamed by my Father (my experience matches her examples of shaming to a tee)….My father was very health conscious, and wanted me to be healthy – in my opinion, he was parenting. I am a white 61 year old, when it comes to loving our bodies, I don\’t agree with the author in regard to race (she focuses a lot on the experiences and struggles of being black because she is)- BUT, I don\’t think that any one race of women has a monopoly on feeling uncomfortable with their bodies…. I understand that she would not have this insight….but, I kinda felt left out of the equation.

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