From the Foreword:

“Fat Vanity is one of many of the fat community’s survival tools. It is deeply enmeshed with the principles of Fat Liberation. 

How does one even survive such a deeply fat-hating world? The only answer, in my eyes, is community. Community does the collective work to dismantle oppressive systems. Community does the daily work to make sure its members survive.

Finding Fat Vanity is not just for you, the individual. It can only be learned, fat person to fat person. It can only be modeled to be understood. When you learn it, you begin the work of modeling it to others. Your inversion — of hateful self-obsession into a loving gaze — is political work. It is a radical and disruptive act. 

I wanted to write The Fat Vanity Handbook as a survival guide of sorts. Finding Fat Vanity will make all of the other work we have to do, so much easier. We aren’t just fighting to be allowed to exist in this world — fat people have so much to gift to this world. The world is better because we are in it. I hope this short book can serve as a small reminder of that. “

The Fat Vanity Handbook contains over 30 pages of poems, essays, and illustrations using hand-marbled paper by artist + activist Tracy Cox. This purchase grants 24-hour access to a downloadable copy for printing or reading on your personal device.