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TAKING UP SPACE
How Eating Well
& Exercising Regularly
Changed My Life

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About TAKING UP SPACE

Taking Up Space is a sociological memoir about being fat and the physical, emotional and economic costs of trying to pass for thin in a culture that stigmatizes fat people.

Making her own life a case study, medical sociologist Pattie Thomas, Ph.D., with the help of her co-author and husband Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A., outlines how stigma limit and shape the life chances of all people and are supported within culture.

Through narrative text, poetry, essays, photos and drawings, Dr. Thomas shares her own process and demonstrates how a sociologically examined life can be a source for personal growth.
An extensive resource section challenges both the popular reader and the academic to further exploration.

Kathleen LeBesco, author of Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, has called Taking Up Space "a road map through the minefield of the 'war on obesity.'" Foreword by Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth (recently published in paperback as The Diet Myth).
                           
To purchase multiple copies of Taking Up Space, click on the Pearlsong Press Store link to shop our online catalog and enter the quantity desired in the pertinent box.

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Pattie Thomas & Carl Wilkerson, with Pattie's brother Stephen Thomas, are Three Wise Twins LLC, which operates The Ample Traveler©.

The Ample Traveler© reports on destinations to promote universal design, inclusion and visit-ability in the tourism and hospitality industry so that there will be room for all travelers no matter what their background, age, ability or size.

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Praise for
Taking Up Space

...a feast of information,
ideas, talking points, discussions.
Anyone who has struggled with
weight or who works with clients
who face these issues will find
this book challenging, disturbing,
and ultimately comforting as it
attempts to change deeply held
prejudices that for most of us
are unconscious.

Susan Hammonds-White, Ed.D
LPC/MHSP
Nashville Psychotherapy Institute
2006-2007 co-chair

Taking Up Space is among the best
books I've read on the costs of
stigma for fat people and society.
Written for the "average reader," it
is sophisticated, funny and touching.
Dr. Pattie Thomas, with her husband
and co-author, Carl Wilkerson, have
clearly demonstrated what we at Size
Matters, Too have been telling our
clients and radio audiences for
years—size prejudice is costing our
country a bundle in wasted human
resources, and accommodating size
diversity is good business, as well as
the right thing to do.

I will be recommending this book to
my clients and my listeners. It is a
must-read for all people of size and
people of all sizes!

Veronica Cook Euell
President, Euell Consulting Group, LLC
Host, WCRS  (Akron, OH)
& online radio show
Size Matters with Veronica

Taking Up Space was so powerfully
and beautifully written that I did not
want it to end. With evocative and
witty prose, Dr. Thomas addresses
the issues that took me years to
learn: If we are ever to be content
with ourselves, we must understand
and challenge those aspects of
our society that tear us down.

As a nutritionist who has had to
develop a new understanding of
eating and weight issues to
successfully treat my clients, it
is clear to me that Dr. Thomas
has captured the essence of what
true change and true happiness
are all about. A must-read for
people of ALL sizes. I will be
recommending this to all my
clients,

Karin Kratina, Ph.D., R.D., LD/N
Nutrition Therapist, Author, Speaker
Nutrition Coordinator, Eating Disorders
Program, University of Florida

Thomas's incisive blend of
sociological inquiry and personal
narrative amounts to a provocative
treatise on fat oppression in our
culture. Taking Up Space is a kind
of roadmap through the minefield
of the "war on obesity," and it
offers protection to the reader
ready to fight for cultural change
surrounding the meaning of fatness.

Kathleen LeBesco, Ph.D.
Author, Revolting Bodies:
The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity

Take it as a given that we all come
to a new book on a certain topic or
by a certain author with expectations:
what the story will be, who will be
important among the cast of characters,
how we are likely to feel as we read it,
all the way up to how long it will take
to read. I came to Dr. Pattie Thomas'
book with 20 years of experience
reading stories of courageous fat
people's journeys from internalized
self-hatred and despair to courageous
self-acceptance. I have been uplifted,
righteously angered, and supported
in my own efforts as a fat human
being and activist by each of them. I
expected more of the same from Dr.
Thomas' book and would have been
content if that had been the case. I
also expected that it would take me,
at most, a weekend to get through
the whole thing. I was wrong.

Taking Up Space is an intelligent,
holistic treatment on the topic of fat
acceptance. Dr. Thomas has presented
her self-portrait in a manner similar
to that of some of my favorite authors.
But she has also provided the social/
political/economic context for her inner
and outer transformation and has thus
presented us with a rich and colorful
landscape in which her journey is only
one small part. Further, she points out
to each of us own our potential space
in the masterpiece and invites us to
use our own palettes to recreate the
world into a thing of beauty, recognizing
that we are already beautiful and need
only to own that knowledge. Taking
Up Space does exactly that—takes
up space in the mind and heart of
the reader, soothing and reassuring
even as it confronts and challenges.
Dr. Thomas' optimism renews my faith
that the work of one person does
matter, and that to save one life
(especially one's own) is to save
the whole world.

Claudia A. Clark, Ph.D.
Director, Association for Size
Diversity & Health
Psychologist, Counseling Center
Bowling Green State University


Taking Up Space could be called a
memoir with a Ph.D., or it could be
called sociology with a heart. Pattie
Thomas brings to the table her
careful study and analysis of the
medical, political, and social aspects
of weight in our culture. To this she
adds her witty and deeply felt poetry,
as well as her revealing and personal
journal (and journey) on the path
to self-love. That path, she shows,
requires that fat people recognize
the bigotry that is aimed at them.

Written in a lucid and readable style,
this book provides insights and
resources for professionals as well
as for those who struggle with issues
of weight and body image. Taking
Up Space should be required
reading for all those who want to
help make this world a better place.

Miriam Berg
President
Council on Size & Weight Discrimination


Taking Up Space is the poignant saga
of how one woman has come to grips
with being large in a society in which
"thin" is worshipped as the ideal. Dr.
Pattie Thomas, with her brilliant writing
style, shares the pain of her battles.
Not just the emotional and psychological
pain of being large in a small world,
but the actual physical pain of two chronic diseases with which she has to contend.

In Taking Up Space, Dr. Thomas often
refers to herself as the reluctant warrior.
But as she shares her battle with personal
weight issues, as she bravely takes on
the societal and medical stigmas that
daily drain people of size, she truly
becomes a brave sumo warrior who leads
the way into battle against the poison
darts that are constantly hurled at us.

Dr. Thomas is such a good example of
what our society does to a person. She
obviously has a brilliant mind. She is a
deep thinker, a very good writer, a warm,
caring person. But all that our brainwashed
world can see is the package that holds
her wonderful mind and heart.

My heart cries for all the time that she,
and others like her—you, me, thousands—
have lost obsessing over weight when
we should have been using that time
to make this world a better place.

Pat Ballard
Author



The personal is political, and the political
is personal—Dr. Thomas offers her
perspective as a thoughtful sociologist
to examine the experience of being a
fat woman here and now.

A consciousness-raising group is packed between the covers of this book. You
will not think the same way about your
own experiences after reading it.
Artful response to stigma!

Deb Burgard, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist &
Eating Disorders Specialist
co-author of
Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide
for Large Women
creator of BodyPositive.com & ShowMeTheData.info
Health At Every Size practitioner
 

This book has punch—from its personal
fat narrative to the social context that stigmatizes a proper identity.

I was struck with how powerful the story
became as the myths, poetry, and sage
advice conveyed both the dignity and
pain of a condition that is increasingly medicalized as obesity. Taken away
from its place as a way of life and
alternative drama of experience, fat
gains embodies and personal dignity,
while also claiming a space in the social
world for one human variation among
many.

This is a story about acceptance, of the
fat self and its body, one in need of
repeated telling to others and to a public
that are largely silent on acceptability.

Jay Gubrium, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair
Department of Sociology
University of Missouri
 

Dr. Thomas brings her breadth of scholarship,the wretched open heart of her own life story and the sublime artistry of her poetry into this analysis of the life of fat people. The book centers on her life and experience
but holds the truth of the difficult world we fat people navigate in terms of attitudes, projections and stereotypes. It is not a dour read but rather a call for a paradigm shift that comes from her own mind, heart and body. The fat community is well served by her voice.

Tish Parmeley
Fatshadow

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