I haven’t read one of my fat-positive books in ages, and I am here to tell you: I can slip into a judgmental person as easily as anyone. Why? Well, we hear the negative messages so often. Even if I’m not hearing derogatory comments about fat people, I’m hearing “positive” comments that moralize food and thinness. You know what I mean; from clean eating to whole foods, or going to the gym in a sports bra and yoga pants, we place value not on what food does for our bodies and minds, but whether we’re doing it “right,” and look “right,” too.

That leads me to today’s review of FatLand by Frannie Zellman, which was published in 2009 by PearlSong Press. In this fiction novel, 2010 sees the release of laws dictating what women of childbearing laws can ingest under the guise of health. In 2012, more laws are written that restrict what Americans can eat in the name of maintaining a healthy weight. In 2014, someone writes a blog post stating they are fat, not a criminal, and want to know who is with them. In 2044, FatLand is fully established. The actual name is “FATLAND, which stood for Fat Acceptance Territory Lease Accession Non Dated,” and the population is over 400,000.

In FatLand, one rules states, “You were supposed to use the word ‘fat’ in FatLand. Not in bitterness, not in pride, but to describe what you were, and what the great majority of the inhabitants were.” Notice that the language is neutral. (In real life, a common rebuttal to people who are fat and in the media is that they are “glorifying obesity” — I’ve even seen this happen when a store put exercise clothes on a fat mannequin). Interestingly, the few times weight are mentioned in the novel gave numbers that are close to my own. Therefore, if I lived in 2044 outside of FatLand, I would be in prison.

The crux of the novel is not the establishment of FatLand (I’m told I’ll get that in the second book). Instead, everything is idyllic in FatLand . . . except for a teen, who is naturally thin. She gets teased for it and eventually flees the territory, to Colorado, which is on the border of FatLand. The community is upset, but perhaps things have been too easy for children born in FatLand. They have no point of reference by which they can compare. No sitting in tight chairs, being stared at in restaurants, no fat shaming, and, in this futuristic story, no prison or food restrictions.

When Ava meets a troupe of travelling dancers and falls in love with the lead, readers get a brief glimpse of a new romance. But then the lead dancer’s car explodes with her in it, and peace in FatLand is disrupted. Does it have anything to do with Stark, the owner of a chain of gyms called Complete Fitness, who feels threatened? His competition is Sandor. Before moving to FatLand, Sandor, a fat man, hated exercise, so he decided to do fun physical activities instead. He lost weight unintentionally, so ditching the judgment and oppression, he moved to FatLand and opened up gyms that were modeled after the physical activities he enjoyed. People exercised because they wanted to move their bodies, not force themselves to burn calories. The beautiful dancer models for a GymNotTrim commercial. With the popularity of his GymNotTrim chains, Sandor opens more locations in Colorado, causing Stark to lose business. Would Stark murder someone with a car bomb to punish GymNotTrim?

Something I foolishly did not consider before starting Frannie Zellman’s FatLand is that our bodies are political, especially fat ones. On top of that, FatLand is about government. If you remember my comments after the November election in the U.S., my brain and heart cannot handle political right now. Therefore, I found myself struggling to read a perfectly good novel at times. I enjoyed the underground Fat Activist group on the American side of the border, and how they refused to move to FatLand because there was work to do to help people in the U.S. The corporate “bro” called Stark freaked me out because I kept getting hints of the tech bros currently altering U.S. politics today. People in FatLand remind themselves:

“Freedom will reign once again in what should have been the Land of the Free, but was coopted and stolen away by large conglomerates and government complicity.”

And to go back to my opening comment about finding it easy to judge, every time a fat character ate something, I caught myself thinking, “Why am I always reading about what they’re eating?” or “Could she eat something other than a croissant with butter?” And then I had to remind myself: oh, yes, the fat characters in this book are the same size as me, and would I want someone constantly watching my food intake? It’s easy to fall into the habit of policing fat people, regardless of what thin people eat. Most diets “work” when the individual is eating less than they need, and outside of FatLand, Americans are being lawfully starved to maintain “healthy weights.”