Valentine’s Day Self Love Book Collection Giveaway!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The contest has ended and the winner has been contacted.

Who better to love and spoil than yourself?! So I’m going to try to help one of you in that endeavor with 12 books on body/fat/self acceptance! I know, right?! So exciting! I’ve been wanting to do this for ages so I’m super pumped about it! (Hence the million exclamation points!)



This collection includes all of the following:

1. Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary
2. Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) by Hanne Blank
3. Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image edited by Ophira Edut
4. Fat Kid Rules the World by ‎KL Going
5. Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace: A Body-Positive Coloring Book by Theo Nicole Lorenz
6. Fat: The Owner's Manual by Ragen Chastain
7. Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon
8. Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, & Fashion edited by Virgie Tovar
9. Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby
10. Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body by Lesley Kinzel
11. The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank
12. What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety by Jaclyn Friedman

Pretty awesome, right?!


Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary published by Seal Press
Rosie Molinary forcefully encourages women — whatever their size, shape, or color — to work toward feeling wonderful about themselves despite today’s media-saturated culture. Drawing on self-awareness, creativity, and mind-body connections, Molinary incorporates practical techniques into a 365-day action plan that empowers women to regain a healthy self-image, shore up self-confidence, reframe and break undermining habits of self-criticism, and champion their own emotional and physical well-being. Through accessible, doable daily actions, women and girls learn to manifest a healthy outlook on life — teaching them to live large, and starting them on the path to learning to love themselves and others.



Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) by Hanne Blank published by Crown Publishing
Big Big Love is the only one-stop-shopping handbook on relationships, sexuality, and big sexy confidence for people of all genders, sizes, and sexual orientations who know that a fantastic love life doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the number on the bathroom scale. Covering everything from dating to sex toys to getting on top, this guide also features tips on navigating tricky topics like making peace with your belly, coping with weight-related prejudice, and creating a happy, satisfying sex life in a culture where no body is ever perfect enough. …Big Big Love’s savvy, sane advice can help you tackle every hot-button issue you may confront in the bedroom and in love.



Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image edited by Ophira Edut published by Seal Press

(This is the book that first introduced me to the concept of self acceptance and body positivity.)   
The writers in this groundbreaking anthology reveal a world where bodies come in all their many-splendored shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. In doing so, they expand the national dialogue on body image to include race, ethnicity, sexuality, and power—issues that, while often overlooked, are intimately linked to how women feel about their bodies. Body Outlaws offers stories by those who have chosen to ignore, subvert, or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies.



Fat Kid Rules the World by KL Going published by Speak
Troy Billings is seventeen, 296 pounds, friendless, utterly miserable, and about to step off a New York subway platform in front of an oncoming train. Until he meets Curt MacCrae, an emaciated, semi-homeless, high school dropout guitar genius, the stuff of which Lower East Side punk rock legends are made. Never mind that Troy’s dad thinks Curt’s a drug addict and Troy’s brother thinks Troy’s the biggest (literally) loser in Manhattan. Soon, Curt’s recruited Troy as his new drummer—even though Troy can’t play the drums. Together, Curt and Troy will change the world of punk, and Troy’s own life, forever.




Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace: A Body-Positive Coloring Book by Theo Nicole Lorenz
There's a whole universe of body types out there, and they all deserve to be represented. This coloring book features eighteen fat scifi heroines doing what they do best: trekking across the time and space, blasting off into adventure, and saving the day.


 
Fat: The Owner's Manual by Ragen Chastain published by Sized for Success Multimedia
This book is more than just the story of a fat woman who managed to win respect and National Championships in the thin-obsessed world of dance. It's more than just a trained researcher's examination of the evidence about weight and health. It's a book about living life in the body that you have now, and making decisions about what you want in the future, and how to get there. Whether you want to change your body, fight for size acceptance, just live your life, or understand and support your fat friends and family, this book provides the insights, aha moments, humor, and hard facts to help.



Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon published by BenBella Books
Fat isn’t the problem. Dieting is the problem. A society that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn’t match an impossible ideal is the problem. A medical establishment that equates “thin” with “healthy” is the problem.  The solution?  Health at Every Size. Updated with the latest scientific research and even more powerful messages, Health at Every Size is not a diet book, and after reading it, you will be convinced the best way to win the war against fat is to give up the fight.


Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion edited by Virgie Tovar published by Seal Press
In this fun, fresh, fat-positive anthology, fat activist and sex educator Virgie Tovar brings together voices from an often-marginalized community to talk about and celebrate their lives. Hot & Heavy rejects the idea that being thin is best, instead embracing the many fabulous aspects of being fat—building fat-positive spaces, putting together fat-friendly wardrobes, turning society’s rules into personal politics, and creating supportive, inclusive communities. Writers, activists, performers, and poets—including April Flores, Alysia Angel, Charlotte Cooper, Jessica Judd, Emily Anderson, Genne Murphy, and Tigress Osborn—cover everything from fat go-go dancing to queer dating to urban gardening in their essays, exploring their experiences with the word “fat,” pinpointing particular moments that have impacted the way they think and feel about their bodies, and telling the story of how they each became fat revolutionaries. Ground-breaking and long overdue, Hot & Heavy is a fierce, sassy, thoughtful, authentic, and joyous collection of stories about unapologetically—and unconditionally—loving the body you’re in.



Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby published by Perigee Books
When it comes to body image, women can be their own worst enemies, aided and abetted by society and the media. But Harding and Kirby, the leading bloggers in the "fatosphere," the online community of the fat acceptance movement, have written a book to help readers achieve admiration for-or at least a truce with-their bodies. The authors believe in "health at every size"-the idea that weight does not necessarily determine well-being and that exercise and eating healthfully are beneficial, regardless of whether they cause weight loss. They point to errors in the media, misunderstood and ignored research, as well as stories from real women around the world to underscore their message. In the up-front and honest style that has become the trademark of their blogs, they share with readers twenty-seven ways to reframe notions of dieting and weight, including: accepting that diets don't work, practicing intuitive eating, finding body-positive doctors, not judging other women, and finding a hobby that has nothing to do with one's weight.



The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank published by Crown Publishing
This empowering exercise guide is big on attitude, giving plus-size women the motivation and information they need to move their bodies and improve their health.  Hanne Blank—a fellow plus-size girl who’s been there and has the worn-out sports bras to show for it—will help you discover activity that works for you no matter what your size or current fitness level.  Featuring incendiary acts like “Flail proudly,” and “Claim the right to be unattractive (just like anybody else),” Hanne serves up years of hard-won fitness advice with humor and self-acceptance.



Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body by Lesley Kinzel published by The Feminist Press
In the age of The Biggest Loser and the “war on obesity,” we’re pressured to conform to certain body standards at any cost. Sure, everyone should eat right and get exercise, but what if you do that and you still don’t fit into the clothes at the mall? … Lesley Kinzel tells stories, gives advice, and challenges stereotypes about being and feeling fat. Kinzel says no to diet fads and pills, shows by example how to stop hating your body, celebrates self-acceptance at any size, and urges you to finally accept the truth: your body is not a tragedy!



What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety by Jaclyn Friedman
published by Seal Press
In this empowering, accessible guide, Jaclyn Friedman—co-editor of Yes Means Yes—gives young women the tools to decipher the modern world’s confusing, hypersexualized, sometimes dangerous landscape so they can define their own sexual identity. Friedman decries the hypocrisy and mixed messages of our culture (we’re failures if we don’t act sexy, but we’re sluts if we actually pursue sex; we need to be protected from rapists lurking in bushes, but deserve “whatever we get” if we have a drink at a party and wear a skirt), and encourages readers to separate fear from fact, decode the damaging messages all around them, and discover a healthy personal sexuality.  ...readers will build new skills for safely expressing their sexuality with lovers and explore effective ways to talk about tricky issues with family and friends - and learn how to make the world a little safer for everyone else’s sexuality along the way.

The contest has ended and the winner has been contacted.

Full Discloser
♥ If you click those links to Amazon and buy anything (not only the books), I get a small percentage of it.  (Which I usually use on vitamins because I’m a mess!) 

How to Enter
♥ Leave a comment telling me about a book that changed your life. (Because I need more book recommendations!)

Additional Entries
♥ Post about this giveaway on your blog/website/facebook/tumblr. You get one entry for each post you make. Limit one per site.

♥ Tweet about it! Limit three tweets.

♥ You don't have to follow me, subscribe to me, like me, or anything.  This is about you, silly, not me!

Specifics
♥ Make sure you include your email address in all entries.

♥ Create a separate comment for every one of your entries. Example: you post about it on facebook and tweet it three times. That means you need to make four comments on here, linking to each one. I'll be using a random number generator so if they're all batched together in one comment, they'll only count as one. Make sense?

♥ This contest is open to everyone. If you win and you're in the US, it will be shipped to you at no cost. If you’re outside of the US, I’m going to need you to pay for part of the postage. I know, it sucks, but I wouldn’t do it that way unless I had to!

♥ This contest will end Friday, February 21st at midnight EST.

♥ Good luck!

♥ Oh my god, I'm so excited!!