For many years, the debate whether ‘fat is a feminist issue' has been, understandably, at the heart of the discipline of fat studies. Yet recently there have been monographs by scholars such as Lee Monaghan and Sander Gilman that have been devoted to the consideration of masculinity and fat. Whitesel's research monograph now broadens these debates to address the issue faced by men who identify both as fat and gay. To identify as fat in contemporary Western culture is extremely difficult when nearly all media and cultural discourses exalt thinness and gym-toned muscularity. Fat prejudice (if not even fat phobia) continues to be a problem in many cultural and social settings despite advancements in fat acceptance politics. However, in the body fascist ‘no pecs; no sex’ world of metropolitan gay masculinity it is, arguably, even more challenging to identify as fat. Whitesel emphasises that fat gay men face a double exclusion – first from heteronormative culture and then, because of their size, exclusion from within gay culture itself. As such, fat gay men are ‘a subaltern within the subaltern’ (p. 2). Attempting to challenge these prejudices are a number of support and social groups in metropolitan gay culture and Whitesel's ethnographic study, drawing upon interviews and in-depth field notes, analyses the politics of one such group: Girth & Mirth. Whitesel's highly accessible book begins with an overview of the history of Girth & Mirth and shows how this organisation functions as both a social club and support network for fat gay men. The second chapter examines the bullying that fat gay men often experience and chapters 3 and 4 then consider how Girth & Mirth events attempt to challenge and subvert the strategies of oppression that these men may have suffered. Whitesel engages in detailed analyses of the events that Girth & Mirth organise, including the Super Weekend in which fat gay men redefine themselves as sex objects rather than abject bodies of derision, and Convergence, which aims to challenge issues of class stereotyping usually associated with larger bodies. The final chapter addresses an important issue within queer studies: shame. Can fat gay men address the stigma of fat through strategies of carnivalesque and camp and what do these strategies do to a body's sexualised identification? Fat Gay Men is one of the first sustained studies of the politics of fat, gay male embodiment in metropolitan Western culture. Although it is an academic monograph, Whitesel's accessible, lively writing style – and command of the critical material – would also make it an excellent text for undergraduate teaching. Each chapter is underpinned by relevant cultural theory but never falls into the trap of recycling academic jargon. Throughout every chapter it is evident that the analyses are never simply abstract theories but are informed by the lived experience of larger gay men. One slight disappointment is that the reader may have appreciated some comparative analysis to consider the differences and similarities between fat, gay men and their heterosexual (male and female) counterparts, but the book stops a little short of doing this. However, a consideration of Western fatness is not the book's remit and instead Fat Gay Men should be appreciated for its detailed and nuanced investigation into subcultural identifications and performances, which may well be unfamiliar issues to many scholars. Even queer-identifying readers may not have been aware of the political efforts that fat gay men need to make in their fight for equality within gay culture itself. The struggle fat gay men may face in order to identify not only in terms of sexual desirability but simply for the right not to apologise for being oversized is brought to the foreground of the debate in every chapter. Whitesel's own emotional investment in the politics of this group is extremely engaging and infectious and so all readers, whether gay, straight, fat or thin, should feel they are not simply reading about the subcultural activities organised by Girth & Mirth but instead recognise and relate to this narrative of struggle on the road to acceptance.