Fat Studies

Social Justice Usage

Source: Marilyn Wann “Introduction,” in Sondra Solovay The Fat Studies Reader. NYU Press. Kindle Edition.

Unlike traditional approaches to weight, a fat studies approach offers no opposition to the simple fact of human weight diversity, but instead looks at what people and societies make of this reality. The field of fat studies requires skepticism about weight-related beliefs that are popular, powerful, and prejudicial. This skepticism is currently rare, even taboo. Questioning the received knowledge on weight is socially risky. American culture is engaged in a pervasive witch hunt targeting fatness and fat people (a project that is rapidly being exported worldwide). Although this urge to eradicate fat people continues, it is not only challenging to be fat, but also especially challenging to question any aspect of the witch hunt on fat people (not that it is so very comfortable to be thin during a weight-based witch hunt). Whenever members of a society have recourse to only one opinion on a basic human experience, that is precisely the discourse and the experience that should attract intellectual curiosity.

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Source: Marilyn Wann “Introduction,” in Sondra Solovay The Fat Studies Reader. NYU Press. Kindle Edition.

As a new, interdisciplinary field of intellectual inquiry, fat studies is defined in part by what it is not. For example, if you believe that fat people could (and should) lose weight, then you are not doing fat studies—you are part of the $58.6 billion-per-year weight-loss industry or its vast customer base (Marketdata Enterprises, 2007). If you believe that being fat is a disease and that fat people cannot possibly enjoy good health or long life, then you are not doing fat studies. Instead, your approach is aligned with “obesity” researchers, bariatric surgeons, public health officials who declare “war on obesity” (Koop, 1997), and the medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex that profits from dangerous attempts to “cure” people of bodily difference (more on “obesity” later). If you believe that thin is inherently beautiful and fat is obviously ugly, then you are not doing fat studies work either. You are instead in the realm of advertising, popular media, or the more derivative types of visual art—in other words, propaganda.

New Discourses Commentary

Fat studies has its roots in radical feminism (particularly fat feminism), which regarded the idea that obesity is unhealthy and unattractive as part of an oppressive, patriarchal beauty myth that pressured women to be conventionally attractive and dainty and not take up much space. However, it has increasingly moved away from radical feminism, combined with other forms of fat activism, and has become part of the intersectional framework as it has become more centrally located within Social Justice paradigms.

Like disability studies, fat studies draws on the work of Michel Foucault and queer Theory to argue that negative attitudes about obesity are socially constructed and the result of systemic power that marginalizes and oppresses fat people (and fat perspectives) and of unjust medicalized narratives in order to justify prejudice against obese people (see also, healthism, nutritionism, Foucauldian, biopower, and thinnormativity). This prejudice is known as fatphobia.

Fat studies, which bears an uncanny resemblance to an obesity support group publishing its takes as academic work, takes particular aim at the claim that obesity is unhealthy, frequently by cherry-picking studies and refusing to think statistically. It makes claims like “every disease related to obesity is also found in thin people” and rejects studies that show diabetes, heart disease, several cancers, and a shortened life expectancy to be related to obesity. When it does accept some link between health and weight, fat studies refers to the idea that this should influence ones diet or behavior as “healthism”—an unjust ideology insisting that people have a responsibility to be healthy (see also, responsibilizing). Fat studies has also taken issue with commonly held views that obesity detracts from attractiveness, arguing this to be a cultural construct by showing examples in which obesity has been considered attractive in other times and places. It therefore argues that a sexual preference for slim bodies represents discrimination and should be unlearned.

Fat studies scholars and activists use critical methods to campaign against attitudes and norms they consider “fatphobic” in many areas of life, ranging from the size of seats in airplanes and restaurants, the price of larger clothes, the (unsurprising) difficulty of finding a doctor who won’t consider obesity a health issue, and the prevalence of what they refer to as “diet culture” in mainstream society (see also, nutritionism). Protests have included campaigning against Cancer Research releasing information on the links between obesity and cancer and the advertisement by Protein World, which produces supplements for athletes featuring a slim model asking “Are You Beach Body Ready?” Fat studies tends to favor a “Healthy at Every Size” model that contends that body fat percentage, BMI, and weight are unrelated to health status, even statistically. (Instead, they are indicative of social constructions that are systemically discriminated against.)

Fat studies, as such, is very concerned with the positive representation of fat, especially in marketing materials. It advocates for plus-sized clothing to be referred to as “fatshion,” for example, and encourages modeling campaigns that portray fat people (especially women) as (equally) sexy. This is often promoted under a rubric of “body positivity,” which means being positive about, usually to the point of being celebratory, one’s body—particularly in this context, one’s overweight or obese physique. (NB: This will also extend into being body-positive about being underweight as well, which can encourage, enable, or shelter eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, though fat studies would complicate this by indicating that such people still benefit from relative thin privilege.)

Related Terms

Biopower; Body positivity; Critical; Critical theory; Disability studies; Fat activism; Fat feminism; Fat shaming; Fatphobia; Fatshion; Foucauldian; Healthism; Healthy at Every Size; Ideology; Injustice; Intersectionality; Marginalization; Medicalization; Nutritionism; Oppression; Patriarchy; Queer Theory; Radical feminism; Responsibilizing; Social construct; Social Justice; Thin privilege; Thinnormativity

Revision date: 2/4/20

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James Lindsay