A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a gravel path. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a wooden bridge.. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking straight ahead and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against the column of a brown wooden park gazebo. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and black boots, and is holding her belly with one hand. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a wooden bridge.. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking straight ahead and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a wooden bridge.. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking straight ahead and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a stone bridge path across a pond. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at…
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a stone bridge path across a pond. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking straight ahead and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org…
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a gravel path. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a gravel path. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a gravel path. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a gravel path. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking at the camera and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail jogs through a garden filled with trees and bushes on a wooden bridge.. She is wearing a pink t-shirt, black athletic leggings and blue running shoes. She’s looking straight ahead and smiling. (Many thanks to Ragen Chastain at danceswithfat.org for this image!)
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against the column of a brown wooden park gazebo. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and black boots, and is holding her skirt with one hand. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
A searingly honest memoir of one young woman’s journey toward self-acceptance as she comes to see her body as a symbol of rebellion and hope and chooses to live her life unapologetically. Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn’t any room for imperfection. Good…
AN EXCERPT FROM THE FATWARD BY THE AUTHOR: I was not born for beige, my loves. And neither were you. My body intends to be seen. My body intends to shine. My fat is not quiet. My fat sparkles. That’s what you’re holding, dear one. You’re holding SparkleFat. You’re holding a loud, unapologetic, intentional book…
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking away from the camera with a neutral expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking away from the camera with a worried or sad expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. Only her torso, belly, hips, arms and upper legs are shown.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. Only her torso, belly, hips, arms and upper legs are shown.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with her hands raised in the air. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking away from the camera with a neutral expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with her hands raised in the air. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses leans against a tree trunk with branches around and behind her. She is wearing a necklace, long pink dress and flower crown, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hands. She’s looking away from the camera with a worried or sad expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hand. She’s looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hand. She’s looking away from the camera with a worried or sad expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hand. She’s looking away from the camera with a worried or sad expression.
A plus-size woman with pale skin, short brown hair and glasses sits on a large, low tree branch and leans against the tree’s trunk. She is wearing a necklace and long pink dress, and is cradling her belly with her hand. She’s looking at the camera and laughing.
Marshmallow is a fat unicorn. Are unicorns supposed to be fat? She makes healthy changes in her life but can she learn to love herself as she is? A parable for children ages 6 to 9 about fat positivity, embracing and accepting yourself in a fatphobic world, and celebrating diversity.
The definitive collection of art, poetry, and prose, celebrating fat acceptance Chubby. Curvy. Fluffy. Plus-size. Thick. Fat. The time has come for fat people to tell their own stories. The (Other) F Word combines the voices of Renée Watson, Julie Murphy, Jes Baker, Samantha Irby, Bruce Sturgell, and more in a relatable and gift-worthy guide…
Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard. Harder when your whole life is on fire, though. Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat. People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her…
Jennifer Renee Blevins’s debut memoir, Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story, sheds light on her experiences living with the emotional and psychological struggles of taking up space in a fat-phobic world. Bringing together experiences of personal and national trauma, Blevins adeptly weaves the tale of her father’s gastric bypass surgery and subsequent prolonged health…
Historicizing Fat in Anglo-American Culture, edited by Elena Levy-Navarro, is the first collection of essays to offer a historical consideration of fat bodies in Anglophone culture. The interdisciplinary essays cover periods from the medieval to the contemporary, mapping out a new terrain for historical consideration. These essays question many of the commonplace assumptions that circulate…
Grace Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her ‘fat black woman’ is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of…
Despite the West’s privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the Western European and North American indulgence in “fat anxiety.” The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West’s efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety….
You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. Sometimes she’s the life of the party; other times she’s the center of gossip. She’s the unruly woman, and she’s on eof the most provocative, powerful forms of womanhood today. There have been unruly women for as long as…
Over the past decade, concerns about a global «obesity epidemic» have flourished. Public health messages around physical activity, fitness, and nutrition permeate society despite significant evidence disputing the «facts» we have come to believe about «obesity». We live in a culture that privileges thinness and enables weight-based oppression, often expressed as fat phobia and fat…
Fat Religion: Protestant Christianity and the Construction of the Fat Body explores how Protestant Christianity contributes to the moralization of fat bodies and the proliferation of practices to conform fat bodies to thin ideals. Focusing primarily on Protestant Christianity and evangelicalism, this book brings together essays that emphasize the role of religion in the ways…
In The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman Gailey investigates the interface between fat women’s perceptions of their bodies and of the social expectations and judgments placed on them. The book explores the phenomenon of ‘hyper(in)visibility’, the seemingly paradoxical social position of being paid exceptional attention while simultaneously being erased.
In recent decades the rise of the so-called “global obesity epidemic” has led to fatness and fat bodies being debated incessantly in popular, professional, and academic arenas. Fatness and fat bodies are shamed and demonised, and the public monitoring, surveillance and outright policing by the media, health professionals, and the general public are pervasive and…
YoungGiftedandFat is a critical autoethnography of “performing thin”– on the stage and in life. Sharrell D. Luckett’s story of weight loss and gain and playing the (beautiful, desirable, thin) leading lady showcases an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to issues of weight and self-esteem, performance, race, and gender. Sharrell structures her project with creative text, interviews,…
Heavy Burdens: Stories of Motherhood and Fatness seeks to address the systemic ways in which the moral panic around “obesity” impacts fat mothers and fat children. Taking a life-course approach, the book begins with analyses of the ways in which fatphobia is enacted on pregnant (or even not-yet-pregnant) women, whose bodies immediately become viewed as…
The fat female body is a unique construction in American culture that has been understood in various ways during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Analyzing post-WWII stage and screen performances, Mobley argues that the fat actress’s body signals myriad cultural assumptions and suggests new ways of reading the body in performance.
FAT STUDIES IN THE UK brings together academics, health practitioners, activists and artists to discuss how contemporary UK culture represents, attempts to control and demonises fat. The book contains articles, cartoons, personal reflection and reports of activism to offer a variety of ways to understand fat. Contributors present stirring and suggestive calls to action for…
In this tour de force the author traces the older, positive meanings of the word “fat.” He analyzes “the thing fat, ” discussing not only the aesthetics of fat but also the nature of fat. He examines “fat sex, ” including representations of the human body designed to arouse people whose taste in beauty is…
Investigating the current interest in obesity and fatness, this book explores the problems and ambiguities that form the lived experience of ‘fat’ women in contemporary Western society. Engaging with dominant ideas about ‘fatness’, and analysing the assumptions that inform anti-fat attitudes in the West, The ‘Fat’ Female Body explores the moral panic over the ‘obesity epidemic’,…
hickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice seeks to explore the multiple, variable, and embodied experiences of fat oppression and fat activisms. Moving beyond an analysis of fat oppression as singular, this book will aim to unpack the volatility of fat―the mutability of fat embodiments as they correlate with other embodied subjectivities, and the threshold…
It is okay to be fat. This is the basic premise of fat activism, a social movement that has existed in Canada since the early 1970s. This book focuses on the earliest strands of the Canadian movement, which emerged around 1977 and ended around 1997 with the emergence of defiant performance artists Pretty, Porky, and…
Mountain Loop Highway, an absolutely delicious drive through the western Cascade Mountains north of Seattle, was our first experience with U.S. Forest Service roads. The first thing you need to know: Just because they’re marked on Google Maps doesn’t mean they’re paved! The first time we went, we weren’t expecting anything but pavement, so we…
