1. History
    Early years  1980s–2000  2000–2010   2010-2019  

2. Intersections with other forms of feminism

3. Fat feminism and women of color

4. Theories that can be associated with fat feminism

5. How fat ties to feminism

6. Problems with fat feminism

7. See also

8. References

9. Bibliography

10. External links

History

Early years

Fat feminism and the related fat acceptance movement originated in the late 1960s, alongside second-wave feminism. During the late 1960's and 1970's, activists such as Sara Fishman, Dr. Franklin Igway, Judy Freespirit, Aldebaran, and Karen Jones, now known as Karen Stimson, emerged. In 1973, Fishman and Freespirit released Fat Liberation Manifesto which opposed size discrimination, describing it as sexism. Their movement was met with mixed reactions during the 1960's, the same decade that very thin models, such as Twiggy, became fashionable. Some of the feminists, such as Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who were active during the decade believed that removing traits of "femaleness" was necessary to gain entrance to a male-dominated society.^[4] This ideal would make removing feminine curves, making fat unfeminist. Despite this, activists continued to hold demonstrations and continued their course of action. When the fat feminists did not get support from National Organization for Women, they founded organizations to advocate size acceptance, such as Fat Underground (opened up by Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran),^[5] The Body Image Task Force (Santa Cruz) and The Body Positive. The first fat feminist book, Fat is a Feminist Issue, by Susie Orbach was published in 1978.

1980s–2000

During this time more organizations and publications against size discrimination were founded. The first issue of Radiance: The Magazine for Large Women was published in 1984. Clothing brands and fashion magazines that targeted a plus-size audience became more common. Fat feminists were also suing diet programs for fraudulent claims. However, the popularity of the diet industry did not wane as it was boosted by the fitness boom during the 1980s. By the late 1990s, Americans were spending approximately $40 billion on diet products and programs.^[6]

In the 1990s fat feminism was gaining steam. For the first time, fat feminism was officially supported by National Organization for Women when the organization adopted an anti-size discrimination stance with no dissenting vote, and started a body image task force.^[7] In 1992, Mary Evans Young, a size-positive activist in England, launched International No Diet Day which was planned as a picnic. Due to rain, the celebration was held indoors instead. In 1993 many American feminist groups joined in and 25 states participated in the second annual celebration of International No Diet Day. It continues to be observed on May 6 each year.

In 1993, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Toni Cassista who filed a lawsuit against Community Foods, a store in Santa Cruz, California when she was not hired because of her size. This put an end to work discrimination based on weight in the state of California. As of early September 2018, 49 states can fire employees for gaining weight because of at-will employment. A study from Yale University shows that 10% of women and 5% of men experience weight discrimination at work.^[8]

During the 1990's, the zine movement, the riot grrrl movement, and the Fat Liberation movement converged for many young activists, resulting in the publication of numerous fat feminist zines. Among these publications were Fat!So?: for people who don't apologize for their size by Marilyn Wann, I'm So Fucking Beautiful by Nomy Lamm, and Fat Girl: a zine for fat dykes and the women who want them produced by The Fat Girl Collective in San Francisco from 1994-1997. In 1996, Toronto-based activist and performance art troupe Pretty Porky and Pissed Off) was founded by Allyson Mitchell, Ruby Rowan, and Mariko Tamaki. It grew to include other members and worked as a collective until 2005 publishing their zine series, Double Double. Nomy Lamm was named by Ms. Magazine as a "Woman of the Year" in 1997, "For inspiring a new generation of feminists to fight back against fat oppression."^[9] In 1999 Marilyn Wann expanded her zine into the book {{Not a typo|Fat!So?}}: Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size. In 2005, former Fat Girl collective members Max Airborne and Cherry Midnight published Size Queen: for Queen-Sized Queers and our Loyal Subjects.

2000–2010

The 2000's saw an increase in internet feminism and internet fat activism, {{Citation needed span|text=which have often converged.|date=November 2018|reason=}} The fat acceptance blogosphere has been dubbed the "fatosphere"^[10] and has enjoyed some positive publicity in mainstream publications. Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby, who are prominent fat bloggers, released a co-written self-help book in 2009 called "Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body", which has 27 chapters devoted to different topics, including body positivity, health at every size, and intuitive eating.

In 2005, Linda Bacon conceived the Health at Every Size belief system, which rejects dieting and the weight-based paradigm of health. Bacon's System has been adopted by many fat feminists. Beth Ditto, frontwoman for the punk band The Gossip, attained celebrity in the mid-2000's with the popularity of her band's 2006 album Standing in the Way of Control, which helped raise awareness for the movement.

2010-2019

Shortly after Barack Obama started his first term as president, first lady Michelle Obama, began a campaign called "Let's Move" to draw attention to obesity in America and encourage people to work out, eat healthy and lose weight.^[5]

In May 2015, America met the "Dancing Man", Sean O'Brien, an overweight man who loves to dance. A Twitter user posted a picture of him dancing and another photo of him looking upset, captioning the photos with "caught this specimen dancing last week, he stopped when he saw us laughing." Soon after this was posted, Cassandra Fairbanks started a movement to get O'Brien to come to America and dance with the big leagues in Los Angeles where he was celebrated.^[11]

At the beginning of 2016, Mattel released "Curvy Barbie." This line of Barbie's included dolls that were all shapes, sizes, and different ethnicities.^[12] When asked about the doll the company said "getting rid of Barbie's thigh gap is part of 'evolving the images that come to mind when people talk about Barbie."^[13] The company also says they are "listening to what girls are talking about." ^[13]

At the beginning of 2017, there was a new trend for fat feminists and body-positive activists to take control of how their fat was seen. The #Don'tHateTheShake videos posted all over social media, were about both fat men and women stripping down to their undergarments and dancing to upbeat music as if they were at a dance club. It was created by Melissa Gibson, but gained traction from Megan Jayne Crabbe, who spreads body positivity on social media with a large follower count. Crabbe has recently published a book about body positivity, that has yet to be published in the United States, called Body Positive Power.^[14]

Intersections with other forms of feminism

Many of the authors in Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings By Women on Fat Oppression are lesbians, and many were involved in lesbian feminism.^[15] Their experience of fatness is seen as distinct from that of heterosexual fat women given the experience of combined discrimination based on their sex, size and sexual orientation.

Fat feminism and women of color

The intersection of race, gender, and bodily discrimination means fat women of color experience anti-fat bias differently than their white female counterparts. ^[16] For starters, women of color often do not view being fat as being synonymous with being unattractive.^[17] They further opine that fat women of color use their weight and personal style as a way to counter dominant beauty standards that have historically been defined by whiteness.^[18] Personal styles include having natural hair or dreads for black women as well as embracing larger and curvier figures.^[18] Research suggests that women of color, as well as communities of color in general, may consider more body types as beautiful than white beauty standards.^[18] However, because women of color are often excluded from fat positivity and acceptance movements, many have turned to social media as a way of finding inclusion within the fat feminist movement.^[18] Fat women of color resist dominant beauty standards by creating intersectional frameworks for accepting fat women of all identities.^[19] Fat women of color also work to resist fetishization by the male gaze or by those giving unwanted health advice while also creating positive and accepting spaces for themselves.^[20][21]

When talking about the fat feminist movement, women of color can often be overlooked, some have suggested that white privilege is the cause. According to the article Fat People of Color, studies show that "14% of the 2018 roles on prime-time television programming portrayed 'overweight' or 'obese' females" and even less are overweight women of color."^[22]

Theories that can be associated with fat feminism

A theory presented by Michel Foucault in his book The Perverse Implantation suggests that society plants ideas inside the minds of individuals all over the world which creates industries and in turn controls the people and the way their belief system works.^[23] This is much like the dieting industry, built to help people overweight become "normal" which in a society such as this, the goal is to be thin or curvy, not fat. Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, DetoxTea, and surgical weight loss options, are all tailored towards individuals to lose weight. These are ideas fat feminists and body-positive activists are completely against. Laura S. Brown, author of Fat Oppression and Psychotherapy, examines that being fat isn't unhealthy.^[29] The standards that we hold overweight individuals to, is what's unhealthy for these individuals. Bulimia, anorexia, depression, anxiety, etc., are all brought on because of the standards that society has over those who are considered outsiders to what's normal.^[24]

How fat ties to feminism

There are many reasons why fat can be a feminist issue. First, "several US health and women's studies scholars have declared obesity a feminist issue on the grounds that women, specifically African American and poor women, are more likely than men to be obese."^[25] Second, the intersection of obesity with race and socioeconomic status, represents concerns to environmental policy issues. Relating to this second reason is the idea that women, particularly women of color, are generally more likely to be obese than men because of things such as child rearing and a lack of access to fresh produce and goods. Moreover, women may overeat in an attempt to avoid being an object of the male gaze by making themselves more invisible to men's desires. Lastly, the intersectionality of being fat and being a woman is at the heart of fat feminism because discrimination and prejudice often occur as a result of gender and body type. The points above that connect fatness to feminism revolve around the varying experiences that body type can produce when combined with socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities. ^[26]

Problems with fat feminism

While fat feminism has made positive changes in the world, it is not perfect. Within fat studies there is a sort of privilege for the overweight girl, and a disadvantage for the thin girl. This is called the anti-thin bias and can close up this form of feminism to a girl because of her body type.^[27] This type of feminism also is very closed off to anyone who is not a white overweight girl. Overweight men and overweight women of color are often excluded from this movement. The article Feminism and the Invisible Fat Man discusses how fashion trends and body fashions may seem to affect women more, but men can be just as affected.^[28] Women of color experience the same kind of invisibility, yet they are not represented nearly as much as white women within this movement.^[22]

See also

• Body image
• Fat acceptance movement
• International No Diet Day
• International Size Acceptance Association
• Marilyn Wann
• Nomy Lamm
• Self-image

References

Bibliography

• Malson, Helen and Burns, Maree, eds. Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/Orders, Routledge, 2009.
• Murray, Samantha. The 'Fat' Female Body, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Orbach, Susan. Fat Is a Feminist Issue, Arrow Books; New edition, 2006.
• Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Tenth Anniversary Edition, University of California Press, 2004.
• Braziel, Jana Evans and LeBesco, Kathleen. Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, University of California Press, 2001.
• Manton, Catherine. Fed Up: Women and Food in America, Praeger, 1999.
• Malson, Hellen. The Thin Woman: Feminism, Post-structuralism and the Social Psychology of Anorexia Nervosa (Women and Psychology), Routledge, 1997.
• Cole, Ellen and Rothblum, Esther D. and Thone, Ruth R. Fat: A Fate Worse Than Death? : Women, Weight, and Appearance (Haworth Innovations in Feminist Studies), Routledge, 1997.
• Hirschmann, Jane R. When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession, Ballantine Books, 1996.
• Fallon, Patricia and Katzman, Melanie A. and Wooley, Susan C., eds. Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders, The Guilford Press, 1996.
• MacSween, Morag. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa, Routledge, 1995.
• Rothblum, Esther D. and Brown, Laura. Fat Oppression and Psychotherapy: A Feminist Perspective, Routledge, 1990.
• Parker, Patricia A. Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property, Methuen, 1988.
• Harding, Kate and Kirby, Marianne. Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body, 2009.
• Various. Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, Aunt Lute Books, 1995.
• Frater, Lara. Fat Chicks Rule!: How To Survive in a Thin-Centric World, Gamble Guides, 2005.
• Farrell Erdman, Amy. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture, 2011.
• Shaw Elizabeth, Andrea. The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women's Unruly Political Bodies, Lexington Books, 2006.
• Kinzel, Lesley. Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body, The Feminist Press, 2012.
• Goodman, Charisse. The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America
• Williams, A.A. Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online. Soc. Sci. 2017, 6, 15. http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/1/15

External links

• UK size acceptance site
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110607132124/http://www.eskimo.com/~largesse/Archives/herstory.html Fat Feminist Herstory, 1969-1993: A Personal Memoir by Karen W. Stimson]
• Fat and Feminist Large Women's Health Experiences
• The Web of Size Acceptance: Internet Resources for Exploring a Feminist Issue
• Love Your Body
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060813203652/http://naafa.org/info/legal/court.html Recent Lawsuits about Fat Discrimination]
• Laurie Toby Edison's & Debbie Notkin's body image blog Body Impolitic

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