The sculpture Bronskvinnorna (The women of bronze) outside of the art museum (Konsthallen), Växjö, Sweden. The sculpture is a work by Marianne Lindberg De Geer. It displays one emaciated and one fat woman as a reaction to body fixation.
Women’s Sumo wrestling. There is modern day prejudice and sexism against it being played in tournaments
The fat acceptance movement (also known as fat pride, fat empowerment, and fat activism organiser)[citation needed] is a social movement seeking to change anti-fat bias in social attitudes by raising awareness about obstacles faced by fat persons for the general public. Areas of contention include the aesthetic, legal, and medical approaches to people whose bodies are fatter than the social norm.
The modern fat acceptance movement began in the late 1960s. Besides its political role, the fat acceptance movement also constitutes a subculture that acts as a social group for its members.
The movement has been criticized, with Cathy Young, writing for The Boston Globe, claiming that "the fat acceptance movement is hazardous to our health", and Barbara Kay, writing for the National Post, stating that "fat-acceptance is not the answer to obesity."
History
The
history of the fat acceptance movement can be dated back to 1967 when
500 people met in New York's Central Park to protest against anti-fat bias. Sociologist Charlotte Cooper has argued that the history of the fat activist movement is best understood in waves, similar to the feminist movement,
with which she believes it is closely tied. Cooper believes that fat
activists have suffered similar waves of activism followed by burnout,
with activists in a following wave often unaware of the history of the
movement, resulting in a lack of continuity.
First wave
First wave activities consisted of isolated activists drawing attention to the dominant model of obesity and challenging it as only one of a number of possible models.
During the early part of the 20th century, obesity was seen as
detrimental to the community, by means of decreasing human efficiency,
and that obese people interfere with labor productivity in the coastal areas of the United States. This kind of history and visibility gave rise to the fat acceptance movement
which originated in the late 1960s, although its grassroots nature
makes it difficult to precisely chart its milestones. Like other social movements
from this time period, the fat acceptance movement, initially known as
"Fat Pride", "Fat Power", or "Fat Liberation", often consisted of people
acting in an impromptu fashion. A "fat-in" was staged in New York's
Central Park in 1967.
Called by radio personality Steve Post, the "Fat-in" consisted of a
group of 500 people eating, carrying signs and photographs of Sophia Loren (an actress famous for her figure), and burning diet books.
In 1967, Lew Louderback wrote an article in the Saturday Evening
Post called "More People Should be FAT" in response to discrimination
against his wife. The article led to a meeting between Louderback and
William Fabrey, who went on to found the first organisation for fat
people and their supporters, originally named the 'National Association
to Aid Fat Americans' and currently called NAAFA
('National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance'). NAAFA was founded
in America, in 1969, by Bill Fabrey in response to discrimination
against his wife. He primarily intended it to campaign for fat rights,
however a reporter attending the 2001 NAAFA conference notes that few
attendees were active in fat rights politics and that most women came to
shop for fashion, wear it on the conference catwalk or to meet a
potential partner.
Since 1991, Fabrey has worked as a director with the Council on Size
and Weight Discrimination, specialising in the history of the size
acceptance movement.
In 1972 the feminist group The Fat Underground was formed.
It began as a radical chapter of NAAFA and spun off to become
independent when NAAFA expressed concerns about its promotion of a
stronger activist philosophy. The FU were inspired by and, in some cases, members of the Radical Therapy Collective, a feminist
group that believed that many psychological problems were caused by
oppressive social institutions and practices. Founded by Sara Fishman
(then Sara Aldebaran) and Judy Freespirit, the Fat Underground took
issue with what they saw as a growing bias against obesity in the
scientific community. They coined the saying, "a diet is a cure that
doesn't work, for a disease that doesn't exist".
Shortly afterwards, Fishman moved to Connecticut, where, along with
Karen Scott-Jones, she founded the New Haven Fat Liberation Front, an
organization similar to the Fat Underground in its scope and focus. In
1983, the two groups collaborated to publish a seminal book in the field
of fat activism, Shadow on a Tightrope, which collected several
fat activist position papers initially distributed by the Fat
Underground, as well as poems and essays from other writers.
In 1979 Carole Shaw coined the term Big Beautiful Woman (BBW) and launched a fashion and lifestyle magazine of the same name aimed at plus-sized women. The original print magazine closed in the late 1990s but the term BBW has become widely used to refer to any fat woman.
In the UK The London Fat Women's Group was formed, the first
British fat activist group, and was active between approximately 1985
and 1989.
Other first wave activities included the productions of zines such as Figure 8 and Fat!So?, by Marilyn Wann which later became a book of the same name.
Second wave
In
the second wave, the fat acceptance movement became more widespread in
the USA and started to spread to other countries. Ideas from the
movement began to appear in the mainstream. Publishers became more
willing to publish fat acceptance themed literature.
By the 1990s, input from the fat acceptance movement began to be
incorporated into research papers by some members of the medical
professions such as new anti-dieting programs and models of obesity management.
The 1980s witnessed an increase in activist organizations, publications, and conferences. In 1989 a group of people including actress Anne Zamberlan formed the first French organisation for fat acceptance, Allegro fortissimo.
Organisations began holding conferences and conventions, including NAAFA.
Third wave
The fat acceptance movement has seen a diversification of projects during the third wave.
Activities have addressed issues of both fat and race, class, sexuality
and other issues. Size discrimination has been increasingly addressed
in the arts, as well. Performance art groups such as Pretty Porky &
Pissed Off, The Padded Lilies, a water ballet troupe of large sized women, Big Moves and the Fat Bottom Revue, a Big Burlesque touring show founded by fat activist, Heather MacAllister, and "LEFTOVERS, the Ups & Downs of a Compulsive Eater", by Marcia Kimmell, Deah Schwartz and Anne Wilford. These shows, among others, intentionally feature fat people in them.
The fat acceptance movement increased in the 2000s, with the creation of the "fatosphere" and the "Fat Liberation Feed",
providing online communities of blogs and social media dedicated to the
fat acceptance movement. Notable fat activists within the "fatosphere"
include Marianne Kirby of The Rotund and Kate Harding of Shapely Prose, who co-wrote the book Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body. Additionally, the Fat Studies listserv, Health At Every Size (HAES) was created by Marilyn Wann as a place for scholars to find more fat positive information.
The individual blogs of the second wave have mainly been overtaken by larger scale social networking sites such as PeopleOfSize.com, while several websites have sprung up to help connect fat people with fat-friendly service providers and products, such as fatshionista. Size discrimination has been increasingly addressed in the arts, as well.
Campaigning themes
The fat acceptance movement argues that fat people are targets of hatred and discrimination. In particular, that obese women are subjected to more social pressure than obese men. The movement argues that these attitudes comprise a fat phobic entrenched societal norm, evident in many social institutions, including the mass media; where fat people are often ridiculed or held up as objects of pity. Discrimination includes lack of equal access to transportation and employment.
Members of the fat acceptance movement perceive negative societal
attitudes as persistent, and as being based on the presumption that
fatness reflects negatively on a person's character.
Fat activists continue to strive for change in societal, personal, and
medical attitudes toward fat people. Fat acceptance organisations engage
in public education about what they describe as myths concerning fat people.
Discrimination
Fat individuals claim to experience weight-based discrimination in a number of avenues within their lives.
This discrimination is claimed to be experienced in healthcare,
employment, education, interpersonal relationships, and in media.
Health
Fat activists argue that anti-fat stigma and aggressive diet
promotion have led to an increase in psychological and physiological
problems among fat people.
Concerns are also raised that modern culture's focus on weight loss
does not have a foundation in scientific research, but instead is an
example of using science as a means to control deviance, as a part of society's attempt to deal with something that it finds disturbing. Diet critics cite the high failure rate of permanent weight loss attempts, and the dangers of "yo-yo" weight fluctuations and weight loss surgeries. Fat activists argue that the health issues of obesity and being overweight have been exaggerated or misrepresented, and that the health issues are used as a cover for cultural and aesthetic prejudices against fat.
Proponents of fat acceptance maintain that people of all shapes and sizes can strive for fitness and physical health.
They believe health to be independent of body weight. Informed by this
approach, psychologists who were unhappy with the treatment of fat
people in the medical world initiated the Health at Every Size
movement. It has five basic tenets: 1. Enhancing health, 2. Size and
self-acceptance, 3. The pleasure of eating well, 4. The joy of movement,
and 5. An end to weight bias.
However, the consensus within the scientific community is that
obesity has a negative impact on the health of an individual. Numerous
medical studies have challenged the 'healthy obesity' concept.
One complicating factor in these studies is that definitions of
metabolically-healthy obesity are not standardized across studies.
Gender
Fat women
Documentary filmmaker Kira Nerusskaya released her film The BBW World: Under the Fat! In 2008.
The issues faced by fat women in society have been a central theme of
the fat acceptance movement since its inception. Although the first
organisation, NAAFA, and the first book, Fat Power (1970), were
both created by men, in each case they were responses to weight
discrimination experienced by their wives. Women soon started
campaigning on their own behalf with the first feminist group, 'The Fat
Underground', being formed in 1973. Issues addressed regarding women
have included body image, and in particular The Thin Ideal and its effect on women.
Fat men
The fat acceptance movement has primarily focused on a feminist model of patriarchal
oppression of fat women, most clearly represented by the encouragement
of women to diet. However, Sander L. Gilman argues that, until the 20th
century, dieting has historically been a man's activity. He continues, "Obesity eats away at the idealised image of the masculine just as surely as it does the idealised image of the feminine." William Banting was the author of an 1863 booklet called Letter On Corpulence which modern diets have used as a model. Men respond to being overweight differently, (i.e., having a Body Mass Index of 25 or more), being half as likely as women to diet, a quarter as likely to undergo weightloss surgery and only a fifth as likely to report feeling shame about their weight.
Irmgard Tischner identifies this behaviour as rooted in notions of
masculinity that require a disregard for healthcare: "Men do not have to
care about their size or health, as they have women to care about those
things for them".
Some gay men have moved beyond disregard for size to fat acceptance and fat activism with movements like chub culture, which started as Girth & Mirth clubs in San Francisco in 1976[56] and the bear culture which fetishises big, hairy men. Ganapati Durgadas argues that fat bisexual and gay men "are reminders of the feminine stigma with which heterosexism still tars queer men". In a comparison of queer fat positive zines, the lesbian-produced Fat Girl was found to have political debate content absent from gay male orientated zines such as Bulk Male and Big Ad.
Joel Barraquiel Tan comments: "If fat is a feminist issue, then fat or
heft is a fetishised one for gay men. Gay men have a tendency to
sexualise difference, where lesbians have historically politicised it."
A fat heterosexual man is known as a "Big Handsome Man", in
counterpart to a Big Beautiful Woman. Like some fat and gay men, BHMs
have sexualized their difference and receive validation of this identity
from BBWs or from straight women known as "Female Fat Admirers".
Legislation
In
the 1980s fat people in the United States began seeking legal redress
for discrimination on the basis of weight, primarily in the workplace
but also for being denied access to, or treated differently in regards
to, services or entertainment. The results of these cases has varied
considerably, although in some instances the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been successfully used to argue cases of discrimination against fat people. Roth and Solovay argue that, as with transgender people, a major cause for the variation in success is the extent to which litigants are apologetic for their size:
What is the difference between a million-dollar weight case award and a losing case? Like the difference between many winning and losing transgender cases, it's all about the attitude. Does the claimant's attitude and experience about weight/gender reinforce or challenge dominant stereotypes? Winning cases generally adopt a legal posture that reinforces social prejudices. Cases that challenge societal prejudices generally lose.
The Americans with Disabilities Act continues to be used as there is
no USA federal law against weight discrimination; however, the state of
Michigan has passed a law against weight discrimination. The cities of Washington D.C., San Francisco (2000), Santa Cruz, Binghamton, Urbana (1990s) and Madison (1970s) have also passed laws prohibiting weight discrimination.
In the cities that have a weight discrimination law it is rare for more
than 1 case a year to be brought, except for San Francisco which may
have as many as 6. Opinions amongst city enforcement workers vary as to
why the prosecution numbers are so low, although they all suggested that
both overweight people and employers were unaware of the protective
legislation and it was also noted that the cities with anti-weight
discrimination laws tended to be liberal college towns.
However, not all legal changes have protected the rights of fat people. Despite recommendations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the contrary, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has decided that fat people will only qualify as disabled
if it can be proved that their weight is caused by an underlying
condition, supporting the concept that being obese is not inherently a
disability.
Other countries besides the United States have considered
legislation to protect the rights of fat people. In the UK an All Party
Parliamentary Group published a report in 2012 called Reflections on Body Image that found that 1 in 5 British people had been victimised because of their weight. The report recommended that Members of Parliament Investigated putting "appearance-based discrimination" under the same legal basis as sexual or racial discrimination via the Equality Act 2010
which makes it illegal to harass, victimise or discriminate against
anyone on the basis of a number of named categories. including size or
weight.
Fat studies
There has also been an emerging body of academic studies with a fat activist agenda. Marilyn Wann argues that fat studies moved beyond being an individual endeavour to being a field of study with the 2004 conference Fat Attitudes: An Examination of an American Subculture and the Representation of the Female Body. The American Popular Culture Association
regularly includes panels on the subject. In a number of colleges,
student groups with a fat activist agenda have emerged, including
Hampshire, Smith, and Antioch. Fat studies is now available as an interdisciplinary course of study at some colleges, taking a similar approach to other identity studies such as women's studies, queer studies and African American studies. As of 2011, there were 2 Australian courses and 10 American courses that were primarily focussed on fat studies or on health at every size, and numerous other courses that had some fat acceptance content. Taylor & Francis publish an online Fat Studies journal. In the UK, the first national Fat Studies seminar was held at York in May 2008, leading to the 2009 publication Fat Studies in the UK, edited by Corinna Tomrley and Ann Kalosky Naylor.
Debates within the movement
The
fat acceptance movement has been divided in its response to proposed
legislation defining morbidly obese people as disabled. NAAFA
board member Peggy Howell says: "There's a lot of conflict in the size
acceptance community over this. I don't consider myself disabled, and
some people don't like 'fat' being considered a disability."
An example of the positive perspective of obesity being classified as a
disability in wider society is noted by one researcher: "She makes a
point to tell me how impressed she is with the way many do make quiet
and polite accommodations for her."
Another common division in the fat acceptance community is the
differing attitudes towards general society, specifically thin people.
The fat acceptance community generally divides into two categories. One
is those who feel discrimination towards thin people hinders the fat
acceptance cause. The other side views thin people as at least a partial
cause of their social stigma.
Women are particularly active within the fat acceptance movement
and membership of fat acceptance organizations is dominated by
middle-class women in the heaviest 1–2% of the population.
Members have criticized the lack of representation in the movement from
men, people of color, and people of lower socioeconomic status.
Criticism
The
fat acceptance movement has been criticised from a number of
perspectives. Primarily there has been a conflict over the
medicalisation of fat and health professionals who have criticised
proponents of fat acceptance for ignoring health issues that many
studies have shown to be linked to obesity.
Fat acceptance has also been challenged from a moral perspective and
the movement has been criticised for being out of touch with the
mainstream.
Lionel Shriver, American journalist and author, wrote a column in Standpoint magazine
strongly criticizing the fat acceptance movement. She condemned the
movements' demand for respect for fatness in itself, which promotes the
same unhealthy lifestyle that she believes killed her brother, who was
morbidly obese and died at the age of 55. She also criticized the
movements' repeated comparison of sizeism with racism or homophobia,
saying that this approach casts obesity in the light of being an
unchangeable state.
Cathy Young, writing for The Boston Globe,
claimed that the movement was responsible for normalizing and promoting
the acceptance of a controllable disease with clear health
complications. While she recognizes the value in fighting against
self-loathing, she draws the line at advocating for acceptance of an
"unhealthy status quo." She says that by normalizing obesity, the fat
acceptance movement leads people to underestimate the associated health
hazards, and that the movement has also grown intolerant, exhibiting
signs of elitism and treading on personal freedom.
The movement has also been criticized for its treatment of women
with eating disorders or who follow diets for health-related reasons,
since they are seen as betraying the movement. In 2008 Lily-Rygh Glen, a
writer, musician, and former fat acceptance activist, interviewed
multiple women who claimed to be rejected by their peers within the
movement and labeled "traitors" when they changed their diets. One
female activist admitted to living in fear that her binge eating
disorder and consequent body image issues would be discovered. Glen
states, "It is precisely because eating disorders are not openly discussed that many fat people who suffer from bulimia, binge-eating disorder,
and pathorexia (defined as disordered appetite, and used to refer to an
entire spectrum of disordered eating) feel they aren't welcome in the
fat acceptance movement." The author also claimed that while in the
process of interviewing and writing the article, which was featured in Bitch magazine's Lost & Found issue, she received wide condemnation from the fat acceptance community, and was labeled fatphobic and healthist.
Medical criticism
The
fat acceptance movement has been criticized for not adding value to the
debate over human health, with some critics accusing the movement of
"promoting a lifestyle that can have dire health consequences". In 2018, the University of East Anglia released a report saying that fat acceptance, body positivity
and the "normalization of plus size" was damaging to people's
perceptions of obesity, made overweight and obese people less likely to
seek medical attention when necessary, and undermined government
initiatives intended to overcome the problem.
In response, proponents of fat acceptance claim that being fat in
and of itself is not a health problem and that long-term weight-loss is
unsuccessful in the majority of cases.
There is however a considerable amount of evidence that overweight is
associated with increased all-causes mortality, and significant weight
loss (>10%), using a variety of diets, improves or reverses metabolic syndromes and other health outcomes associated with overweight and obesity.
Barry Franklin, director of a cardio rehab facility states: "I don't
want to take on any specific organisation but... A social movement that
would suggest health at any size in many respects can be misleading". Fat acceptance campaigners also argue that current approaches constitute fat-shaming which, rather than leading to weight loss, results in psychological issues like eating disorders and more often functions counter-productively, resulting in weight gain.
Resting metabolic rate varies little between people, therefore,
weight gain and loss are directly attributable to diet and activity.
There is thus little evidence to support the view that some obese
people eat little yet gain weight due to a slow metabolism; on average,
obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their healthy-weight
counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body
mass.
