Fat Talks Back at WOW2013

Women of the World (aka WOW) is an annual festival at the South Bank in London. It's a mainstream feminist event and visiting it feels a bit like listening to an extended episode of Woman's Hour – not everyone's idea of heaven! But WOW is a big deal, it's hosted at the Royal Festival Hall, one of the jewels of London, and many people come. There are panels and presentations, activities and performances.

This year, WOW bit the bullet and invited a bunch of us to do a panel on fat. Corinna Tomrley chaired, and I participated, alongside Isha Reid and Caroline Walters. We called the panel Fat Talks Back because of the history in mainstream feminism of marginalising fat within broader discussions of 'body image,' 'beauty,' 'dieting' and so on. We thought of the space as an opportunity to speak for ourselves.

I know the hard-working organisers had no intention of pushing us to the back, and they made every effort to make space for us, but I also had a sneaky giggle to myself because the room was in quite an obscure place in the building, and I was reminded of how the fat clothes are always pushed to the back of the shop. This made it especially delightful that we packed out the room. I don't know the exact figures but I think over 100 came, and it was standing/squatting room only.

Corinna organised the panel so that the three of us gave prepared answers to three questions:

• What is fat activism for you or, how does your fat activism manifest itself for you?
• Mainstream discussions about fat and size tend to focus on the concept of ‘skinny’ vs the ‘average-sized UK woman’ (apparently size 14-16): what does this mean for fat activism? And women who are bigger than a size 16?
• How/does fatness and feminism intersect for you?

Our answers were pretty diverse and reflected our interests: Isha in fatshion and blogging; Caroline in teaching and academic life; me in fat feminism and activism, and psychotherapy. I was glad of this because I think there's a temptation to try and simplify the experience of being fat, or an activist, to single narratives, when actually there are many different ways of expressing this stuff.

After this, we answered some questions from the floor. If I had a penny for every time questions from the floor start with "Yes, but is it healthy?" I would be richer than Croesus. It's especially bewildering when health has not been a part of the previous discussion. It's as though talking about fat can only ever be a discussion about health and, even then, a discussion of how fat can't really be healthy, with the subtext that we must be deluding ourselves. Am I frustrated about this? Yes. There is a lot more to be said about fat and feminism than "Yes, but is it healthy?"

My favourite question came at the end; someone asked about the emphasis being put on thin privilege within fat activism. I answered that I thought this was a shame, that you often come across fat activism that focuses on how terrible it is being fat. I think being fat is often terrible, but that activism is about joy, power, strength, making lives liveable.

The session lasted an hour, and there was so much more that could have been said. From the quiet and respectful audience, the packed room, the comments and discussion afterwards, I really got a sense that people were hungry for this stuff and wanted to talk more, but perhaps didn't know where to start, such has been the overwhelming silencing effect of obesity epidemic rhetoric in the last ten years or so.

You can watch the session here, in the WOW YouTube channel. There are technical issues in the first minute or so, but the rest of it looks fine.



Meanwhile, check out some pics on the Fat Talks Back event page, read Isha's round-up, and visit the Storify. By the way, the image comes from the gorgeous drawn minutes of the festival, but I can't find any more information about this project.

The Guardian - fat panic and class hatred

The Guardian's Comment is Free asked me to write about today's stupid fat panic story, so I did.

If you like what I do, feel free to leave a comment over there and to pester the editors to commission me to write more stuff about fat.

Benefit cuts for the obese are driven by fat panic and class hatred

PS Welcome Guardian readers!

Queer zine talk with added fat, London, Saturday

I'm giving a little show and tell talk about making and writing for zines, including FaT GiRL and other queer fat activist zines. It's in London on Saturday, part of the inaugural Queer Zine Fest. I have new zines to give away too.

Please come.

Charlotte Cooper's Queer Zine Show and Tell
Queer Zine Fest London
Space Station Sixty-Five
373 Kennington Road
London SE11 4PS

Saturday 8 December 2012
12.00 – 19.00 (I'm on at 14.30)

QZFL Facebook Event

Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion

From the old to the new. The doorbell rang as I was writing that last post with a delivery of my copies of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion, edited by Virgie Tovar.

Well, I'm not feeling so hot, heavy or fierce today, but this is surely a lift and I'm proud to wrap my fat fists around this book at last. I have a little piece in it, about spitting.

Get yourself a copy, it's available from all the usual places, there will be readings and whatnot to support its publication, and it's gonna be huge.

Tovar, V., ed. (2012) Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion, Berkeley, CA: Seal Press.

Virgie Tovar: Hot & Heavy

Toronto: The Queerness of Fat Activism with Charlotte Cooper

I always feel a bit strange about referring to myself in the third person, but I can't resist it here because I am over the moon to announce the final details for this talk that I'm giving in Toronto in a couple of weeks.

Ryerson University are hosting the event at the Gladstone Hotel. Following my talk there will be a panel discussion and then a party! ASL interpretation is provided and the venue is wheelchair accessible and supports attendant care. It's free.

Here's what I'm going to be talking about: having conducted an autoethnography of fat activism, I have found that this social movement is more complex than the literature and popular assumptions of it currently presume. In this presentation I will use 'queer' to theorise some of these complexities. I begin by acknowledging that there are many queers in my particular social networks of fat activism because of genealogies of radical lesbian fat feminism in the West. But queer can also be thought of as a series of qualities that expands fat activism. Sharing examples, I will show that a queered social movement is one where a common agenda is not necessary for social change; where being normal and nice is overrated; where sometimes the irrational is a productive course of action; and where it is possible to organise beyond the interests of dominant discourse. Queering fat activism matters because it increases access to social activism, enables people to develop liveable lives in the present, and adds to the well-being of people of all sizes.

The Queerness of Fat Activism with Charlotte Cooper
26 June 2012, Doors 6.45pm COME EARLY!
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West, Toronto

The Queerness of Fat Activism with Charlotte Cooper: Facebook Event
Afterparty: The Crush Project presents CHAFE

Come along if you can, and tell anyone you know who can get to Toronto. Here's what people are already saying about the event:

Charlotte Cooper will blow your mind. if you have the opportunity to see her band Homosexual Death Drive never ever ever miss it. It will do everything for you that you ever needed. I love Charlotte Cooper in ways and magnitudes that I can never express. (Allyson Mitchell)

NO REALLY I DON'T THINK PEOPLE EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW INCREDIBLE THIS IS GOING TO BE. (Chelsey Lichtawoman)

The other thing is, isn't the poster for the event fantastic! It's designed by Sam Abel, you can see more of her work at Saucy Nüdels. Would you like to see a copy of this poster on your wall, or on a noticeboard, or all over town? Download it right now!

The Queerness of Fat Activism with Charlotte Cooper – poster by Sam Abel (.pdf, 4mb)

Many thanks to the School of Disability Studies, the School of Social Work, the Department of Psychology and Critical Dietetics at Ryerson, as well as the Irish Social Sciences Platform for making this happen. Thanks also to the fat and queer activists of Toronto who have created a space in which an event like this can happen.

Also, earlier this week I made a list of introductory reading about fat and queer activism for anyone that's interested. It's a real mixture of things. No tests, no pressure, read or ignore at your leisure.

Cooper, C. (1996) 'Fitting' in Bernstein, R. and Clark Silberman, S., eds., Generation Q: gays, lesbians and bisexuals born around 1969's Stonewall riots tell their stories of growing up in the age of information, Los Angeles: Alyson, 59-64.

Cooper, C. (1998) Fat & Proud: The Politics of Size. London: The Women's Press.

Cooper, C. (2009) 'Fat Activism in Ten Astonishing, Beguiling, Inspiring and Beautiful Episodes' in Tomrley, C. and Kaloski Naylor, A., eds., Fat Studies In The UK, York: Raw Nerve Books, 19-31.

Cooper, C. (2010) 'Fat is a feminist issue, but whose feminism?', [online], available: http://www.thescavenger.net/feminism-a-pop-culture/fat-is-a-feminist-issue-but-whose-feminism-90645-428.html [accessed 11 June 2012]

Cooper, C. (2010) 'Charlotte Cooper and Judy Freespirit in Conversation, June 2010', Obesity Timebomb [online], available: http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com/2010/09/charlotte-cooper-and-judy-freespirit-in.html [accessed 11 June 2012]

Cooper, C. (2010) 'Olympics/Uhlympics: Living in the Shadow of the Beast', thirdspace, 9(2). [Online] Available: http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/cooper [accessed: 11 June 2012].

Cooper, C. (2011) 'A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline - zine download', Obesity Timebomb [online], available: http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com/p/queer-and-trans-fat-activist-timeline.html [accessed 11 June 2012]

Cooper, C. (2011) 'Queer Hapas, fat activism and weight loss surgery', Obesity Timebomb [online], available: http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com/2011/03/queer-hapas-fat-activism-and-weight.html [accessed 11 June 2012]

Cooper, C. (2012) 'A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline: Queering Fat Activist Nationality and Cultural Imperialism', Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, 1(1), 61-74.

Fontaine, G. (2008) 'Keynote Address: Nolose 2008 - More Than Just Fat: The Intersection of All of Our Identities', in NOLOSE, Northampton MA. [online] Available: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nolose.org%2F08%2Fgeleni_fontaine08.pdfamp;ei=ohnWT627HvC10QXqps36Aw&usg=AFQjCNFdJNL4C4bcuUVt82f7o2gTA8dxAw [accessed 11 June 2012]

Freespirit, J. (1983) 'A Day In My Life' in Schoenfielder, L. & Wieser, B. , ed. Shadow On A Tightrope: Writings By Women on Fat Oppression, San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 118-120.

Freespirit, J. (2003) 'On Ward G' in Koppelman, S., ed. The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe (and other stories of women and fatness), New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 153-160.

Gingras, J. R. (2009) Longing for Recognition: The Joys, Complexities, and Contradictions of Practicing Dietetics, York: Raw Nerve.

Johnston, J. and Taylor, J. (2008) 'Feminist Consumerism and Fat Activists: A Comparative Study of Grassroots Activism and the Dove Real Beauty Campaign', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 33(4), 941-966.

LeBesco, K. (2001) 'Queering Fat Bodies/Politics' in Braziel, J. E. and LeBesco, K., eds., Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 74-87.

LeBesco, K. (2004) Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Mitchell, A. (2005) 'Pissed Off' in Kulick, D. and Meneley, A., eds., Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession, London: Penguin, 211-225.

Moon, M. and Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. (1994) 'Divinity: A Dossier, A Performance Piece, A Little-Understood Emotion' in Kosofsky Sedgwick, E., ed. Tendencies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 211-246.

Rensenbrink, G. (2010) 'Fat's no Four-letter Word: Fat Feminism and identity Politics in the 1970s and 1980s' in Levy-Navarro, E., ed. Historicizing Fat in Anglo-American Culture, Columbus OH: The Ohio State University Press, 213-243.

Rothblum, E. and Solovay, S. (2009) The Fat Studies Reader, New York: New York University Press.

Schoenfielder, L. and Wieser, B. (1983) Shadow On A Tightrope: Writings By Women on Fat Oppression, San Francisco: Aunt Lute.

Shuai, T., Mozee, G., Paulus, K., Rachel, Fontaine, G., Weintraub, A., Herrington, J., Joe, Sondra and Zoe (2011) 'NOLOSE Policy Change: Inclusion and Moving from Identity to Intention', [online], available: http://www.nolose.org/11/genderpolicy.php [accessed 11 June 2012]

Snider, S. (2009) 'Fat Girls and Size Queens: Alternative Publications and the Visualizing of Fat and Queer Eroto-politics in Contemporary American Culture' in Rothblum, E. and Solovay, S., eds., The Fat Studies Reader, New York: New York University Press, 223-230.

Stinson, S. (2004) Venus of Chalk, Ann Arbor, MI: Firebrand Books.

Tomrley, C. and Kaloski Naylor, A. (2009) Fat Studies In The UK, York: Raw Nerve Books.

White, F. R. (2012) 'Fat, Queer, Dead: 'Obesity' and the Death Drive', Somatechnics, 2(1), 1-17.

I'm Presenting at Tate Modern on Friday

Kay Hyatt and I are presenting a little something at Tate Modern on Friday, as part of Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue's Axe Grinding Workshop, part of the work they do as the Feminist Art Gallery in Toronto.

The ticketing is a bit weird, but do your best! Maybe give the Tate's box office a call?

Here's a link: Axe Grinding Workshop
East Room
Tate Modern, London
Friday 18 May 2012, 19.00 – 21.00

Psst: You can get tickets for £9 if you enter the promo code 'activist' on the booking page.

Fat Panel Talk at National Portrait Gallery, London

I'm going to be taking part in a panel discussion at the National Portrait Gallery in London about fat representation. Come and join in!

In Conversation: In Praise of the Voluptuous
10 May 2012
19:00-20:00
Tickets: £5/£4

Ondaatje Wing Theatre
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place
London WC2H 0HE

My fat queer band gets a Spanish outing

Following their fat activism special, Una Buena Barba, the super-cool queer feminist online mag from Spain, asked me to write something for them, so I did. 'Homosexual Death Drive: Diario de una Bollera Gorda y Su Novia' has just been published in the new issue of the magazine, available for free online. It's a little diary about my band. Download and read it today.

PS. I'm strangely excited to see some of my lyrics in Spanish.

Primero te follamos
Luego te matamos
Luego te comemos
Luego te cagamos

Una Buena Barba 4

Original unedited English version (.pdf, 52kb)

Come and see me in real life

I've added some new events to the Forthcoming Events page, just so you know.

Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummits 2012

I'm taking part in a series of telesummits called Body Love Revolutionaries, about fat culture and community, organised by Golda Poretsky, which runs more or less weekly from 31 January to 28 February 2012.

On 23 February I'm going to be talking about fat and queer and, more than likely, femme with gorgeous gussies Bevin Branlandingham and Jessica Jarchow. We'll be online at 7pm GMT (use a Time Zone Converter to find out what that means for you).

What's a telesummit? I've never participated in one before but I think it's like a conference phone call where anybody can ring in but where there are invited guests who will say their piece and who will be available for questions and discussion. This particular series of telesummits is accessible via Skype, and possibly other free internet telephony applications, which means that people participating internationally and long-distance needn't rack-up huge phone bills. The downside for people outside North America, where the telesummits are being organised, is that the time difference can be quite brutal. Recordings of the telesummits will be available free for 24 hours after they take place, as long as you register, and then for a fee on a sliding scale.

Register for access details at http://www.bodyloverevolution.com

Here's the schedule for the rest of the telesummits, with a whole mess of links. All of the times are in Eastern Standard Time, use the Time Zone Converter link above for local times.

Tuesday 31 January, 8pm EST
Activism
Peggy Howell, Amanda Levitt and Marilyn Wann.

Thursday 2 February, 7pm EST
Health
Linda Bacon and Ragen Chastain.

Tuesday 7 February, 8pm EST
Fatshion
Marie Denee, Rachel Kacenjar and Yuliya Raquel.

Thursday 9 February, 8pm EST
Sex
Hanne Blank and Virgie Tovar.

Thursday 16 February, 8pm EST
Blogging
Marianne Kirby, Margitte Leah Kristjansson, and Brian Stuart.

Tuesday 21 February, 8pm EST
Fitness
Jeanette DePatie and Anna Guest-Jelley.

Thursday 23 February, 3pm EST
Fatness/Queerness
Bevin Branlandingham, Jessica Jarchow and me.

Tuesday 28 February, 8pm EST
Politics/History
Paul Campos and Amy Erdman Farrell.

You can add yourself to the Facebook Event and tell all your friends, and Tweet about it with the hashtag #blrev if you're so inclined. Golda's got it all covered.

Queer Fat Performer film: Go Big or Go Home

I'm in this. Take a look and support the project if you can.

http://queerfatperformerfilm.wordpress.com

The Adipositivity Project Calendar - I'm March

Back on a freezing day in January, Substantia Jones persuaded me to strip down to my skivvies and flash passers-by on a Lower East Side corner in Manhattan. Neither of us were arrested. It's funny how good times look.

Now it's November, I'm in London, wrapped in a blanket, staring down the end of the year and really delighted that one of the pictures from that session has ended up on the 2012 Adipositivity calendar. I'm March.

In the words of the creator: "The 2012 Adipositivity Calendar is here! And this year it's biggerbetterfastermore! 11x17 with 12 full-bleed square format pictures of plush, pulchritudinous plump, couple of which have not yet been seen. Snag your big-ass calendar of big asses here: http://www.cafepress.com/adipositivity.595211226 Hurry! Go!"

Eccentric Bodies, Soggettiva, Gender Bender, Bologna

I'm giving a little presentation called 'Queer Fat Feminist Activism in a Handful of Amazing Episodes' at Soggettiva, which is part of a festival called Gender Bender. The festival takes place in Bologna, 1-5 November 2011. Come along if you can!

Here's the official blurb:

Eccentric Bodies: Beauty, Normativity and Representations
3pm, Saturday 5 November
Aula Magna Santa Cristina, via del Piombo 5
Free entry

Which are the ways to resist actively the objectification of our bodies and our individualities, that is so much in vogue among our political class today? How can you stop pursuing the ideal of the perfect body dictated by the media? How to redefine the concept of beauty that threatens to crush many of us, since this ideal is more and more distant from the inclusion of real women, lesbian or straight? And it happens especially when our own desires are not in conformity to the mainstream.

Together with Giorgia Aiello, Elisa Arfini, Charlotte Cooper, Alessia Muroni, Roberta Sassatelli we will try to reflect on these issues and give solutions certainly not exhaustive, but analysis tools that can be useful for everyone.

Gender Bender

Queer Feminist Fat Activism Spanish Style

Hey look, Una Buena Barba has published a fat activism special, featuring interviews with me and Ruth from The Bop, plus the Fat Liberation Manifesto, and lots of eye candy. Queer feminist culture, free, unshaved and all in Spanish - hola!

Una Buena Barba

Original unedited English version (.pdf, 96kb)

Karen Throsby and Charlotte Cooper double whammy at King's College London

Here are more details. Come and see Karen Throsby and I talk next week. Anyone can come, it's free, and there's a wine reception (hic) afterwards.

Obesity and the Rejection of Body Normativity
Wednesday 18 May 2011
CMCI Work Room (formerly the Art Exhibition Room, on the ground floor of the South East Block), King’s College London, Strand Campus
17:30-19:00 followed by a wine reception

Following our successful launch in 2010, GenderMatters@King's, a research network of gender studies and feminist theories across King’s College London, is now organizing a series of seminars on the theme of “Gender and Mental Well Being: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives”, funded by King's Graduate School. Our first seminar will focus on exploring the subject of 'Obesity and the Rejection of Body Normativity', highlighting not only the gendered aspects of institutional interventions that attempt to govern bodies, but also the emancipatory potential of 'body shape diversity' discourses on fatness and fat identity, and their contestation against the weight-centred approach toward health.

"What do I eat, love?"
Obesity surgery and the reproduction of gender
Karen Throsby, The University of Warwick

Obesity surgery is conventionally understood through the lens of weight-related health discourses; it is the intervention of last resort for those whose bodies are deemed both medically and socially to be dangerously, intractably fat. Approximately 80% of all obesity surgery patients are women, but the gendering of obesity surgery as a practice extends far beyond the distribution of men and women among the patient population. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an obesity surgery clinic, this presentation argues that the practice of obesity surgery, both within and outside of the clinic, not only leaves unaddressed troubling social and bodily gender norms, but actively reiterates and reproduces those norms. This presentation explores the gendering of obesity surgery, including patient candidacy, the everyday work of managing the post-surgical body, and the distribution of responsibility for treatment outcomes. I conclude by considering the implications of this for those working within critical fat politics.

"She was so viscerally happy in that moment"
Fat Activism for Well Being
Charlotte Cooper, The University of Limerick

Dominant obesity discourse in 21st century Western culture is steeped in the abjection of fat people, and that this impacts negatively on our health. A Social Model of fat activism remedies this problem by addressing systemic fat hatred and helping to create more livable lives for fat people (Cooper, 1998). Fat activism re-imagines fat embodiment and agency, collectively it spans continents and has historical links over four decades. Cooper will talk about her research into this social movement, and presents case studies which both support and reject body normativity.

I'm giving a talk in London, please come

I'm giving a presentation at King's College on the Strand in London on 18 May. It is the first in the Gender Matters seminar series 'Gender and Mental Well Being: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives'. Gender Matters is a research group based at King's.

The organisers have given this talk the title of 'Obesity and the Rejection of Body Normativity' and I'll be talking about fat activism and mental health. I'll use accessible language and hopefully make it interesting. The seminar is open to members of the public, so please come. It's free and there's a wine reception afterwards - crikey.

Obesity and the Rejection of Body Normativity
Gender and Mental Well Being: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives
King's College, Strand campus
18 May 2011
17.30

"She was so viscerally happy in that moment" - Fat Activism for Well Being
Charlotte Cooper

Abstract

In this presentation I assert that dominant obesity discourse in 21st century Western culture is steeped in the abjection of fat people, and that this impacts negatively on our health. As I have argued previously, a Social Model of fat activism remedies this problem by addressing systemic fat hatred and helping to create more liveable lives for fat people (Cooper, 1998). Fat activism re-imagines fat embodiment and agency, collectively it spans continents and has historical links over four decades. I will talk about my research into this social movement, and present case studies which both support and reject body normativity.

Cooper, C. (1998) Fat & Proud: The Politics of Size, London: The Women's Press.

I've been interviewed for a Finnish mag with Beth Ditto on the cover

Hannele Harjunen interviewed me for top Finnish queer rag NHL NormiHomoLehti, and it's just about to be published. Hurray!

Wanna read the unedited and raw English version? Here you go... (.pdf 88kb)

Sander Gilman review is now published

My review of Sander Gilman's Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity has been published in Sociology journal. I wrote it 18 months ago!

Give me a shout if you don't have access to academic libraries and would like to read it.

Cooper, C. (2011) 'Review: Sander Gilman: Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity', Sociology, 45: 1, 181-183.

Posing for Substantia Jones

I've been in the US for a bit, visiting archives and finishing the last of the data collection for my PhD. I've also been doing what might be referred to technically within sociology as 'entering the field' in terms of fat activism, but I draw no distinction between my real life and the things I am studying, so thus can neither enter nor leave the field because I'm always already there. The lay version is that I've been talking with a lot of rad fatties, seeing a lot of fat activism, and taking part in some of it myself.

One of the people I spent some time with is Substantia Jones, the photographer behind The Adipositivity Project. If you are unfamiliar with Adipositivity, go to the site right now and feast your eyes on the amazing variety of fat flesh. This is one of my go-to places if ever I am having a bad fat day – and when I'm feeling perfectly fine too.

Substantia took my photograph in 2009, I'm Adiposer 303, 379 and 413, and just last week she did it again. Here's the pic that appeared on the site today, number 442, and outtakes of me with Mickey, and a snowman in Chinatown. By the way, yep, it was very cold, I got undressed in a restaurant toilet and dressed again out on the pavement, they're real streets in Chinatown in Manhattan, there were comments from passers-by (the guy in the main pic wanted my number – no chance!), it's as true as you see it.

When we were talking beforehand, Substantia asked me what it was like to pose for Adipositivity. I gave a jumbled up response, so I thought I'd try and give a more considered answer here.

I love the Adipositivity aesthetic, which is totally at home with femme and queer identity, often full of delicious colour, witty, sexy, imaginative, and stuffed with personality and style. Substantia has great visual ideas an collaborative skills, she makes the shoot fun, an adventure. When Substantia takes your photograph, you enter this world too and you get to see yourself within this frame, literally. It's a gift considering that many of the people who are photographed grew up with body shame and self-hatred.

When you appear on the site it's a measure of how far you've come in refuting fatphobia. It's not only about having your picture taken and allowing others to see it, it's also about being able to look at your own image without terror or disgust. Being there is a way of showing that having a fat body is alright, it gives permission to be visible and unafraid. There you are, part of humanity, not the fattest, not the thinnest, not the prettiest, or any other category that is supposed to be important, just there, doing your thing.

You could say that Adipositivity is a means of creating a new kind of beauty, or appreciating beauty. I don't think that beauty is the only thing going on in the pictures, they are also about flaunting fat, sometimes quietly and shyly, sometimes not. I love that the photographs are 'positive' but that they are never trite or monodimensional, 'positive role models' is an expression that makes me want to burn and rob, and I never get that feeling looking at these images. Instead they suggest another way of being, a richer way of considering fat embodiment. There is nothing apologetic or placatory about them and I think that this is because they are not necessarily created by and for 'them', but by and for 'us'. Whenever I come across the photographs they make me want to climb inside the frame and inhabit the world in which they were taken, I've been lucky enough for this to actually happen to me.

I come from punk and I appreciate that although Subsantia's photographs have high production values, they also strongly support a DIY ethic. Adipositivity is put together on next to nothing, it uses available resources, easily accessible web technology, for example, and also manages to have a really powerful impact. It is created without the pressure of advertisers, completely on Substantia's own terms.

It sounds cheesy but I'm really proud to be part of this project, grateful to have an opportunity to pose, and glad of Substantia's friendship. Although I live far away from New York, being an Adiposer makes me part of a community that wants to see images like these and is ready to help make them happen. I love seeing myself within this context and am delighted to be able to offer it my embodied support.

PS This still seems inadequate. Oh well, I'll write more next time, hopefully there will be a next time.

My new Fat Studies article has just been published

An article I wrote has just been published. It's an attempt to describe what I think Fat Studies means in terms of the available literature.

Here's the abstract:

An extensive body of literature concerning obesity already exists, but this paper seeks to map the field of an emerging body of work that is critical of that dominant discourse. Although it has been most recently mobilised by the rhetoric of an assumed global obesity epidemic, or moral panic around fatness, Fat Studies has an extensive history and interdisciplinary literature which questions and problematises traditional understandings of obesity and draws upon the language, culture and theory of civil rights, social justice and social change. Fat Studies enables the reframing of the problem of obesity, where it is not the fat body that is at issue, but the cultural production of fatphobia. Given the powerful commercial, ideological and institutional interest in maintaining dominant obesity discourse, such reframing is contested. Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates that Fat Studies offers dynamic new possibilities for social scientists interested in using fat as an interrogative lens.

It's taken well over a year to come out, academic publishing is so dreadfully slow, and I'm not sure how I feel about it, certainly there are many things I'd change. Oh well! Hopefully some people will find it useful, and maybe build on the work themselves.

Let me know if you would like a copy, just send me your email address.

Cooper, C. (2010) 'Fat Studies: Mapping The Field', Sociology Compass, 4: 12, 1020-1034.