Fat Studies: Why now?

I was emailed some questions recently about the emergence of fat studies, and I felt a little ridiculous waxing as long as I was getting over email, so I cut it down a lot and decided I’d save some of my thoughts for here, so I could really look at the question.

The gist of the question (and I think of the article in general, if I understand correctly) is, why now? Why, after having a fat liberation movement for almost as long as we’ve had a gay liberation movement, is Fat Studies finally emerging as a discipline (or, in some cases, a sub-set of other disciplines, like sociology or art history or women’s studies)?

As I mentioned in my response, it’s a complicated question, and there isn’t really any easy answer. I think that it’s been spurred on by success of programs like women’s and queer studies, which often compel those in the fields to question ways of knowing, especially about bodies. I could get into Butler and Braidotti but my wife reads this blog, and she’d probably have a conniption if I went into any more theory, at least this week. So I won’t, but it’s interesting to think about how much of queer theory can be incorporated into fat studies.

For me, I came to fat studies because I was an activist and a student, and I realized that if society was going to base their war on fat in academic and clinical studies and theory, then the people who are fighting for fat liberation were going to have to do it on all fronts, to do fat activism both in grassroots settings and in guerilla fat activism, and in the academy and public policy, and hopefully go back and forth between strategies. Bonnie Zimmerman said that Women’s Studies is the theoretical arm of the feminist movement, and I think that can also be extrapolated to this field, the idea that fat studies is the theoretical arm of the fat liberation movement. However, I do think that sometimes academics do lose sight of the fact that just because theory can contribute to and support activism, that doesn’t mean they can just rest on their laurels knowing that ahh, that paper is contributing to the movement. I think it’s still important to be active, to go protest and be visible and be vocal about and against fat oppression. Otherwise, why bother?