Fat in the Classroom: What would you teach?
This is the (Right?)Bodies week in my class, and tomorrow we’re going over fat. I’ve given this lecture many times over the past year so I already have my plans made for tomorrow, but I thought in light of how active the fat blogging community has become in recent months I’d throw this out there to get other opinions.
What’s the most important stuff to get across in an hour and fifteen minutes? I have my thoughts (history of the movement, major debates within fat activism, fat feminist discourse, terminology), but I was wondering what other people would do. Attempt to debunk BMI? Focus on the health debate? Legal challenges? Fetishization?
So tell me, fat bloggers and blog readers: if you were teaching my class tomorrow, what would you teach?
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
Would you be up to addressing the whole ” fat as last available prejudice” myth?
Pshaw! Did I not say I’m talking about the history of the movement? That is TOTALLY one of the big problems in the movement, so yes, I will definitely be including it.
Way to keep me on my toes 
Hi there. :^) I’m a random lurker, here via the Fatosphere. I definitely think that the prejudice angle is important, so I’m glad you’ll be covering it. Also, I’d certainly include information about the health debate, and how slanted the research and media coverage are, possibly with some information about less-privileged research on the topic (e.g., links to Junk Food Science!). The links between sizeism, healthism, racism, sexism, etc., and how those are supported by and maintained by the largely white, intellectual, financially privileged, male research juggernaut is of particular interest to me (and it might be worth noting that my degree is in the sciences and I worked at UC Berkeley for nearly 15 years, so I say this with something of an insider’s view of science and academia).
This is a class of college kids, right? I think you should also focus on how fat discrimination hurts not only fat people, but people of all sizes. Maybe include how yo yo dieting carries more adverse health risks than does obesity, and how many eating disorders begin with a simple case of dieting. Definitely go over Health at Every Size, and the often conflicting and contradictory nature of studies (like the three that have come out this month, all saying different things about the effect of weight and diet on cancer).
In debunking BMI, I would also show them Kate’s Illustrated BMI chart. It might make it more interactive for the class if you hide the classifications, and have them “guess” if a person is considered underweight, average, overweight or obese. I bet that would really open a lot of their eyes.
Good luck!
Everything Rachel said. I especially like the idea of having them guess who is considered “underweight,” “average,” “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese.”
I wish I could be there for your lecture! Please post and let us know how it goes.
Just an hour and fifteen minutes — so hard to know what to cover.
I think that conveying the damage that anti-fat prejudice causes may be eye-opening to some, but also allowing an opportunity for reflection on the internalized fat hatred might be a good thing.
Raising consciousness about the effects of dieting, the fallacy that all people “should” be a certain size, would be good, too.
Rachel’s post above covers all the best ground, really.
I think you should definitely talk about the health debate, because most people have no idea about the studies that link obesity to positive things, or don’t find the link to negative things. The new study that just came out would be a good, recent example. I also think you should talk about how the media tends to skew the results and make them sound more dramatic than they are. I’d talk about the negative effects of dieting and mention how low the success rates are even in the “healthiest” diets.
I was gonna suggest a game where they get to guess people’s BMIs, but Rachel beat me to it. That would surely give them some idea of how far BMI is from our understanding of “fat”.
I’m not sure about fetishization. Would it take the discussion too much to the sexual topics? Young people (even university students, at least boys) tend to focus too much on sexuality anyway, and might take away nothing but “some people LIKE fat girls, how gross”. I’ve seen a few fetishism documentaries, and the only public debate they seemed to spur was “eww, did you see the HUGE fat lady and the pervert who likes it?”
All the suggestions are great so far, and I only have one thing to add, but it ties in with the suggestions already made.
I would OPEN with something like Kate’s BMI project. Start off by showing them that their idea of “fat” and “overweight” is skewed. Shock them into thinking about their preconceptions, basically.
Regardless of where you decide to go from there, I’d be willing to bet real cash money that you’ll already have grabbed their attention. I really think they’ll be much more open to hearing what you’ve got to say once they see something like that.
As a newbie to the process of body acceptance and intuitive eating, I think the idea that has been most important to me in regard to my own body is the simple idea that diets don’t work, have never worked, and, as Kate Harding suggests, NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO GET OR KEEP PEOPLE PERMANENTLY THIN. I have been shocked to find these ideas were first promulgated back in the 1960’s, yet we’ve had a deluge of diet and “lifestyle” change books, programs, pills and surgeries still trying to take fat people the other way ever since. The voice of reason when it comes to eating and body size is truly the small voice crying in the wilderness.
But, anyway, if there is no reliable method of slimming people down, then what are we to do, as individuals and as a society, about our increasing girth?
The answer seems to be to push harder at shaming, controlling, taxing and punishing fat people.
Maybe a class discussion about alterntives might be interesting.
I am SOOOOOO late on this (as usual), but I would love to hear how this turned out and what you include in your lecture. I have done a few HAES lectures and last year I did a guest lecture on the movement. I went over what I felt were the basics. I went over the history of the movement (as well as I could) and what it stands for. I didn’t go into TOO much detail because I figured that would be too much for a SOC 100 class and it was enough to give them basic ideas and history. I included a slide of pictures of important/famous fat positive people. I also went over HAES and debunked BMI and such. I included videos because I think sometimes they can help illustrate things that are hard to convey in a lecture. I showed most of Fat Rant, I showed the Linda Bacon video on HAES, and also the video on Kelly Bliss’ site. My intention was not to focus soley on HAES, but I knew that’s where the most questioning would come from. I was fortunate to have a lot of great discussion and able to keep emphasizing that despite any health arguments, fat people deserve respect and rights.
Again, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Hey Withoutscene (and all),
Class ended up going great! I’ll post a recap in a few days, but I did end up using Kate’s BMI project (got her permission first of course), which was an incredibly effective tool, as well as one other brief activity. When I lectured last year (without the BMI project), I usually did a history of fat lib in the U.S., with a discussion about the lack of transnational discourse… in the past I didn’t focus so much on health stuff because Esther covered that during her lectures (the health bit).
Soo, I had to cut out quite a bit of history, but it ended up going great. More later. Thanks for all the great ideas, folks!