(FTS2) An Intersectional Multi-Gender Panel on Anti-Fat Bias as Reductive Harm

In the realm of fat studies, the body and embodiment has been an anchor in the research and activism done. It is pushed forth a theorizing of fat stigma and anti-fat bias across institutions and interpersonal relations. However, the scholarship continues to map marginalized voices to the margins (Crenshaw 1990). From a Fat Studies perspective, Sander L. Gilman’s (2004) Fat Boys: A Slim Book wrestles with the topic of fat being strictly a feminist issue, which he believes leaves out a historical version of masculinity that the fat man’s body represents. Transnational analyses of fatness are also limited as much of the scholarship has been canonized in North America and the United Kingdom. Transnational fat scholarship reminds us that a single-category analysis of anti-fat discourses fails to reflect on the racial origins of fatphobic attitudes, the exoticization, and debilitation of fat racialized people.

This panel commits to decentering whiteness and heteropatriarchy through the positioning of the intersectional lives of a intergenerational kin structure. The panelists critically reflect on the cultural practices that come to institutionalize the notion of ‘bodies that matter’ across space and time (Butler 1993; Braziel and LeBesco 2001; Padalecki 2022; Rinaldi et al. 2023). Additionally, this panel hopes to fill the gap on gendered experiences of fatness as they explore bodies and spaces with a specific focus on the experience of fat gendered bodies and the diet and wellbeing industrial complex. Overall, the panel explores intersections of race, gender and embodiment while navigating fat scholarship, complicated masculinities and fatphobic barriers to accessing spaces and one’s body.

Moderators:

Ramanpreet A. Bahra, York University, Kelsey Ioannoni, Wilfrid Laurier University

Panelists:

Dr. Mark Allwood, Cultural Studies, Trent University

Kathryn Last, PhD Candidate, Cultural Studies, Trent University

Gin Marshall, PhD Student, Social Work, York University

 

Works Cited:

Atherton, E. (2021). Moralizing hunger: Cultural fatphobia and the moral language of contemporary diet culture. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 7(3), 1.

Bell, K., & McNaughton, D. (2007). Feminism and the invisible fat man. Body & Society, 13(1), 107-131.

Braziel, J. E., & LeBesco, K. (Eds.). (2001). Bodies out of bounds: Fatness and transgression. Univ of California Press.

Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. Taylor & Francis.

Padalecki, I. Growing Up and Into Excess: A Historical and Auto-Ethnographic Investigation into the Gendered,

Sexualized, and Racialized Nature of Fat Embodiment. In 2022 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (p. 331-352).

Rinaldi, J., Friedman, M., & Jiménez, K. P. (2023). Materializing Trans/Fat Bodies: Lessons from an Arts-Informed Project. Excessive Bodies: A Journal of Artistic and Critical Fat Praxis and World Making, 1(1), 25-50.

Tags: Fat Studies, Genre, Race et origine ethnique

Organizateurs: Kelsey Ioannoni, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ramanpreet A. Bahra, York University