"Fat" in a Philosophy and Theory of Disabilities Context

Fat is at once a political category, a form of embodiment, and a community-based resistance politics. Central to the areas of scholarly interest produced in fat studies, arising in conjunction with a fat activist politics, is the claim that fat is a neutral descriptor of bodily variation and that fat lives are worthy of protection and social value. This contrasts with systemic fat oppression, fatphobia, and size discrimination that act within regimes of bodily normalization to produce practices and institutions upholding thin bodies as good and healthy. Fatphobia names a range of beliefs and practices that construct fat as dangerous, immoral, and unhealthy, which is evidenced by a range of media representations, medical practices, and capitalist industry, chief among them is the diet and weight-loss industry. Medical and weight-loss industries have been in lockstep in their support of the body mass index (BMI), which creates a statistical measurement of body size used to administer life in population health. These all fuel the obesity epidemic, which marks fat bodies for eradication, blaming them for the loss of the American competitive edge and failing militarism. Consequences of this obesity panic are especially prominent in the fight against obesity in children, which aims to prevent disability as well as any drains on parental energy, which should otherwise be aimed at the nation’s progress. This is all held together by xenophobic, white supremacist systems that aim to purify bodies and bolster racial progress through weaponizing racialized fatness as to blame for society’s ills. Disability is present everywhere in these concepts because of the focus on health, normal bodies, and blame for holding back society. While uses of “health” for political recognition in liberal rights frameworks are uneasy in areas of fat and feminist politics, critical disability politics are closely aligned with a critical fat perspective in centering concepts such as bodily instability, vulnerability, and community care.