Charlotte Cooper - Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement

FAT ACTIVISM

FAT ACTIVISM

A RADICAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Charlotte Cooper

HammerOn Press

Charlotte Coopers fierce new book Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement should be required reading for scholars and activists. Cooper draws on extensive interviews with fat activists to render a trenchant analysis of our field of motion. She takes a penetrating look at activist efforts and self-understandings, eschewing easy praise in favour of discernment that ultimately promises to invigorate the movement.

Kathleen LeBesco / Marymount Manhattan College (Associate Dean)

For any civil rights movement to succeed, it must know its history; to build on its strengths and learn from its mistakes. With the ubiquity of the Internet, the historical knowledge and record of activism can be rewritten with 140 characters. That is one of the many reasons that Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is important. Charlottes latest text provides a detailed presentation of fat activism throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries, including illumination of those who have appropriated and occupied fat activism for their own agendas. She highlights the achievements of fat activism, while also acknowledging where it has often failed (for example, the dominance of the work in the United States, the often limited accessibility, the lack of intersectionality). Charlotte allows space for both assimilationist and anti-assimilationist activism, closing the text with delightful examples of her own work as a queer fat activist. Anyone interested in the epistemology, ontology, and methodology, (not to mention history) of fat activism should make this a central text of their library.

Cat Paus / Massey University/ Co-Editor of Queering Fat Embodiment

Charlotte Cooper is once again in the vanguard of radical social change with this book about fat activism. She has captured the history of the fat rights movements, interviewed fat activists, and demonstrated the extensive and exciting breadth of fat activism in a global setting. Fat activism is often portrayed as ineffective when in fact its lack of conformity and interdisciplinarity can serve as a model for other social movements.

Esther Rothblum / Editor/ Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society

It is in the interest of the ethically and intellectually dubious field of Obesity Research to flatten fat subjects; rendering our voices narrowly defined by punchy rhetoric, our activist interventions reduced to child-like flailing against the big bad thin-dominated world. Charlotte Coopers book Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement resists this myopic view of resistance to fat oppression in form and content. By remaining true to her own subject position as a Fat Activist who works in community with other Fat Activists, Cooper lays out a methodology and practice of fat studies research that positions lived experience at the center of her rigorous analysis. This book is full of honesty about the challenges of doing research on a complex, diverse community, and acknowledges its own pitfalls and under-developed critiques gracefully. Fat Activists need more researchers and writers examining and reflecting on our work from within, and this book stands as an offering and opening in that vein.

Naima Lowe / Artist and Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College

FAT ACTIVISM: A RADICAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Charlotte Cooper, 2016

The right of Charlotte Cooper to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

ISBN-13: 978-1-910849-02-6

ISBN-10: 1910849026

Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement/ Charlotte Cooper

1. Social Movement Studies 2. Fat Studies 3. Public Health 4. Obesity 5. Cultural Studies 6. Feminism 7. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer.

First published in 2016 by HammerOn Press

Bristol, England

http://hammeronpress.net

Cover design by Eva Megias

It has taken me years to write this book. I am grateful to everybody who consented to be interviewed for this project, all the reviewers and every single one of the hundreds of people who offered me words of encouragement and opportunities to share this work. Thanks to Simon Murphy, Kay Hyatt, Deborah Withers, Eva Megias, Natalie Brown, Ann Kaloski Naylor, The Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society, The Irish Social Sciences Platform and Sociology at Limerick.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

For you.

Fat How can and do fat people try to make liveable lives for ourselves and others? Thats basically what this book is about.

I begin by examining what others have already said about fat activism strategies to reinvigorate the movement.

I am writing in a context where being fat is commonly experienced in the West People preoccupied with how fat people can be caused, managed and prevented will not find much about it here.

The dominance of anti-obesity rhetoric means that dissent is usually understood as being part of a debate. In this book I present fat activism as a social movement, not a debate. That is to say, it is a concept that is not always concerned about participating in this debate or in need of validation through it, it exists regardless of whether or not there is a debate, and it has done for some years. When I say social movement I mean the actions that people take that often have some connection to social change and which are bound together by various threads to do with history, place, philosophy, identity and so on, of which this book is full of examples. Fat activism is an idea that connects many different kinds of people and activities and contributes to how people think of social action, social change and social movements. Fat activism shows that you do not have to be corralled into a debate in order to think, speak and act.

Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is linked to another book, Fat & Proud: The Politics of Size , not least because they are both based on my academic work and desire to see ideas move beyond the world of the university. In that other book I developed a theory, suggested to me by my friend and mentor Jenny Corbett, that the Social Model of Disability could be applied to fat activism. of fat activists by a fat activist-researcher has taken place. Like my previous book, this one is based on primary evidence and has a moderately international scope. It is also a book that is openly queer, something that the publishers of Fat & Proud tried to suppress.

The book you are reading started out as my doctoral research at the University of Limerick in Ireland, which began in 2008 and ended The proposal reflected my supervisors and the funders interests more than mine and did not consider the possible effect on a fat researcher, such as I, of encountering relentless clinical discrimination over at least a four-year period. A different approach was required that reflected my experience and knowledge of fat, which built on my expertise as a fat activist, enabled me to write myself into the research, and which posed less of a risk to my well-being. The original proposal made a brief mention of resistance to clinical discrimination. Fat activism was regarded as a minor footnote even here! A short course on peace-building undertaken at the end of my first year of study, which included a module on community strategies for non-violence, convinced me that activism needed to be central to the study.