By: Leslie Goldman

Nov 09, 2009

I’ll never forget back in college, working for University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Student Health Center (I was that girl who sat by the free condom bowl and smiled as you stocked up for the weekend), I was once sitting in a staff meeting with all the head honchos. Doctors, nurses, therapists, administrators. We were strategizing for an upcoming gender rights event and as we sat around a giant oval board room table, I had the floor. For the life of me, I can’t recall what I was pontificating about, but I remember quite clearly saying the following: “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a feminist (said with a bit of a sneer), but I do like it when a guy holds the door open for me.”

Crickets. For what seemed like two hours, no one said a single word. I’m telling you, I felt like I was being stared down by 18 FBI agents as I sat in a dark room with a lone light bulb swinging over my head. “What?!” I asked.

“Leslie, you DO know that being a feminist simply means you think men and women deserve to be treated equally, don’t you?” my favorite nurse practitioner said.

Oh, wait, so it doesn’t mean you’re a man-hating lesbian who refuses to shave her armpits and listens to Indigo Girls? My bad.

The thing is, it was 1995 and I was hardly alone in my erroneous thinking. Many people were – and still are--confused about what it means to be a feminist. Another area of confusion: Fat studies. We’ve heard the term more and more lately, and I think a number of us still think fat studies is a school of thought dedicated to helping people plump up. Or to the belief that fat is where it’s at and thin women are gross while plus-sized women are beautiful. But guess what? We’ve got it all wrong.
I recently interviewed Esther Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University and co-editor of  The Fat Studies Reader (NYU Press, 2009). 

NSD: What, exactly, is fat studies?
ER: It’s a field of scholarship, focused on the belief that all people should be treated with respect, regardless of body size, fat or thin. And that weight, like height, is a human characteristic that varies across a population. All heights and weights exist. Fat studies aims to remove the negative associations society has about fat and the fat body. Fat studies scholars ask the question, ‘Why do we oppress people who are fat, and who benefits from that oppression?'

NSD: Who does benefit from that oppression?
ER: It’s a multi-billion dollar economy. Pharmaceutical companies who sell weight loss medications.
The diet industry. The diet cookbook industry. The diet food and diet cola industry or any products that call themselves “lite.” The plastic surgery and bariatric surgery industries. If, suddenly, people felt comfortable with their bodies, many of these companies would go bankrupt. The idea that people might feel good about who they are can be very threatening to many industries.

NSD: Do fat studies people have a problem with thin people?
ER: No, on the contrary. Fat studies looks at oppression based on body size. Fat studies says everybody deserves access to medical care and to engage in fun exercise, that there should be clothing for all body types, which is something that can be very challenging for thin people, too. Everybody deserves exercise equipment that fits them, access to nutritious foods free from pesticides, plastics. Everyone.

NSD: Do fat studies scholars believe weight is under an individual person’s control?
ER: Up to 98% of people who go on diets lose weight but do not keep it off. They restrain their intake, then they regain, we know yo-yo dieting is not healthy and results in a number of health risks. I really would say weight is not under our control. When we say something has a 95-98% failure rate, there are very few procedures we would undergo with a 2-5% success rate. Regardless of whether you’re fat or thin, we need to focus on health problems.

In 1982, I taught at the University of Vermont, and everyone smoked. We even had a cigarette vending machine in the basement. Over time, just about everybody quit smoking except one or two. But these same people, when they tried losing weight, they struggled tremendously. And these people had a lot of willpower! I mean, they quit smoking! They truly were trying. It shows weight is not a controllable variable.

For those of you curious about my using the word “fat” so liberally, I asked Rothblum and she said it’s totally allowable. Much like gay people have reclaimed “queer,” or like Eve Ensler reclaimed "the C word," fat studies advocates have taken a word used against them, a word they’ve been taught to fear (ie “fat”) and taken it back.

Surprised by any of this new info? I know I was…I never knew fat studies also advocated for equal rights for thin people. Has this cleared things up for anyone else?

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