Public enemy. Crucial macronutrient. Health risk. Punchline. Moneymaker. Epidemic. Sexual fetish. Moral failing. Necessary bodily organ. Conveyor of flavor. Freak-show spectacle. Never mind the stereotype, fat is never sedentary: its definitions, identities, and meanings are manifold and in constant motion. Demonized in medicine and public policy, adored by chefs and nutritional faddists (and let's face it, most of us who eat), simultaneously desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry, for so many people “fat” is ironically nothing more than an insult or a state of despair. In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, “feeling fat” and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

    This is the basic premise of fat activism, a social movement that has existed in Canada since the 1970s. Being Fat focuses on the earliest strands of the movement, covering the last decades of the twentieth century. The book explores how fat activists wrestled with feminist issues of the era, including femininity, sexuality, and health.Showcasing the earliest efforts of fat activists in Canada, such as the growth of social initiatives "for fat women only," Being Fat helps us recognize the long reach of second-wave feminism and how it shaped activists' approaches to everyday experiences like shopping, exercise, and going to the doctor.

    population who are overweight, dismantling the negative framework around fat bodies has been extremely challenging for changemakers who are interested in securing fundamental human rights and equal protection for fat people in the law, in healthcare, and in society.Body Sovereignty: Fat Politics and the Fight for Human Rights examines not only weight-based discrimination, but the underlying politics that benefit and encourage it to thrive. The authors simultaneously call attention to the fat liberation movement's intersections with race, class, and disability politics and the real people whose lives are affected by their outsider status. They highlight fat injustice from various perspectives, such as health and law, and uplift the often-overlooked voices of people of color, disabled people, superfat people, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Body Sovereignty invites readers to consider fat bodies and the politics of fatness from a nuanced, forward-thinking vantage point that values the voices of fat people as experts of their own experience and people worthy of equal rights.