ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I have argued that aerobics for fat women reflect a fluid approach to fat activism, which focused on pleasure, was driven by personal experience, and drew on feminist and feminine popular culture of the 1980s. For Large as Life (LAL) members, the value of these activities was not determined by the extent to which they promoted health or femininity, but rather their affective impact on being fat. It is unlikely that aerobics participants had singular motivations that could easily be divided into good/bad or pro-woman/hegemonic reasons for exercising. Participants enjoyed the music and the camaraderie and many also had fun finding aerobics clothing to wear to class. In aerobics classes, participants were literally embodying the ideas about fat and health that had been circulating among groups of fat women for the previous ten years. In this respect, aerobics departed from and added to the knowledge and knowledge practices built up by activists in Canada and the United States. Women experienced their bodies anew in aerobics classes and, in turn, shared physical activity fuelled LAL’s response to fat oppression.
