ABSTRACT
Fat studies, which has roots in fat activism, emerges as a response to a contemporary cultural landscape that is openly hostile towards fat people and their perceived social and aesthetic transgressions. This book builds on a deep admiration for this discipline and examines the relationship between fat, sex and sexuality. It follows in the wake of key texts – including The Fat Studies Reader (eds. Rothblum and Solovay, 2009), Deborah Lupton’s Fat (2012), and the academic journal Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society – which have broken new ground in the debates around fat embodiment. Their insights encompass issues such as health and the medicalization of ‘body mass’, cultural geographies of weight and size, and fatness and social justice. The discipline has been ahead of the curve, too, in understanding how intersecting forms of oppression impact embodiment. It has consistently demonstrated a commitment to better understanding the ways in which factors such as class, gender, race, age, ability, ethnicity, and sexuality can inform one another and shape the lived realities of fat people. Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism owes a debt to this activism infused scholarship, and seeks to draw on the strengths of the tradition in order to make a contribution to the field.
