ABSTRACT
Fat people often avoid attending medical appointments because of their concerns about being weighed and then judged negatively by the doctor. The stigma and social ostracism and discrimination incurred by fat embodiment is similar in many ways to that of having the 'wrong' sexual preference, ethnicity or race, skin colour or religion, or having a disability. Bodily experience and subjectivity are constructed through space and place in a dynamic and heterogeneous relationship with the physical world. The notion of fatness as a disability has received some attention in critical approaches to obesity discourse. There are many similarities between the mainstream sociocultural response to fat bodies and to those with disabilities. Many fat people and organized fat activist groups, however, have sought to critique, challenge and resist these stigmatizing and discriminatory meanings and practices. At the same time as anti-obesity has intensified and proliferated, the fat activism and size acceptance movements have taken on a new impetus in response.
