About Cat Pausé:

C.Pause@massey.ac.nz

Cat Pausé, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in Human Development at Massey University. She is the lead editor of Queering Fat Embodiment (2014, Ashgate), and coordinated two international conferences – Fat Studies: Reflective Intersections (2012) and Fat Studies: Identity, Agency, Embodiment (2016). Fat Studies: Past, Present, Futures is running in Auckland, New Zealand in 2020. Her research is focused on the effects of fat stigma on health and well-being on fat individuals and how fat activists resist the fatpocalypse. She has called for a new fat ethics, acknowledging the role science has played in the oppression of fat people and ensuring that research around fatness centers fat epistemology. Her work appears in scholarly journals including Fat Studies, Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, Feminist Review, and Narrative Inquiries in Bioethics, as well as online in the Huffington Post, NPR, The Conversation, and in her blog (Friend of Marilyn). Her fat positive radio show, Friend of Marilyn, has been showcasing fat studies scholarship and fat activism since 2011.

Articles by the author:

Poor Fatties Can’t Help but Make Unhealthy Decisions?: The Myth of the Obesogenic Environment

Posted on by Cat Pausé

The obesogenic environment refers to “the sum of influences that the surroundings, opportunities or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals and populations.” The obesogenic environment encompasses the infrastructural, social, and culture conditions that influence people’s ability and willingness to engage in health seeking behaviours. These include the advertising and availability of high calorie food, the lack of safe green spaces for activity and play, and the motorisation of daily life.  It represents an ecological lens for understanding and solving the ‘problem of obesity,’ shifting the responsibility for fatness from individuals to environmental factors, and highlights that certain populations (poor people; usually people of color) live in environments that put them at greater risk for fatness. Concerns over…

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Changing the Terminology to ‘People with Obesity’ won’t Reduce Stigma against Fat People

Posted on by Cat Pausé

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The British Psychological Society is calling for changes for how we talk about fatness, suggesting we should no longer use the phrase “obese people”, but instead, “people with obesity” or “people living with obesity”. These changes are being proposed to recognise that fatness is not about personal choice and that fat shaming and fat stigma are harmful. But this suggested language change is based on the idea obesity is a disease to be cured and fat people are not a natural part of the world. This serves to reinforce stigma, rather than prevent it. How does stigma and shame affect fat people? Fat stigma…

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