About Elisabeth Lechner:

elisabeth.lechner@univie.ac.at

Elisabeth Lechner is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, where she completed her PhD in 2020. Situated at the intersections of literary, cultural and media studies as well as affect & body studies, her research on ‘disgusting’ female bodies, body positivity and digital feminist activisms was published academically and as the German non-fiction book Riot Don’t Diet! Aufstand der widerspenstigen Körper (2021, 3rd edition).

Apart from engaging in various forms of science-public communication and conducting workshops on media literacy, body shaming and lookism over the last few years, more recent publications include “#Feminist – Naming Controversies and Celebrating Points of Connection and Joy in Current Feminisms” (together with Greta Olson) and co-editing the collective volume Caring for Cultural Studies (2022). She is active on social media as @femsista. Photo provided by Elisabeth Lechner (photographer).

Articles by the author:

Leftist Politics and the “Significant Burden” of Fatness

Posted on by Elisabeth Lechner

In July 2024, after 14 years of conservative Tory rule, the British Labour party won a general election. Shortly after their landslide victory, in October, an interesting case study on fat politics played out in the UK. Keir Starmer, the party’s newly elected prime minister, announced he wanted to get fat, unemployed people back onto the job market with the help of free “weight loss injections,” a new turn of the screw in dystopian diet culture. In this piece, I want to reflect on the larger politics and consequences of this policy proposal and ask: What are progressive fat politics and what role do fat politicians play in shaping fat policy-making?  According to British Health Minister Wes Streeting, the “widening waistbands” of his…

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