Food, Fatness and Fitness

Towards the end of the twentieth century the World Health Organization declared “obesity” a global epidemic. From 2001 onwards the term “globesity” came into use. “Globesity” is understood as a globally observable consequence of the spread of new “lifestyles” common in industrialized countries characterized by increased consumption of high-energy, industrially processed foodstuffs and low physical activity. According to this thesis, more and more people in the global North and increasingly also in the global South are “overweight” and suffer from “obesity,” measured by using the BMI. As “obesity” is classified as a risk factor for chronic, non-communicable diseases, “globesity” has been declared a public health crisis that threatens global society due to high healthcare costs and decreasing productivity. More recently,…

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The definition of Health at Every Size (HAES) may initially appear to be easy to understand. Many HAES advocates argue that all bodies, regardless of size, can achieve and maintain ‘good’ health. Yet, meanings and understandings of HAES have a complex and contentious history. HAES can loosely be separated into two branches. The most popularised branch has now been trademarked and was adapted and popularised by healthcare professionals such as Lindo Bacon, Deb Burgard and Lucy Aphramor. The other is perhaps lesser known to people outside of the fat activist movement but has its roots in early fat liberation where fat people were first able to discuss their dismal experiences of healthcare as part of community organisation. Both branches argue…

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I watch a video of professional marathon runner Mirna Valerio. Juxtaposed with the footage of her fat black body running through the woods, she reads—in a static, calm, level voice—an email that was sent to her: “You are a liar and a fraud. You are not a runner. I have seen your few videos where you actually pretend to run. What a joke! You are moving no faster than I can walk.” I watch Valerio’s body zig and zag in between trees. The camera lens lingers on her thick thighs as they land on the damp earth with thuds. I watch the flab on her arms and tummy jiggle, listen in for her deep breaths. She is not fast, but…

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In both contemporary medical and cultural discourse, a relationship between fatness and excess is often perceived to be self-evident. Being “overweight” is consistently connected to “overeating” and “overindulgence,” with the implication that if one simply ate less and practiced greater self-control they would lose weight and would stop being fat. Fat bodies may thus be perceived as transgressive since they are thought to transgress the norms of consumption. In the early modern period, however, the connection between excess and fat was not as straight-forward. While ideas about excess and excessive behavior permeated German-speaking society in the sixteenth century, excess was not always understood to result in fatness. Contemporary criticism of gluttony and drunkenness commented on the effects of such vices…

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I am a fat gamer. The “gamer” part is easy to write, the “fat” part does not come as easily and it still feels like admitting to a flaw. I have felt, like most gamers I assume, my share of guilt and even shame after I could not turn off whichever game had me sucked in and especially so, whenever I canceled social events in favor of a night with just myself, some food, and a video game. Fat-shaming, however, makes admitting to fatness much harder (in our cultures in the Global North). In identifying myself as fat, I build on work at the nexus of critical feminist, queer and fat studies; as Marilyn Wann has phrased it: In fat studies, there…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

„Globesity“: On an Objectionable Narrative of Global Health

Trademarks and Activists: The Complex History of Health at Every Size

Thin-Rage and Racialized Fat

Transgressive Bodies? Fatness and Excess in Early Modern Germany

Playing Fat? The Fat Gamer Meme