Why not major in Fat Studies?Proponents of fat studies see it as the sister subject — and it is most often women promoting the study, many of whom are lesbian activists — to women’s studies, queer studies, disability studies and ethnic studies. In many of its permutations, then, it is the study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society.
“It’s about a dominant culture’s ideals of what a real person should be,” said Stefanie Snider, 29, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, whose dissertation will be on the intersection of queer and fat identities in the United States in the 20th century. “And whether that has to do with skin color or heritage or sexual orientation or ability, it ends up being similar in a lot of ways.”
In the other corner, we have the people who hate this sort of thing:
“In one field after another, passion and venting have come to define the nature of what academics do,” said Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, a group of university professors and academics who have a more traditional view of higher education. “Ethnic studies, women’s studies, queer studies — they’re all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group. That’s not what the academy should be about.
“Obviously in the classroom you can look at issues of right and wrong and justice and injustice,” he added, “But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question.”
They're here, they're fat, and they want a department devoted to them.
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60 comments:
The most alarming detail in the NYT article is the California law professor who advocates "weightism" as a new field of tort law. Imagine the consequences for society.
What fat activists need is not funding for new academic departments, but compulsory gym memberships. A daily two-hour workout would do wonders for those issues of social oppression.
I do find it absurd. But then I find these other ism departments just as absurd. It is a way to divert often public resources to one's own benefit. Do many of these ism departments provide a public good, esp. when compared to the cost? I doubt it.
Hahaha...someday the humanities will have delegitimized themselves so throughly that we will dispense with them altogether.
If fat people want to deny that being fat is bad for your health, so be it. Just don't make me pay for your health bill.
And before someone brings up that study that says overweight people live longer - please, that was for slightly overweight people. You can read the original JAMA paper here
"weightism" as a new field of tort law
Listen, buddy, as it applies to fat people, that's torte law to you!
Compulsory gym memberships? A cellulite Mengele, we've got here!
If the fat people have a sit-down strike, then gravity alone shall ensure them of their own department! We vill bury you! (and crush them like bugs!)
I don't know about devoting a whole department to it, but I do think the modern phenomenon of obesity, its effects on culture and the question of how public policy should treat the phenomenon is interesting and worthy of study. As for the goal of advocating fat people's rights and self-esteem, I agree with Balch that that is certainly not a sufficient intellectual reason for the department. But I think advocating causes should not be anathema to academics either since those academics often have the most substantive knowledgeable underlying a given policy debate. Advocacy naturally flows out of many areas of academic study, whether biologists talking up or down the merits of stem cell research or constitutional law professors promoting or opposing same sex marriage bans.
This would be funny if it didn't reveal the intellectual Left's accelerating decent into Fascism.
Mussolini was a life long Marxist who discovered that ethnic bonds were stronger and more politically reliable than those of class. The Germans intensified the bonding by making it about supposed biological relations.
Sometime in the 60's Leftist intellectuals rediscover that innate characteristics make for better politics than did class and that campaigns that appealed to group identification worked better appeals to individualism. They have gone so far over to this fascistic view that they build it into the organizational structure of the universities and colleges they control.
They seek to extend this dark vision to the whole of society.
I look forward to the first William Howard Taft Endowed Chair (suitably reinforced) for the advancement of these studies.
(I also look forward to seeing this get published because, after I upgraded to the new google sign-in, I've been unable to post anywhere using my regular name.)
What I want to know is where will the food nazis (Fast Food Nation, nanny state, city regulations on transfats...) fit? While they by favored by Fat Studies, or not?
How about that! It worked! Now, I wonder why my Internet Ronin account doesn't work any more.
If they're all coming out of the closet, it must be some closet.
Less than 20 comments and liberals are already nazis and fascists!
Joseph - Wow! Where did anyone but you equate liberals and fascists?
Shannon Love: "the intellectual Left's accelerating decent into Fascism."
One in ten...seems like a lower ratio than comments made on Daily Kos towards their sworn enemies.
Menlo Bob: I'm not arguing with that, just saying its not a good sign when comparisons to fascism come up this early in a thread.
It's not a comparison to fascism, it IS fascism.
But "liberals" and "leftists" aren't identical groups.
They can probably consolidate everything into the Department of Illegal, Immoral, and Fattening Studies (thank you, Alexander Woolcott).
It is a way to divert often public resources to one's own benefit. Do many of these ism departments provide a public good, esp. when compared to the cost?
Bruce, at my university, women's studies is an interdisciplinary department. The faculty work under their main departments, and teach one or two courses per year for the WS program. WS has a small budget, enough to pay those course costs and do some recruiting. There's a single office with a grad student assistant, and the chair is a two-year position paid for with a two-course reduction. So far as I know, ours is not a unique model, at least not for a public university with shallow pockets.
What is the likelihood that even one faculty member (or doctoral candidate) within such a department will be of normal body habitus?
Will the healthy or thin perspective have any voice in such a venture?
Just some food for thought (not consumption).
John
How about a Department for Flatulence Studies? I could do my thesis on the intersection of Fatties and Flatulence. Or maybe on the intersection of Queers and Flatulence?
This society is undeniably ill disposed to falutulent individuals and I'm tired of it. Seems like the only place you get to express your gas is on nice long hikes. The least they could do for us is give us designated Gas Passing Lounges in airports and theaters.
I look forward to that tort professor in California signing on to defend the rights of us gassy folks.
Daily two hour workout? A one hour workout could change their life and enable them to keep off 100+ lbs for decades. Not that I've thought about it or anything.
Isn't this the academic side of organizations like the N.A.F.F.A folks? Militant fatties aren't something you should worry about. They won't be able to walk fast or far to demand or protest.
Where are they going to find students for a fat studies department? Who's going to be willing to drop forty grand a year and come out the other side with a BA in being fat?
Hey, I used to be fat! I could make contributions to Fat Studies that you "never-been-fat" persons just don't have in you. Especially you "never-been-fat" white males.
Cordially,
A "used-to-be-fat" white male
Any room for baldism, hirsutism, tallism, shortism, six-toeism .......
"Am I the only one who sees this as another cash cow scam by universities to squeeze money out of losers who don't have the self-discipline to put real work into a legitimate field of inquiry?"
No, you aren't the only one. That is exactly what all the postmodernist "X-studies" programs are, with nothing that can be called scholarship at all.
If it's worthy of study, then appoint people capable of doing research to study it, rather than people who can't do anything but write a personal essay and call it scholarship.
I just wish these lefties would make up their minds. First, we're all dying of anorexia. Then, we're all dying of obesity. Now, we need fat studies to study how oppressed fat people are. It's enough to make any reasonable human being dizzy.
I think I'll head on over to McDonald's and work on my doctoral thesis.
Please, oh please God, let pieces of video featuring Homer Simpson feature prominently in the course materials, as You are mecrciful and benevolent.
Ah, the moral bankrupcy of identify politics. Want to engage in brain-dead identity politics, but you're not a member of a distinct group? Don't worry, we'll fabricate a new group identity to make your decisions for you.
Still, the proponents of this field are precisely right in one regard: this is just like "queer studies" or "ethnic studies" or "business school." Just not in quite the way they imagine.
"Don't worry, we'll fabricate a new group identity to make your decisions for you."
Unlike the other identity groups, this one requires no genetic or cultural inheritance for membership. It's freely open to anyone who wants to ingest more calories than they burn. Overeat, blame society, and make society compensate you financially for whatever self-imposed hardships come your way.
"Weightism" really is the reductio ad absurdum of the whole identity-politics grievance industry.
tjl said...
"Unlike the other identity groups, this one requires no genetic or cultural inheritance for membership."
In the world of identity politics, that is no limitation anyway, as encapsulated by the horrid term "self-define." If you "self-define" as disabled, that will suffice; if you desire intercourse with people of the same sex, that will also suffice to get you into the LGB club, and don't even get me started on what has heretofore been the apogee of volitional identity politics, "transsexuals." I remember several years ago, there was a minor fuss over the President-elect of a Disabled Students Society, because he had no readily-apparent disability, and the most he was willing to say that he "self-defined" as disabled. For all anyone knew, his disability was, you know, blue balls or whatever, but nobody wanted to be so insensitive as to break the taboo of actually asking him what his disability was. Farcical, I think is the word.
Identity politics doesn't care about whether you should identify, it's only concerned that you do identify yourself in terms of an identity.
They already have a department of fat studies. It is called bariatric medicine. They would be pleased to do a stomach stapling for those who are in need.
Damn the postings are "slim" here compared to the underpants crowd.
Wonder if that says something about the Althouse crowd?
"they want a department devoted to them."
Any self-respecting campus has a well-equipped fitness center. Problem solved.
Nahanni said...
"It seems that some here think that everyone is naturally inclined to be the same body type as the current versions of "Hollywood barbie bimbo" or "Hollywood male bimbo" body type. .. If Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Jane Mansfield were in their prime today all of you would be calling them fat."
That remark is patently absurd in light of comments by regular Althausians in this post's comment section.
I don't think that anyone has any duty to be a regular reader in order to comment at a blog, but I do think that it's out of order (completely insane, in fact) to take gratuitous swipes at the commenters and proprietor of a blog if you're either a first-time visitor or so utterly unaware of previous writings as to be the functional equivalent of a first-time visitor. You see the same thing in Greenwald's sock puppets when he comes here to take swipes at Ann - it's just ludicrous. You can criticize ideas at first showing, but to make rash generalizations about particular commenters? That's pushing it.
"It seems that some here think that everyone is naturally inclined to be the same body type as the current versions of "Hollywood barbie bimbo" or "Hollywood male bimbo" body type. I can assure you that is not the case and to state that anyone and everyone who does not conform to that needs "compulsory gym memberships" show a typical arrogant ignorance on so many peoples parts."
Guess what? I'm carrying about 25 pounds more than I should, and have always struggled a bit with my weight, because I like to eat. I agree with the comments here.
Do you what this is about? This isn't about people that are a little plump. This is about people who are 5'2" and weigh 300 pounds and up.
I am not at all surprised that there is overlap between "fat studies" and lesbian studies. The stereotype of obese lesbians, like some other stereotypes, has some basis in reality. Nor is this surprising; women who have been sexually abused (as lesbians disproprtionately were) often look for ways to to drive men away--a message that says, "I'm not interested in sex with you. Go away." For some of the sexual abuse victims that I know, the way to convey this message is to eat to a level that is frightening to behold.
I can understand this as a reaction. But building an entire academic field around a need for therapy (as a number of the identity group studies programs have historically been) is a terrible mistake.
Ann, of course, zoned right in on the tell of the article. There isn't really clamor for actual fat studies. These are generally fat lesbians who see weight as a facet of their queerness. They are antiessentializing their lesbian-ness into the intersection of weight and sexual-orientation. In other words, this isn't a new field of study: it is proof that academic lesbians are growing in their power on university campuses. Where before they had only queer studies, now they have queer studies and fat studies, too.
I can understand Women's Studies as an interdisciplinary umbrella encompassing a variety of topics or Critical Race Theory doing the same (especially if we're talking about examining colonial history), but is "What Irks Fat Lesbians" really an academic topic? As one who disdains fragmentalism and loves to lampoon it, I must say that this might produce sanguine anti-P.C. local truths. I wonder what will happen when the first fat lesbian writes the groundbreaking radical polemic, "Am I a Lesbian because I am Fat?"
Hmm. Do you think if I tried to get a Biology course cross-listed, they would go for it? I'd teach about fat and carbohydrate metabolism, how one gets fat, how one stays fat, the health consequences of being fat, and how one stops being fat. For the "gendered" angle, I'd talk about scientific evidence that men and women metabolize and store fat differently, and how the health consequences of being fat are different for men and women (in both cases, very very bad, just differently bad).
I'd also talk about the recent evidence that the things that make you fat also prevent optimal mental function. But I'm guessing that would be lost on most Fat Studies majors.
Then, I would ask one of my colleagues in the school of public health to teach a course about health care policy in the age of obesity, when 10-friggin-year old kids get type II diabetes. For kicks, I'd have her trow in a little statistical projection that was recently published that finds the silver lining in all of this, namely that with obesity-related comorbidity pushing life-expectancy down into the fifties, we man not have to worry about fixing Social Security. It'll suck for Medicare, though.
Do ya think they'll cross-list our classes? If they do, I'll give them some Krispy Kremes.
Am I just nuts, or do most of these "studies" schticks have a genuinely meaningful subset (Lardass Studies excepted) that has a legitimate place in the history department?
That sounds like a reasonable test of what to keep and what to get rid of: Anything that's already being done over in History, let the historians (who come in all colors, genders, and sizes, last I checked) keep right on doing it. As for the rest? Get a real job. There are openings in the exciting field of rodent control! Learn to Drive the Big Rigs! There are burgers to be flipped! 'Tis not to late to seek a newer world! Go study your fat on your own nickel, Porky.
Not that I'm holding my breath.
Robert Bucholz, a history professor at Loyola University, in Chicago, has spent years trying to figure out why Queen Anne, the British monarch who reigned from 1702 to 1714, has gotten so little attention. Britain prospered under her guardianship yet, "few people even think about her," he said. Finally, he figured out why: She was fat.
So was Queen Victoria. And Henry VIII. Those two much-neglected monarchs.
Where do find these morons? And where does the NYT find journalists so breathtakingly ignorant that they've never seen a picture of V.R. or H.VIII? Or so abysmally stupid that they can fail to make the connection?
Anything that's already being done over in History
That's a bad test. The "Studies" programs are usually interdisciplinary and include History amongst other disciplines, e.g., Sociology, Literary Theory, and Political Science. I'm talking, say, Martha Nussbaum, not Andrea Dworkin.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fatness
Or Bureau Fatness, Alcohol and Tobacco a/k/a Bureau of FAT
What fat activists need is not funding for new academic departments, but compulsory gym memberships. A daily two-hour workout would do wonders for those issues of social oppression.
Gosh, really? If they only worked out a bit more, no one would be fat?
The hostility, ignorance and pure viciousness of the comments here seems to make it clear that there is something worth studying here, even if not a whole department, but certainly in terms of why body size is assigned a moral weight in this culture as well.
The humanities have extracted all the raw material possible out of victimology, chewed it up and spit it out. I guess fatism is all that's left.
Can't believe no one got the correct bureau acronym yet.
The Bureau of Fatness, Alcohol, and Tobacco (BFAT)
"If they only worked out a bit more, no one would be fat."
If they only worked out a bit more, and ate a whole lot less.
Adam thinks the comments here, and apparently mine in particular, are
"hostile, ignorant and vicious."
Adam is offended by suggestions that fat people should actually do some work on themselves that will eliminate their social problems. Evidently he would prefer that fat people should waste time and energy on grievance-based studies that won't lead to real careers in the real world. Deprived of gainful employment, the fat-studies graduates will have lots of time on their hands to amplify their sense of grievance. How does this benefit them or society?
Adam is offended by suggestions that fat people should actually do some work on themselves that will eliminate their social problems.
No. I'm offended by the simplistic analysis here, which is below even blog-level. Such as taking my statement that "there is something worth studying here, even if not a whole department" and turning it into "he would prefer that fat people should waste time and energy on grievance-based studies".
Actually, you're the one in need to taking such a course. Why such hostility?
Doesn't sitting around studying only contribute to the problem?
Imagine someone svelte trying to take a class in fat studies. Could they even get a C?
Maybe so, if they started to bulk up!
What if you went in all fat and then became svelte.
Would the fat profs let you through?
Would you have to write a fat dissertation or would a slim but weighty one do?
Don't know if they still do this, but NAAFA (The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) once offered a scholarship to fat high school seniors willing to express pride at their status. Of course, lacking self-control myself, I couldn't help asking them for guidelines on who qualified as fat. Specifically, on what basis could they exclude anorexics, who only think they're fat?
I'm Anna Kirkland, the Michigan professor quoted in the article, and I invite anyone here to look up my faculty website and read my work. All my syllabi are also posted showing how I treat fat issues in the classroom. Posting snarky comments here is amusing, but actually finding out what we're doing is always an option.
Professor, why not post a link?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7eakirklan/index.htm
What a strong (however frightening) illustration of your field's necessity, Dr Althouse! I'm sure you have already thought of multiplying such blogs in order to gather a lot more of this type of prejudice (and often hate)-filled material for your research!
Politics, ethics, the body and its "discipline", gender, race, class - enough involved here, by those who stigmatize, to justify your studies! BRAVO!!
Anni: Your course, which is a much more general course, looks interesting. I think discrimination against the fat is a fair subject within a larger subject like employment discrimination. My problem is about the demand for a special "fat studies" program and the university caving to such demands on grounds other than the value of the scholarship.
No one in the article asserted anything like "give us our own department on grounds other than the strength of the scholarship." No one even says fat studies should be a department. Ellin (the reporter) calls it an academic discipline in her own prose and of course the NYT dressed up the piece to make it more exciting. Judging by the panic and derision here, those buttons were easily pushed and reflected a strategy for marketing one's newspaper that's not hard to discern. The article actually reflects a small but growing interest in the academy in a significant social phenomenon in contemporary society. Like any cluster of scholars, there are some who come to the area from personal experience and some who don't (although the comments here on this blog offer a little taste of fat hatred for those of us who aren't read as fat in person but are assumed to be here). Again, and without speaking for anyone else named in the article, I'd just ask for calm consideration of the questions being asked and a little benefit of the doubt that maybe something interesting is going on. If this is just a fleeting cultural moment, fine. But if over time we find that analyzing fat from interdisciplinary perspectives provides new insights and begins to take on the qualities of a discipline or a sub-discipline (whatever those might be), then I'd be happy to call it a discipline. I have no idea what might happen, but for now I'm seeing a fascinating site of inquiry.
Hello.
I am not a regular participant here.
I am the author of FAT!SO?, a book based on the mid-90s 'zine of the same name that I created. I'm also a board member of NAAFA. I give weight diversity talks nationally. And I'm frequently asked to comment on anti-fat prejudice in the media.
When I give talks, I invite audiences to brainstorm all of the concepts our society teaches us to attach to the words, "fat" and "thin."
For the word "fat," people suggest...
- stupid, smelly, lazy, ugly, out-of-control, unhealthy, unsuccessful, asexual/oversexed, gluttonous, unfashionably dressed, sexually undesirable, poor, and, of course, the 5 Official Fat Animals: cow, whale, hippo, pig, elephant
For the word "thin," people suggest...
- smart, active, healthy, successful, disciplined, restrained eating, fashionable, sexual, sexually desirable, rich, popular
Stereotypes about fat are not innovative. They're the same dehumanizing concepts that have been applied to people in numerous outsider groups. It's interesting to see such stereotypes repeated here as fact.
Fat people routinely encounter discrimination in employment, education, housing, public accommodations, child custody, access to health insurance and quality medical care. In most jurisdictions, we have little or no legal recourse.
The New York Times chose not to include mention of an important field in the sciences called Health At Every Size, which is allied with fat studies. I suggest this article from JADA as a good introduction to the radical notion that fat people just might not all be self-destructive, denial-driven gluttons...
http://www.adajournal.org/article/PIIS0002822305003226/abstract
I appreciate people's comments here that fat studies scholarship is unnecessary. I certainly wish it weren't.
Ann, I came across this post and comments while researching the topic of weight discrination in the workplace.
What I love about your blog and why I keep coming back, is the educational way you write, which is often thought-provoking and instructional. Secondly, that you draw people like "Anni" and others from a news article, to your site, is a good thing, and very educational also. I'm glad women feel comfortable about showing up.
Thanks!
More food for thought:
Will the chair of the department of Fat Studies be the Fattest? Will thin people be discriminated against? What will be the politics of Fat faculty in Fat Studies in terms of American foreign policy towards Third World Countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia, that count most of skinny and starving people?
This is an extremely important topic given today's world politics and the huge problem of terror. Fat people do not engage in terror? I All terrorists are thin. It is a simple fact. I would defy anyone to find a fat terrorist or a terrorist with a fat body. It simply does not exist.
Maybe the solution for the war on terror is to overfeed the population of the earth!
Fat studies? sound so interesting so you mean it study about all third sex? anyway you know that mensusa.com offer discount and free shipping in all $99 above dress boot
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