New open access Fattylympics chapter queers public health
I'm delighted to announce that a chapter I co-authored with Bethan Evans is now available to download for free!Reframing Fatness: Critiquing 'Obesity' is a piece in The Edinburgh Companion to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #18: Off Our Backs letters page
Off Our Backs was a radical feminist newspaper from the US that ran from 1970-2008 in various forms and was collectively produced. Some people get Off Our Backs mixed up with On Our Backs, a queer sex...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Watch the 1979 Fat Underground video
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about what it was like seeing the Fat Underground video.A generous reader of this blog, who may or may not wish to be named, shared a digitised copy of the video with me....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #19: Stein and Freespirit
During the research process for my book I would occasionally find something in the archive that looked unassuming but said so much more. This poster for a reading by Judith Stein and Judy Freespirit,...
View ArticleI'm still fat, I'm still dancing, things are happening
It's nearly three years since I went to see Project O dance a piece called O. This sparked a chain of events that has included me becoming a dancer. I always did dance, at clubs and around my flat, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #20: The Fatluck
I haven't had much energy to write and post lately, apologies. But what I do have is this, a beautiful hand-drawn poster for a get-together in Boston in the early 1980s.I found this poster in Judy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Killjoy an Obesity display one #BodySpectacular at a time
My friend E puts on events and curates things, as is the modern way. Earlier this year she asked if I would like to talk about my book at something she was involved with at the Wellcome Collection in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Report: Fat, Disability, SWAGGA, DaDaFest
Breast wigs, gold mini-mini fingerless gloves,puce Air Force 1s, the essential partsof my SWAGGA costumeI'm surfacing from an intense few weeks rehearsing for and being at DaDaFest in Liverpool. For...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beat diet season by winning a copy of Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement
Welcome back to failed diet season, that deadly time of the year that keeps on returning like a rotten yo-yo. I see that W***** W******* are selling hard in the UK to busy mums and young black women,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #21: Spare Rib's Classifieds
There are few things I like more than a free online repository of independent radical feminist journals of yesteryear. I have been that woman crouched in a corner of a specialist library, going through...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #22: London Fat Women's Group
The London Fat Women's Group went through two phases. The first took place around 1987-1989, the second from 1992-1994 or so. Both groups were either based or made use of the resources at The Women's...
View ArticleRoots of fat activism #23: Rotunda Press
I've written a little about Rotunda elsewhere, but want to reiterate it here because it fits nicely in this recent flurry of posts about fat feminism in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #24: Fat Lip Reader's Theater
Still from Throwing Our Weight AroundWhen I started writing this post I was annoyed with myself for not knowing more about Fat Lip than I do. I found out about Fat Lip through Radiance magazine, more...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rethinking fitness and leisure centres
A foggy winter day at the lidoThis week was the first since the cold war that I thought getting nuked was a possibility. "How does one cope with radiation sickness?" I thought to myself. Things are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #25: Judy's Stuff
Judy Freespirit's t-shirtRegular readers of this blog will know that I hold Judy Freespirit's activism in high esteem. In 2010 I met her and visited her archives at the GLBT Historical Society in San...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #26: Elana Dykewomon
Elana Dykewomon's fat feminism is some of my favourite fat activism of the early movement. It is rooted in her life as a poet, writer and editor. She is a cultural worker, meaning that her creative...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #27: We Dance
We Dance poster from Deb Burgard's personal archiveLong-standing readers of this blog will know that I love to dance and that in recent years I have been finding my feet as a dancer. My work could not...
View ArticleRoots of fat activism #28: Stein and Lawrence
There are posts elsewhere on this blog that feature Judith Stein and Meridith Lawrence, key figures in the development of fat feminist activism. I just want to reiterate and include them here because...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #29: Susan Stinson's Scrapbooks
During the research period for my book I was lucky to spend time with the author Susan Stinson, who showed me some of her scrapbooks. As I write and reflect now, I keep coming back to the essential...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roots of fat activism #30: Fat Poets
Two collections of poetry stand out for me as classic fat feminist texts of the 1980s. These are The Fat Black Woman's Poems by Grace Nichols and The Fat Woman Measures Up by CM Donald. The former...
View Article
