How do we typically see fat, and how can thinking differently about it have emancipatory outcomes? Fady Shanouda of Carleton University’s Feminist Institute of Social Transformation introduces Fat Studies and their inextricable link to activism. Alert to the connection between living and other things, Fady unpacks his feminist new materialist approach, and explains what it means to say “I’m not fat in my house”, describing how our surroundings can liberate us or show bias. He also considers the harm caused by misconceptions of fat as simply “surplus”, “inanimate” or even “dead” material. How does such valuing get mapped onto whole bodies and lives? And what happens if, instead, we recognise fat as essential, pushing back against the idea that having a lower amount of body fat means somehow a more valuable life?

Plus: how has fat come to be seen as a matter for psychiatry? And what are the manifestations of the “fat tax” in a world where things are made with certain bodies in mind and costs imposed on others?

Featuring discussion on autoethnography in North America. Plus: celebration of TV drama “Shrill” and the gripping reality TV survival series “Alone”.

Guest: Fady Shanouda; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

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Episode Resources

By Fady Shanouda

• Fat Animacy (forthcoming book chapter)
• Fat and Mad Bodies: Under, Out of, and Beyond Control (chapter in Fat Studies in Canada)
• Disability Saves the World (podcast)

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Sugar Rush by Karen Throsby – Lucy Aphramor
• Fat Activist Podcasts
• Just my size? Our bodies, our waistbands, our triggered selves – Nina Sökefeld

Further resources

• “Fat Studies” – an Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society
• “Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect” – Mel Y. Chen
• “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain” – Margaret Price
• “Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction” – Tony E. Adams
• The “Pool” episode of the TV series “Shrill”
• The reality TV survival show “Alone”

More on the “Obesity Paradox”

• “The impact of obesity on the short-term and long-term outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention: the obesity paradox?” – Luis Gruberg, et al.
• “‘Obesity paradox’ misunderstands the biology of optimal weight throughout the life cycle” – J. B. Dixon, et al.

Read more about the work of Eli Clare on bodyminds and Hunter Ashleigh Shackleford.

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