![]() The thing is, though, fat jokes aren’t funny they’re unoriginal, outdated, and hurtful. There’s one in every sitcom, in every show, every film, no matter the genre. And once you do notice them, you just can’t stop. ![]() I am a Black woman, I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself.Fat jokes are everywhere, but you don’t really notice them…until you do. She places her Black identity before fatness. Her self-described “brand” is Black girl liberation. Lizzo’s embodiment as a self-loving and self-empowered Black, fat woman offers a radical response to such histories. Academics have also worked to situate Lizzo’s message of self-love and the consistent sexualising of her own body against a history in Western (white) society of treating Black, fat bodies as spectacle: paraded, made abject and shamed. Sabrina Strings in her book Fearing the Black Body traces the racist legacies of fat-phobia and its emergence with the rise of global slave trades during the Enlightenment Era. When discussing Lizzo, it is vital we acknowledge her identity as a Black, fat woman. It’s a sliding scale made even more complex by factors such as gender.įor instance, the language existing around fat men is typically less vitriolic than what fat women experience, for example, phrases like “big guy” or “big man”. We have the added complication that fatness, in many ways, is in the eye of the beholder: conceptions of fatness tend to be individually, socially and culturally shaped. There are many people who avoid the term given it’s continuing use in shaming others, including themselves. It should not, however, suggest all larger-sized people now prefer to be described as fat. Why the body positivity movement risks turning toxic Lizzo encourages it, saying, “I don’t need your positivity or your negativity. Such an approach has encouraged diet companies and major apparel brands to embrace size inclusive language, so that fat discrimination and oppression is, in turn, rendered invisible in surrounding discourse.Ī recent turn towards body neutrality, which neither promotes a positive nor negative spin on body size, has grown in popularity. Critics demonstrate how body positivity centres white, “mid-size” women, who simply demand a seat at the table of acceptance, while amplifying a toxic positivity towards their bodies. For years fat activists have been drawing attention to the assimilationist nature of body positivity and its toxic and exclusionary mechanisms. ![]() Lizzo has joined a procession of voices in calling out the cooption of fat-positive language by the body positivity movement. No justifications, excuses or box-ticking: the art of a successful celebrity apology In adopting fat as a lead subject descriptor and as a term to self-identify, activists and scholars have argued it is a biological term and thus neutral – it’s stating a fact. The rise of the Health at Every Size movement is another. The (re)positioning of the BMI scale as an antiquated and fraught system to determine “obesity” is one example. They do so to push the conversation in new directions and to break down long-existing negative frameworks that inform our understanding of, and feelings towards, fatness. Fat studies has since emerged as an interdisciplinary field that documents and theorises the work of fat activists.įat activists seek to destabilise harmful assumptions of morality and willpower (or a lack thereof), as well as the punitive, shame-based “health” messages that exist around bigger bodies. It exposed the oppressive structures contributing to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of fat people. The fat activist movement emerged in the United States in the 1970s, and includes early figures such as Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran. ![]() Lizzo’s reclamation of the word is rooted in a queer-feminist led and disability-related activist movement: fat activism. So, why the term fat? And should you now be using it to describe bigger bodies like Lizzo’s? The word fat stands out among these descriptors since we typically employ it as a pejorative, a term intended to bring shame to the person on the other end of it. She also uses descriptors such as big, thick and juicy. Those familiar with Lizzo may have heard her using the term “fat” to describe her body.
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