Last post...for now

I am a Psychotherapist and Cultural Worker. I am Fat.

I started this blog in 2008, around the time that I started working on a PhD. I wanted a place where I could work out ideas and talk things through in a community setting. I knew that I couldn't rely on academia to provide me with that space. As an activist I was more interested in what was happening at grassroots level than what was fashionable in the ivory tower.

I am writing this in 2018, nearly ten years later, as I make preparations to take an indefinite pause. I am stopping because I need more breathing space in my life and, over the last six months, I've noticed I have less energy for blogging. Other people can take up the work if they wish, and can do it better than me. Like many people ten years ago, I was naïve about blogging on a corporate platform, and my feelings about internet surveillance, trolling and the institutional and professionalised appropriation of marginal voices online have since sharpened. I no longer want to provide content to Google or to make something that someone can cut and paste, make palatable, and pass off as their own.

Of continuing concern, too, is the shifting nature of what was once known as the Fatosphere, a network of blogs and fat activists. It is now harder to find radical voices talking online about fat than it ever was, despite a roar of background noise and what is called 'body positivity'. I am not alone in being very worried about a creeping conservatism in radical politics. Speaking publicly about complicated subjects can leave you open to terrible attacks. These things have affected what I have published here enormously and have influenced my decision to stop blogging so that I can have these conversations elsewhere.

Sometimes I have made mistakes with this blog. Some of my peers excelled in branding, monetising and generating social capital online through their blogging. I have failed at all of that. This blog has opened no doors for me, but it has given me a space to think and share thoughts publicly. I don't know what people have done with those thoughts but the pleasure for me is working out an idea and developing this over time.

Longevity in the movement is a rare and lovely thing. I can see how my thinking about fat has changed. I'm no longer a compliant student! An important turning point came in 2011 when I started to think seriously about what fat activism could look like, how it didn't have to replicate the mainstream, how it could be a lot weirder and freer. At the same time, I became a lot more engaged in research ethics and their application within activism. Since graduating, I have been less preoccupied with the debates of the day and more orientated towards fat activism as a product of cultural work, and lately what it has felt like to turn my doctoral thesis into a book and to become a dancer. Wave upon wave of interests, all being worked out here, diversions, tangents, space for everything.

There are over 350 posts on this blog which, for now, will exist as an archive suspended in a particular time and place. Have a poke around, I hope you enjoy what you find.

Social Cleansing and the End of the Obesity Epidemic

I had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with Cat Pausé recently whilst she was in London. She is one of the few fat activists currently engaged with building global networks and understanding what local fat activisms look like around the world.

During our conversation I made the naïve assumption that a developing international discourse around fat activism was the result of the powerful movements of fat feminist discourse. Well, isn't that a fanciful idea! The reality is more depressing. More people are getting into fat activism because it is a necessary survival tactic in the face of global obesity epidemicTM rhetoric established in 2000 by the World Health Organization.

As well as massively exacerbating pre-existing fatphobia, the WHO's take on obesity has been a Western diet industry sponsored project of market expansion and colonisation of places where fat was not regarded as much of a problem until the turn of the millennium. There is evidence aplenty to show that, although viewed as common sense, weight loss brings with it a plethora of health problems. The key word is iatrogenisis: illness caused by treatment. In this respect, the WHO has underwritten a worldwide public health calamity.

This week I had the pleasure of another conversation, this time with Laura Thomas. She told me that the WHO had published a report about 'Weight Bias' and we talked extensively about the gentrification of professional language around fat.

Now, I have been working on other things and have not been keeping on top of fat in the news as I may have done in the past. I may be a little bit late to the party, but I have some things to say.

The WHO has published a paper suggesting that resilience is the appropriate response for fat people suffering from the hatred engendered by the massive political problem created by the WHO themselves. Resilience, now there's a neoliberal buzzword. Let's translate, it means: too bad, suck it up.

I'm assuming that I am supposed to be pleased and grateful that the WHO recognises that fat people are often treated poorly. There is a crumb of comfort that this paper could lead to policy change, it would be nice not to be discriminated against when I am trying to access basic health services. It shows that the WHO obesity policy is in crisis and could herald the end of fat panic, they have published a paper that seems to contradict their earlier position. But where is the apology? Where is the restitution and accountability? It also reads very much like business as usual.

Weight Bias typifies the process in the world of fat where oppressors become pseudo-helpers. They do this through appropriation of fat activist concepts and language, and of renaming ideas so that they are tidier, less raw (an example of this is the pressure from thin academics to rename Fat Studies 'Critical Weight Studies' which has led to academic research that has no connection with canonical Fat Studies literature). This has the effect of making the originators of those concepts invisible, it is an act of social cleansing. Indeed, I'm not surprised to see Rebecca Puhl of Yale's Rudd Center in the WHO report, longstanding readers of this blog will remember this nonsense she pulled back in 2011.

The act of appropriating fat activism is a denial of the essential maxim for the liberation of all beings: nothing about us without us. The WHO has failed to recognise and respect fat expertise. It reproduces the idea that fat people can only ever be passive and grateful service users, not in the driving seat of our own lives. It is patronising, arrogant, about maintaining thin privilege, power and status.

Weight bias and obesity stigma: considerations for the WHO European Region (2017)

Rest in Power, Blunderwoman

Bella Emberg's death last week gave me pause to think about Blunderwoman, one of the few fat characters I encountered on TV when I was growing up in the UK in the 1980s.

Blunderwoman was the sidekick to Russ Abbott's Cooperman. Abbott, terminally unfunny and over-exposed, created an absurd superhero based on actual comic genius Tommy Cooper. Abbott wrote Blunderwoman for Emberg and she upstaged him every time. One of the most important laws of the universe is that an older fat woman in a sequinned superhero outfit will always outshine anything within a significant radius. The comedy was crude and crass, he gave her an insulting character and she made it her own through sheer force of performance talent and charisma.

Blunderwoman is ridiculous, stupid, clumsy and can't do anything right. As a young fat woman I cringed my way through it, dreading the inevitable playground names that followed each broadcast. Back then, Blunderwoman was my nemesis. I wanted to be treated as fully human and the stereotyping she represented made that impossible.

But something has happened in the intervening years because today I think of Blunderwoman fondly. She is an icon in a cultural desert when it comes to depicting fat women, especially those of us who are older. Yes, she follows the tradition of fat people as butts of the joke, but her wrongness is what makes her so right. There are disappointingly predictable comments about political correctness in this hack piece from last year cashing-in on the release of the Wonder Woman reboot, 'The first time I put the costume on my boobs fell out!' Bella Emberg relives her days as comedy superhero Blunderwoman. But let her cheek and irreverence be a lesson for us all. Blunderwoman, there she is, a far superior role model to Wonder Woman herself.

Roots of fat activism #32: Political Shifts in the 1990s

A classic spread from the second Pretty Big catalogue
198?/199? That's Audrey with the trombone

I've written here that 1989 was a big year for fat activism in the UK, with The London Fat Women's Group gaining a lot of visibility and their successful conference. I've heard it said that the values of one decade don't really kick in until much later. Although the 1980s is often associated, in the West at least, with the spread of neoliberalism through Thatcher and Reagan, fat feminism of that period was pretty radical and reflected lesbian feminist ethics, community and culture. It wasn't until the 1990s that that spirit of early fat feminism was pushed aside in fat activism and the movement took a turn towards conservatism.

This turn was, intentional or not, an attempt to appeal to an idea of what mainstream women wanted and needed. Feminism was seen as alienating, so some of the more prominent proponents and interventions at the time distanced themselves from it even as they benefitted directly from the earlier work of fat lesbians.

This went as far as erasure. For example Sue Dyson quoted the fat dykes statement directly in her book. This was a series of statements developed at the Fat Women's Conference, and which may have had roots in earlier fat feminist community activism (I saw a version of it in Judy Freespirit's archives). Yes Dyson never mentions this, the words 'fat dyke' have been removed.

There was also a shift in language at this time. Fat was seen as too abrasive, so euphemisms like 'size,' 'large,' 'big' and so on became commonplace. In my view this pandered to people's fears about fat and marginalised those of us who use the word freely to describe ourselves.

Shelly Bovey's work rightly attacked what sometimes came across as banality in cheerleading fat activism but my feeling is that she ended up universalising her own pain in being fat and foreclosed a possibility of finding power and strength in fatness. She produced a series of books that gradually eroded a message of fat feminist liberation: first shifting her language to a more euphemistic set of terms and then publishing a weight loss book with the feminist publisher who had published my own Fat & Proud. I have found the latter enlightening regarding the labour involved in maintaining weight loss, but I still regard it as a sad conclusion to a trilogy that was so promising when it began. Her books seem to exemplify the petering out of the earlier ideas and energy which, perhaps, could not be sustained by everybody.

Another shift occurred through the rise of consumerism and the emergence of charismatic leadership, which was less collective in its approach to community-building. Pretty Big magazine is a good example of this shift. It was produced independently by Audrey Winkler, a really dynamic community-minded ex-magistrate and entrepreneur from the Yorkshire Dales. She'd been involved with the knitwear industry for a while and was interested in selling large-sized clothes. Captivating and persuasive, with pink hair, she found that her shop was developing a community and so she started publishing the magazine. Oh yes, and it was through this magazine that I found myself in a hotel in Troon one day, having made it to the final of the Pretty Big modelling competition! Ack, what happened to those pictures?!

Pretty Big Aims & Intentions

Pretty Big
...acts as a club for all women who are size 16+
...promotes a positive self-image for all bigger women
...believes being big is not a sin and should not be a handicap
...speaks out on behalf of bigger women everywhere
...concentrates on healthy living
...shows "dieting" the door
...includes profiles of successful big women
...seeks out information on large sizes fashion and who is making them
...conducts shopping surveys and tells you who stocks larger sizes
...presents the PRETTY BIG SHOPS AWARD to shops nominated by readers for outstanding service to bigger women
...acts as a forum where you can air your views, share your thoughts, or ask for help and advice
...responds sympathetically to your problems

Pretty Big was pretty great and reflected the energy and tenacity of its owner, but it was a world away from the earlier fat feminisms and activisms that had laid the groundwork for such an endeavour. What continues to sit uneasily with me is the reinvention that took place in fat activism, one which rather arrogantly assumed that little of value had come before, that the movement's founders could never have been fat feminist lesbians, and that each new intervention was an improvement on the last. There was a troubling amnesia in place which obscured the radical work that had happened previously. This remains a problem today.

Bovey, S. (1989) Being Fat is Not a Sin, London: Pandora

Bovey, S. (1994) The Forbidden Body: why being fat is not a sin, London: Pandora.

Bovey, S. (2001) What Have You Got to Lose? The Great Weight Debate and How to Diet Successfully, London: The Women's Press.

Dyson, S. (1991) A weight off your mind: how to stop worrying about your body size, London: Sheldon Press.

Roots of fat activism #31: Let It All Hang Out

In recent weeks Virgie Tovar reminded me of Let It All Hang Out, a fat dyke gathering which took place in San Francisco in 1989, 1990 and 1991.

I'm wondering if these parties sprang from the Robust and Rowdy potluck dances that took place in Oakland around 1987 or so, perhaps commenters can clarify. Anyway, Robust and Rowdy, Let It All Hang Out, what excellent sentiments! I understand that LIAHO was part of the annual Pride parade at that time but it also reminds me of the spirit of the Fat-In.

I'm including here a fantastic flyer that I found in Judy Freespirit's archive, and an exuberant photo from Sinister Wisdom #49. LIAHO certainly looked like the place to be!

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 appeared in 1884 and had a good number of reprints, the latter in 1986. I wonder if both books went on to influence a collective of US fat poets who produced an anthology in 2009, referenced below.

My preference of the two volumes has tended to be towards CM Donald's work. The pieces are angry, vulnerable, piss-taking, spiky, and I like that a lot. I identify with the speaker where they are written in the first person. I understand that this is likely because she is a white dyke like me.

When I first read The Fat Black Woman's Poems I was put off by an earlier cover to that pictured here, and what to me then looked like a cutesy rendering of fat black embodiment. One stanza, often quoted when people referenced the collection, reinforced this view of black women's fatness:

Fat is a darling
A dumpling
A squeeze
Fat is cuddles
Up a baby's sleeve

Contrast this with CM Donald's work:

    To those women
Who find me cuddly
Who like fat women
And want to hug them all;

I am not your mother
Your baby or your shelter
And I am not your blasted teddy bear

The fat black woman of Grace Nichols' poems is powerful, irreverent and sassy and I couldn't see through the strong black woman stereotype to enjoy the poetry at that time. I felt that the figure of a fat black woman who is larger than life let everyone off the hook about fatphobia, racism and sexism. I wondered if this was about the poets' respective standpoints in relation to fat, were they fat? Did this affect what they wrote? I still don't know.

But revisiting them both now, my feelings have changed. I still adore CM Donald's work and often wonder what happened to her. I have grown to appreciate The Fat Black Woman's Poems for the richness of their imagery, their sexuality, their rendering of fat black women who are so often made invisible in fat activism. Perhaps back in the day they were reduced to a stereotype because many white readers like me could not understand the world that the poet was describing. When I return to them now, I see that they are subtle pieces and that politics, death, survival, rebirth, nature and resistance are also very present. They are the work of a wonderful poet.

Barron, K., Kaplan, A. S., Makris, C., Owen, L. J. and Zellman, F. (2009) Fat Poets Speak: Voices of The Fat Poets Society, Nashville TN: Pearlsong Press.

Donald, C. M. (1986) The fat woman measures up, Charlottetown, P.E.I: Ragweed.

Nichols, G. (1984) The Fat Black Woman's Poems, London: Virago.

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 activist acts of keeping, remembering, generating and sharing personal archives. I demonstrate in my research that fat activism is often an activism of conversation, talking and sharing stories about activist ephemera is a very powerful act.

Here are two images from her scrapbooks, one referencing a Fat Dykes Extravaganza, which sounds really fab, where Susan read; the other a song by Helen Weber called 'Put That Diet Cola Down'.

susanstinson.net

Roots 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 they deserve a lot more attention from those interested in fat activist cultures and histories.

Fat lesbian feminists share archive recordings

Roots of fat activism #19: Stein and Freespirit

Roots of fat activism #20: The Fatluck

Roots of fat activism #27: We Dance

We Dance poster from Deb Burgard's personal archive

Long-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 have been possible without the fat dancers who came before me. I am especially indebted to Deb Burgard, who started We Dance in the Bay Area in 1983.

Deb Burgard, nothing short of a powerhouse in fat activism, a founding presence in Health At Every Size, had been studying West African dance in Cambridge Massachusetts. In the early 1980s there were the beginnings of fat-friendly fitness proponents and classes, including Rozella Canty Letsome, who was also teaching around then, and the fat swim. The time was ripe for some moving and shaking.

Deb started We Dance, a fat feminist community dance class that ran for six years. She'd been inspired by the African-American women she'd been dancing with, where being fat was not a hindrance to dancing well or expressively. We Dance was not a weight loss space. Deb told me that the class became a meeting of different communities: lesbian, fat, local and middle class Oakland women.

Burgard went on to co-author Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide for Large Women with Pat Lyons. This was the book of the class, with We Dance regulars appearing in the photos and illustrations. Warm, welcoming, full of thoughtful advice and encouragement, intersectional and accessible, the book remains the gold standard for fat fitness resources. My favourite image continues to be "Carol Squires dazzles her We Dance friends" on page 34, an extraordinary picture of a fat woman gleefully doing the splits. How I longed to know these people and dance along with them! (Ok, full disclosure, eventually I did).

Lyons, P. and Burgard, D. (1990) Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide for Large Women, Authors Guild Backinprint.com ed., Palo Alto, CA: Bull Publishing Company.

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 life is a political act, a reflection of her community, perhaps a gift of service. Her writing explores intersections of class, race, disability and lesbian sensibility. Like other powerful early fat feminists she is Jewish, and that is a significant part of the frame.

There are a couple of pieces that I think are particularly important for those who are interested in fat feminist activism, queer fat feminism and the fat activism that emerged from radical lesbian feminism.

I came across Dykewomon's essay 'Traveling Fat' in Christian McEwen and Sue O'Sullivan's anthology Out The Other Side, published in 1988. It had already been published in Shadow on a Tightrope but it would be a few years until I got to read that book. I didn't expect to read about fat in a lesbian anthology, the fact that it was there was really exciting. Until then, the only accounts I'd read that tried to make sense of fat women's bodies were pathologising psychoanalytically-informed texts, not at all helpful. Traveling Fat charts Dykewomon's encounters with feminism and fat and they are frequently painful. Although the world she was writing about was nothing like my own at the time (the idea of a national lesbian infrastructure seemed utopian beyond belief to me) her struggles with legitimacy and visibility in feminist community were all too relatable. The t-shirts still don't fit me and bodies like mine or bigger. The essay remains a rich snapshot of an era.

Dykewomon published 'the real fat womon poems' in Sinister Wisdom #33 in 1987, around the time that she became editor of the journal. During her seven years of service she ensured that fat became part of the fabric of lesbian feminist politics and culture. It is really gratifying to see fat there in the journal, in bios, in small ads as well as in poems and articles. 'the real fat womon poems' cover eleven epic sections and takes in intersectionality, imperialism, consumerism as well as quiet moments of realisation, irreverence and longing. It's a monumental piece of work that offers something new on each reading.

Fat is present throughout Dykewomon's writing, often as a fact of life, a part of community. It's a very un-flashy approach to fat cultural activism but this tactic makes fat available, it can be talked about, explored. Dykewomon's writing gives me confidence to think about fat as I live and see it around me.

References

Interview: Elana Dykewomon

Dykewomon, E. (1983) 'Travelling Fat' in Schoenfielder, L. and Wieser, B., eds., Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, Iowa City: Aunt Lute, 144-154.
Dykewomon, E. (1988) 'Traveling Fat' in McEwen, C. and O'Sullivan, S., eds., Out the Other Side: Contemporary Lesbian Writing, London: Virago, 21-29.
Dykewomon, E. (1987) 'the real fat womon poems', Sinister Wisdom, 33, 85-93.

You can download archived copies of Sinister Wisdom at: http://sinisterwisdom.org/archive

Roots of fat activism #25: Judy's Stuff

Judy Freespirit's t-shirt

Regular 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 Francisco, pivotal experiences in my own thinking about fat activism. I then went on to explore this in my most recent book.

I just wanted to give these holdings some space in their own right and encourage anyone who has the means to go and check them out. So here is the GLBT Historical Society's Finding Aid of the Judy Freespirit Papers 1971–2010, basically a list of all the things they have. It runs to 25 pages and is compelling as an object in its own right.

I bang on about fat activism and archiving quite a bit. Freespirit's archive shows that saving and donating ephemeral material can create an amazingly rich resource for researchers, activists, or anyone really. If you are the kind of person who does stuff, think seriously about leaving a trail behind you, like Judy, for people of the future to use and enjoy.

Rethinking fitness and leisure centres

A foggy winter day at the lido

This 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 very bad. I believe that it is my adult duty to stare into the abyss and do what I can to stop anyone pushing the button, but I also need respite. I have been relishing mornings at a lido in south London where the water is heated and the surrounding trees in full blossom. There aren't many places in the city where you can immerse yourself in soothing water and stare at the clouds.

On Wednesday my peace was shattered by an outdoor spin class, surely one of the most miserable things you can do in the name of leisure, which led me to wonder why sports facilities and centres in the UK are a pile of cak, and needlessly so. I will share these thoughts with you.

Leisure centres in the UK are run by jocks with no sense of aesthetics. I plan holidays around pools I would like to visit on the continent. Müller'sches Volksbad in Munich, Therme Vals in Switzerland, Holthusenbad in Hamburg and pretty much all the pools in Budapest have found me padding around in my swimmers. They boast stunning architecture, they have a sense of place about them, they're unique and lovely to visit, usually the highlight of a trip. They often have a groovy café attached, where you can get well-made food, even a glass of wine or a brandy. At central European pools you can have a dip and a game of chess. But in the UK the architecture is usually so-so at best, older pools are rarely maintained and usually close in a state of disrepair, there seems to be no incentive to build or preserve something remarkable. Inside it might be a bit dirty and smelly, the changing area is uncomfortable, it's expensive and penalises the casual user because the place is run on a business model of hard-selling memberships, the atmosphere is banal. My local Morrisons can get it together to play Joy Division as I wander the aisles, yet a typical leisure centre soundtrack consists of bleak high BPM generic M People-sounding remixes.

At many pools your swimming choices are limited to lanes or family sessions. The lanes are about training to win, sport and its attendant nationalism and citizenship, or increasing one's athleticism. The family sessions are alienating to those of us who are not a family with kids. If you are an adult by yourself there is little space for social swimming, swimming expressively, mucking about, exploring, playing, bobbing or doing any kind of unorthodox movement that being in water enables you to do. You'll find that you're subject to the lifeguard's angry whistle if you try.

The focus is on athleticism not wellness, fun or sensuality. I don't care about swimming a fast length, I just want to feel good in my body. At Bartholomäus-Therme in Hamburg I went to a candlelight session with classical music and pool noodles. Underwater jets were switched on that swirled the group of mostly old people (they'd just had a water aerobics session) round and round, so peaceful, watching our reflections in the high mirrored ceiling for an hour or so. But in the UK shit like this is not allowed, to the extent that people can't handle it when it is allowed. I went to Thermae Bath Spa last week and was amazed by the awkward, stiff people horrified by their own public near-nakedness, unable to relax in the warm water, behaving as though they were at a suburban cocktail party with strangers.

Sports and leisure centres in the UK remain places where compulsive exercising and body dysmorphia thrive. It's back to the jock quotient again, these people can get your heart rate up on a treadmill but they are not equipped to deal with those who hate and punish their own bodies through exercise. Sports and leisure centres in the UK are like a haven for misery with a grinning-winning Go For It! face plastered on top. It's not uncommon to find services advertised on the back of body shaming whereas such places could be at the forefront of breaking it down.

Which brings me to access. Being able to winch someone into a pool is all very well, but you don't see it in use very often. If you don't have a certain kind of body, if you are vulnerable within a culture that values those certain kinds of bodies, you will likely stay away. Why would you go to a place where you might get stared at or treated as inferior? This is not just about body types but also about making places accessible to people who are "unfit," a term I hate. I would never take the spin class I saw this week because I know I would be subtly sanctioned if I couldn't keep up or needed to stop. Could I even fit on one of those bikes? Session leaders say that it's fine to take a breather but no one ever takes them up on it. This keeps away people like me and the kind of people I like or consider community.

There is no political impetus to make anything different. Policymakers can chug on about "tackling the obesity epidemic" but it's all hot air or sanctioning. I dream of public services and centres that are open to all, prioritise wellness and joyful embodiment, collective feelings, imaginative possibilities. You can see fragments of this in projects like Open Barbers, a not for profit hair salon that welcomes people of all genders and sexualities. Why couldn't this community sensibility be extended further? What if a leisure centre was an arts project? Or run like a really fab nightclub? An autonomous centre for intergenerational oddballs? A political meeting place? What an experiment that would be! And likely profitable/self-sustaining. You could cordon off an area for the jocks, the wannabe Olympians, the normals and all that family-friendly stuff, they could still come too.

Roots of fat activism #24: Fat Lip Reader's Theater

Still from Throwing Our Weight Around

When 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 about that later. I rationalised that this group was active largely pre-internet, that knowing more about them at the time would have meant sending off for a video from the US and having the equipment to view it in the UK. At the time these resources were beyond me.

Then I found some notes for my PhD, later my book, hidden in a folder on my computer. Apparently I know more than I think I do! This knowledge came from a series of visits to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco in 2010, where I sifted through Judy Freespirit's collection, which is held there. During these visits I also sat and watched the Fat Lip video, Throwing Our Weight Around, a series of skits, monologues and poems.

A Reader's Theatre is a means of making theatre with few resources. Fat Lip Readers Theater was a theatre by and for fat women that used fat feminism to discuss everyday joys and hassles. Fat Lip is important because it shows how culture-building is essential to political activism, it is activism.

As I understand it, Fat Lip Reader's Theater had a relationship to a show or a dance group called Fat Chance, made or performed by Judy Freespirit, perhaps others too. Yes, my details are sketchy. They were active in Oakland around 1981 or 85, had a ten year anniversary show in 1991, and reformed in 2004 for a reunion show "after a seven year hiatus", according to Big Moves, with additional performances by some Big Moves dancers. Freespirit's papers state that Fat Lip was part of the Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective based at The San Francisco Women's Building. As well as Throwing Our Weight Around, they also released Nothing To Lose through Wolfe Video in 1989.

"Our 30 minute video includes the words and experiences of 16 fat, feisty women, speaking, acting and singing about being fat in America in the 80s. Scenes, dialogues, snappy answers to street taunts, poetry, song and more will provoke you to laughter, tears, and anger. Our message is fat positive and challenges the diet-obsessed, fat-hating culture we live in. We present it as an entertaining antidote to everyday life in America."

An early-internet listserv from 1995 describes Fat Lip as a group that toured the US and performed at lesbian and feminist gatherings. By this time they had a mission statement:

Questions from Fat Lip Workshop 1987

"Our mission is to end fat oppression and promote size acceptance through education and theatrical performance. We are a collective of fat women who present exciting, dynamic, theatrical performances about what it's really like to be a fat woman in today's society. We also offer educational workshops and in-service trainings for organization and community groups."

Other flyers and papers stated:

Fat Lip is "a collective of fourteen fat feisty women from the San Francisco Bay Area. We come together from varied backgrounds and are not afraid or ashamed of the way that we look or what we need to say."

"Our task is to say: 'Here we are. Deal with us. We are not going to hate ourselves if we get bigger and we're not going to like ourselves more if we get smaller. We like ourselves now. We are not going to put our lives on hold one minute longer.'"

The most significant documentation of Fat Lip in Freespirit's collection relates to Still Fat After All These Years!, their tenth anniversary show, performed at the Women's Building on 18 May 1991. A flyer gives some idea of what the night was like: there was non-alcoholic bar to benefit Making Waves (the fat swim); a dance after show; you could buy Fat Lip t-shirts; child care was available and the event was sign language interpreted, wheelchair accessible, with no scents or perfumes. There was a sliding scale for entrance and no one was turned away for lack of funds. The programme notes attest to a marathon evening of 54 acts and skits with an intermission and an MC! Nancy Thomas wrote this for the event:

F is For... by Nancy Thomas

F is for the fine, fat friends it gave me
A is for the audience applause
T is for the theatres we've played in
L is for loving women, which we are
I is for the images we're changing
P is for the politics we hold
Put them all together they spell FAT LIP
A group that's worth its weight in gold
And this year we are ten years old

Sadly Freespirit could not attend, she sent love and support in a note and added that because the Women's Building had been recently repainted "Some of us with environmental sensitivities will be here tonight in spirit only."

Photo by Cathy Cade

I don't know what happened to Fat Lip. There were attempts to expand and recruit new members, they were looking for "women who are somewhat familiar with the fat liberation concept, have a bit of ham in you, or want to develop new skills and confidence". They worked with a collective structure and decision-making by consensus. But the last paper in the box is a call for donations: "To put it bluntly, it has been a hand to mouth proposition". I suspect that behind the applause was a lot of hard graft and that as lives carried on something had to give. But the shows and videos were only part of what the group achieved, the women met without fail every week for over a decade, which suggests that Fat Lip was critical in establishing a fat feminist community and developing feminist analyses of fat oppression.

Roots 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 course I can't talk about Rotunda without also mentioning Shadow on a Tightrope.

Shadow on a Tightrope, the book that made me fat

Though it came and went, the idea of a fat feminist publishing house remains tantalising. Could it happen again?

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 Centre, at 4 Wild Court in Holborn. Sadly this no longer exists, though it should (have a peek at Wild Court now in the video A Walk Around Fat Activist London). Both phases of the group were explicitly feminist and intersectional, which is to say that participants had fat in common but their experiences of it varied according to other identities.

I'm not sure how the first group came into existence. From researching my book it would appear that somebody got hold of Shadow On A Tightrope and initiated some conversations amongst feminists in the UK. They published articles in Spare Rib and Trouble and Strife, created a BBC documentary (see my post Revisiting BBC Open Space: Fat Women Here To Stay) and organised a national conference at Wild Court in 1989. The latter involved generating national media exposure, which is how I got to hear from them. The conference created sparks, a publishing house, books, short-lived groups. The main group ended, I believe, because of burn-out and internal conflicts, but it has not been possible to corroborate this. I don't know much about who was in the group or what happened to those women.

In April 1992, Spare Rib published a small ad, placed by me:

I am a fat woman living in London and trying to organise a political and social group for other Fat women who may be feeling isolated. I am hoping that the group will be primarily celebratory and consciousness-raising (both for ourselves and the general public) but at this point the options are open! If you're interested, contact Charlotte at [address].

People did contact me and we started to meet. A group formed with some core members and others who came and went. We met monthly in the Rotunda at Wild Court and produced a newsletter called Fat News. I left in 1994 and the group folded but also created other sparks: an exhibition and a magazine.

Both groups experienced difficulties and are now really obscure. The generational divide is vast between these earlier fat feminisms and a discourse around fat activism that has moved towards consumerism and 'body positivity'. In scholarly literature, dominated by the US, the only historical fat activist organisations that matter enough to be documented usually reflect a North American cultural bias. It's as though these activists never existed. Not only that, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were other international, non-Anglophone, fat feminist groups that sprouted and then ended. Information about them is currently sketchy, but there must be people still alive who know and who have stories and material to share for the benefit of the movement.

See also: Fat Feminism, missing women and conversations unspoken

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 the dusty box files. It's lovely to touch and hold these artefacts in real life, but it's also a delight to browse them from home with a cuppa at your elbow, no opening hours or obscure rules to observe, and no dodgy photocopier.

The first 50 issues of Sinister Wisdom are available online, as are copies of Dyke, A Quarterly. Rainbow History Project has downloads of The Furies and I recall seeing a page of .pdfs for The Lesbian Tide recently but now, typically, can't find the link.

The more obscure and lesbian the journals the better as far as I am concerned because this is where you will find roots of fat feminism and activism that are not really documented elsewhere. There is plenty that is problematic about some of these feminisms and navigating these spaces is a complex undertaking but still worthwhile, in my opinion.

There are many radical queer, feminist and lesbian journals that I have not seen digitised or made available online, and their absence is a giant cultural loss. Square Peg, Quim, Gossip to name a few. There are so many more (check out this amazing wiki of lesbian periodicals to get a taste of bygone media). So it's great when collections are made available, as long as their makers consent, and I am fond of resources that are accessible in thought and ideas and which don't demand institutional log-ins or a knowledge of academic language and conventions.

In the UK there are online repositories of Trouble and Strife and Shocking Pink that are particularly great. Of course the muthalode is Spare Rib, which is archived by the British Library. Does an equivalent free online archive of Ms Magazine exist? If not, it should do.

Spare Rib is especially important for people who want to know more about fat feminist activist histories in the UK. Volume 182 from 1987 has a cluster of articles about fat feminism that marks a break from previous discourse that was very much centred on eating disorders. Here fat women finally get to speak for themselves. As I write this, I have gone to download those pieces and am shocked to see that the content has been redacted. What a bummer! A note on the British Library website explains that that material is being investigated for copyright permissions. Hopefully this will be released soon. Meanwhile, The Feminist Library has a full set if you fancy a trip out.

But it is in the margins that things hot up. In issue 184 Susie Orbach refutes the criticisms made of her by fat feminists, which she also did in the Feminist Review two years previously and then 22 years later in Washington DC at the Association of Size Diversity and Health conference. I would love to see more work in Fat Studies and beyond about how particular feminist discourses around fat have persisted, and been seen as progressive, even though fat people consistently say that they are damaging and are ignored! How come those arguments remain obscure? Does this illustrate how talking about fat is usually controlled by thin people?

I also love the Classified adverts in Spare Rib. They give you a fantastic picture of everyday feminist organising and concerns in the period, whaich was, need I even say it, pre-internet. It is here that the National Fat Women's Conference was publicised in 1989, after which there were a spattering of fat feminist groups and resources proposed. I don't know what happened to them but it's encouraging to see how the work touched and encouraged people to have a go, even if they weren't ready to see things through. Later, in 1992, in issue 233, you will also see an ad that I placed, calling for a social and political group for fat women. I'll save that story for next time.

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, exactly the kind of people who could do without inevitably regaining the weight they lose on the programme 7x faster than if they did it alone.

Anyway, it's been a year since I published my newest book: Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement, your best antidote to failed diet season. It's been quite a ride! The mauling I imagined never happened. Instead I've had the pleasure of supportive reviews, interesting readings and events, and excited readers. I hope that continues. Thanks to everyone who's helped it into the world. I would love to see the book taken up on course syllabi, to help create conversations about what activism is and could be, to be talked about in groups and online. I think it's a unique and important piece of work which is saying something a year on, it still feels fresh.

To celebrate this anniversary I am running a competition to WIN A COPY OF MY BOOK! The competition is now closed and the winner has been notified. Thanks for taking part.

Report: Fat, Disability, SWAGGA, DaDaFest

Breast wigs, gold mini-mini fingerless gloves,
puce Air Force 1s, the essential parts
of my SWAGGA costume

I'm surfacing from an intense few weeks rehearsing for and being at DaDaFest in Liverpool. For those not in the know, DaDaFest is an organisation that promotes disabled and deaf arts. They host a biannual festival and are involved with lots of other things besides. Their website is a treasure trove. This year's DadaFest (theme: Skin Deep) is still underway, there are still things to see.

I was there for two reasons: 1. To participate in an event around fat activism and disability arts. 2. To perform SWAGGA.

It was really exciting to create public conversations about fat and disability. People who know me will know that I have been interested in this intersection since the early 1990s. I wrote an MA dissertation about it that later spawned a book and a journal article that has also prompted people to write and think about these connections and divergences. Elsewhere people have come to explore the subject independently of my work. It's a thing. But it's hard to create conversations because this is tender stuff and it involves negotiating fatphobia and disablism to varying degrees.

My friend the actor, comedian and activist Liz Carr and I have been talking about fat and crip culture for quite a while and we wanted to have a public conversation about it at DaDaFest. Because the festival is progressive and supportive about fostering conversations that expand ideas around disability, they encouraged us to go for it. Our conversation meandered around our friendship, the things we have in common as fat and disabled people, the things we don't have in common. It was satisfying, full of hope! We have a lot to learn from each other. We were joined during this event by Bethan Evans of the University of Liverpool and Stacy Bias, who have been working on a project about fat people and access.

The talks were set up to be livestreamed and archived online. There were technical hitches that meant we thought this wouldn't happen, but in the end they were recorded, although the image is blurry and the sound very quiet. Have a go at listening with headphones and the sound cranked up. If I ever get some free time I will transcribe it.



Followers of this blog will know that SWAGGA has been a life-changing experience for me. For those not in the know, SWAGGA is a dance project instigated by Alexandrina Hemsley and Jamila Johnson-Small who work together as Project O. They recruited Kay Hyatt and I in 2014 to develop and dance this piece. We have now danced it at a number of venues for many people. We've been working with Trash Kit, who play live on stage with us, and with music composed by Verity Susman. Jo Palmer has designed a beautiful lighting set-up too. There is also a film, check out the trailer.

We swept up this little pile of
dancer's dirt before we could
practise. Dust and long golden
hair. Not ours.

I don't know when we will dance SWAGGA again, or if we will dance it again. Every time I come back to it I feel changed. Dancing at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool, a wonderful venue with a radical history, was probably the best performance of it I've ever given. I had a sense that I'd really cracked it this time, which of course I feel every time! But what was different was that I was able to relax into the performance. We rehearsed quite intensively the previous week, resolved some of the things that I found difficult about it, like the part when I get up off the floor, I was confident and I felt that we belonged at DaDaFest.

Over two years, nearly three, with lots of space inbetween for me to pursue other interests in dance, performing SWAGGA at the Unity felt a bit like a graduation. I've never been to dance school, I doubt that any of them would have me anyway especially at this time in my life, it's unlikely that I would be cast in a dance production other than this, or do well at an audition, or even be invited to audition. For lots of reasons, the dance world excludes fat dancers. My movement and engagement with dance, a lifelong ambition, has been a process of making space in dance for people like me, with the amazing and generous support of radical practitioners. What a trip!

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 London. For those not in the know, the Wellcome Collection is one of the world's most august museums on medical history. They are very hot on art as a means of understanding medicine and bodies that have been medicalised. Like fat people.

I said yes, I was thrilled to have been asked, and also daunted. The exposure and support of this institution for my work is not to be sneezed at. I work outside of institutions mostly, partly because I value my independence, partly because I feel that I don't belong, and partly because I actually don't belong and would never normally be invited to take part. I said yes because I wanted to see what might happen and because I hoped it would be a good way of supporting the book.

Yet I was daunted. The way in which fat is framed throughout the institution and its sister organisations is very retrograde based on my experiences of rubbing up against it as a visitor and researcher. The public face of the institution's attitude to fat people is located in a display in their Medicine Now exhibit called Obesity. This consists of a sculpture, weight loss technology, diet books, audio recordings of anti-obesity proponents and a token fat woman, and objects implying that people have become less active and over-reliant on labour-saving devices. As a depiction of Obesity Epidemic rhetoric and medicalised obesity discourse, it is pitch perfect. I experience it as a hate zone.

I knew that I would be talking about my book in the lecture theatre on the night, but I also wanted to be in the Obesity gallery. I didn't feel that I could deliver a talk about my book without some comment about the display upstairs. I couldn’t ignore it. I have loathed that display since it was installed in 2007 and I want to see it change to reflect the realities of people like me, and to be approximately a hundred thousand times more critical of the discourse it currently represents.

So I proposed a dance that I would dance with Kay Hyatt in the Obesity gallery. We've been working on a piece that would be suitable, called 'But is it Healthy?' The people at the Wellcome Collection said yes. I said I would make a zine to contextualise the dance, and I did, it's called The Blob. I made some beats to dance to based on some recordings of fat feminists from 36 years ago. I wrote an article about the event for the paper.

I'm making it sound very easy, but the reality is not easy. Another friend, L, said that people would likely tell me how awesome I am, which is nice, but they might not be able to see the risk involved in dancing in such a space.

The risk is I am dancing in a hate zone and that most people are unlikely to understand what that might feel like. Even at this stage in my life it is hard. My hope is that dancing, being there, making a spectacle of myself, might help transform that space. Sometimes I feel hopeful and other times I think I am a fantasist and that nothing can stop the greed and ambition of the weight loss industry. I don't want to bellyache about it too much, it is an amazing privilege to be there at all, I'm so grateful for the invitation and care that has been extended towards me, but it is still complicated and sometimes it sends me into a spin.

Today we did a site visit, I was able to hear the music we will be dancing to in the space and we did a little bit of dancing when no one was looking. I am so moved by the fat feminists who made a path for us all those years ago. When I think of the risks I am taking I am humbled by those women who dared to speak before. They give me a lot of strength. It was amazing to hear them speaking today, to dance to their words which remain so relevant. I felt that I was part of something much bigger than me, that there are many other voices of refusal, not just voices but bodies. I'm not the only one to put myself in a risky place. Those others have given me a lot of courage, they remind me that I am not alone and that this risk is worth taking.

Anyway, here are all the details, downloads and links. Come along if you can but, if you can't, you can still read, watch and listen. My talk on the night will be audio recorded and put on the Wellcome website too.

Paper copies of my zine will be available at the event but you can also download a digital copy.
The Blob (.pdf 4mb)

But Is It Healthy Beats by Charlotte Cooper, featuring Diane Denne, Judy Freespirit, Aldebaran and Judith Stein recorded by Karen Stimson in 1980.

Guardian article (I didn't write that rather boastful title!): The rhetoric around obesity is toxic. So I created a new language for fat people

Wellcome Collection Friday Late Spectacular: Body Language
Friday 4 November 2016
#BodySpectacular

Please note that you will have to book in advance through the Wellcome Collection website if you want to see me lecture, though this is free. The dance will take place around 9.30pm, no booking is required though these events tend to be extremely popular, so get there early.

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 Freespirit's archive at the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society archives in San Francisco. It supports the evidence I present in my book about cross-country friendships in the US being a way in which fat feminism travelled. Judy Freespirit on the West Coast and Judith Stein, one of the propagators of Boston Area Feminist Fat Liberation, were pals. See #19 for more about that.

The poster is printed on yellow A4 paper. It has an image of two fat women in a heart shape on the top left hand corner, an image that also appears in the collated notes (by Judith?) for The First Feminist Fat Activists' Working Meeting: Proceedings of The First Feminist Fat Activists' Working Meeting. That gathering took place in New Haven in 1980 and was circulated through Fat Liberator Publications. Everything is hand drawn, with 'fatluck' written in blobby lettering.

The poster is of its time, which is also what makes it compelling to me. The world seems so different now, what would it have been like to go to a Fatluck? Online maps show me that the laundromat and the bank might still be there but that the women's centre is now at a different location. The terminology has also shifted, womyn being a way of naming gender separate to men's involvement, but also a term that has historical associations with trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Whilst I have seen some trans women/womyn reclaim womyn, I do not see this word very often these days.

What I love about the flyer is its playful and homemade qualities. Potlucks are a staple, a cliché even, of this kind of feminism. There's a postmodern feminist publication that refers to the practice called No More Potlucks. It's a North American name for collectively producing a meal to share. Here the potluck is called a Fatluck, it acknowledges that it is a big deal, a political act, for fat women to eat together, to nourish each other, to talk about liberation and to treat each other with sweet things.