Fat Activism Fuels the Obesity Epidemic

The Body Positivity movement and the Healthy at Every Size movement gained steam in the 1990s, promoting acceptance and celebration of fat bodies. Quickly, however, the movements took on many aspects of intersectionality claiming, “We cannot dismantle weight, size oppression without addressing the intersectionality of ALL oppressions.” Free the People creative director Sam Martin traces the recent trend of fat celebration back to universities and the relatively new branch of critical theory called fatness studies. Fatness studies attempts to equate fat phobia with many of the other serious prejudices based on immutable characteristics such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, and in practice, it threatens to hinder much of the progress made by these groups.