Re-visioning ethical responses to fat: From enforcing body norms to exploring the possibilities unique to different bodies

This paper offers a new materialist theory of fat and develops a feminist body ethics based on the narratives of a diverse sample of adult Canadian women self-identified as former fat girls. Drawing on my earlier research that analyzed popular and public health messages concerning fatness and fitness received by participants in their childhood social worlds (Rice, 2007, 2009), I draw on an growing corpus of new materialist writing to analyze how big girls become fat girls in social and physical spaces, which I argue are productive of “overweight.” While the women I spoke with grew up prior to the obesity epidemic moral panic in Canada, their experiences are relevant to current debates since they confronted earlier campaigns calling for fitness promotion and fatness prevention among citizens. Although it is commonly claimed by obesity scientists that too much food and not enough exercise cause overweight, for those with whom I spoke, the opposite more often was true: pervasive weight stereotyping and enforced dieting lead them to avoid activity and engage in problem eating, which contributed to life-long difficulties with food/weight. In light of dire warnings and moral panic about rising obesity in today’s North American children, I turn to discuss of the implications of women’s accounts for contemporary feminist-informed policy and practice. I argue that with renewed focus on fatness prevention through fitness promotion, obesity prevention proponents may be leading a new cohort of large children to adopt problem eating and exercise, possibly contributing to another generation’s struggles with weight. In this context, I am interested in thinking about an ethics that emphasizes more open-ended and embodied ways of approaching the relationship of fatness to fitness, by moving away from practices of enforcing norms toward creative ways of exploring the abilities and possibilities unique to different bodies.