Fat Move(ment)s

Venue: JYU Library, Room B347 Koski, 3^rd floor

10.45–11.00 Welcome and opening words Hannele Harjunen, University of Jyväskylä 

11.00–12.00 Keynote 1 (30 min + 30 min Q&A)

• Associate Professor Hannele Harjunen, University of Jyväskylä: Gendered fatphobia in the field of sport and exercise

12.00–13.00 Lunch 

13.00–14.30 Workshop Session 1) Fatness, terms, and norms

Papers 15–20 min + Q&A

• Sunniva Árja Tobiasen, University of Bergen, Norway: Examining the fat-bodied boundaries of sexual norms
• Dina Amlund, University of Copenhagen, Denmark: Fear and Trembling: Phobic Aspects of the Structural Oppression of Fat Folx and Terminology
• Nina Navajas-Pertegás, Universitat de València, Spain: “Tonight we’ll surely score!”: An analysis of hogging as an expression of violence against fat women

14.30–15.00 Coffee

15.00–16.30 Workshop Session 2) Fatness, gender, and representation

Papers 15–20 min + Q&A        

• Susanne Ritter, Tampere University: Fatness, Gender, and Relationships of Power in Makeover Television Shows from Finland and the United States
• Anna Puhakka, University of Jyväskylä: Exploring Challenges and Positive Narratives in Fat Women’s Physical Activity
• Salli-Sofia Ritola, University of Jyväskylä: Fat, funny and fierce – reflecting the representations of fatness and body size in burlesque

18.30– Dinner (Venue: Bistro Kirkkopuisto; address: Kauppakatu 16, Jyväskylä)

Venue: JYU Library, Room B349 Suvanto, 3^rd floor

10.00–11.00 Fat Coffee at the JYU Library ground floor cafeteria Café Tiede (own expense)

• Come start the day and hang out with fellow conference attendees before the official program begins 😊

11.00–12.00 Keynote 2 (30 min + 30 min Q&A) NB! The keynote is delivered via Zoom.

• Fellow programme in management (FPM) candidate (19–23) and researcher at Center for Development Management and Communication Saesha Kini, MICA, India: Of Sightings that Matter: Fat Move(ment)s in ‘Re-visioning’

12.00–13.00 Lunch

13.00–14.30 Workshop Session 3) Fatness and/in the social media

Papers 15–20 min + Q&A

• Saara Särmä, Tampere University: Regressive body politics in the 2020s
• Ella Holi, University of Bergen, Norway: From #bodypositive to #weightlossjourney – exploring fat social media narratives
• Lene Bull Christiansen & Maj Hedegaard Heiselberg, Roskilde University, Denmark: The FAT research project: between research dissemination and activism

14.30–15.00 Coffee

15.00–16.30 Workshop Session 4) Fatness, affect, and embodiment

Papers 15–20 min + Q&A

• Jatta Sammalkangas: Fatness and affects – body normativity in Finnish universities
• Riikka Juntunen, University of Turku: Beyond “the Fat Lady Sings” – Analysing Fat Vocality in Pop Music Performance
• E. L. Karhu: FAT EMBODIMENT: PLEASURE AND ALIENATION IN E. L. KARHU’S "FOR MY BROTHER", A READING

16.30–17.00 Closing discussion

Fear and Trembling: Phobic Aspects of the Structural Oppression of Fat Folx and Terminology 
Dina Amlund, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

The term fatphobia proves difficult to reveal its source of origin, but has made its way into the Collins Dictionary list of “New Words Suggestions”, on which it is defined as “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against obesity or people with obesity.” The term fatphobia has been avoided in academic circles within medicine, physiology, psychology etc. with the interest field of weight bias, weight stigma, size-based discrimination, weight neutrality and Health At Every Size (see for instance the programs of the nine Weight Stigma Conference, particularly the early conferences, which were completely dominated by medicine, physiology and psychology). Fatphobia has been a part of the Fat Studies vocabulary within the humanities, arts, and social sciences (see for instance the programs of the three Fat Studies New Zealand conferences). In international fat activist circles fatphobia has been discussed and by some dismissed (for instance by NAAFA) arguing it is an ableist term. Usually sizeism, anti-fat bias or anti-fatness are words suggested to replace fatphobia. By other fat activists fatphobia is defended, arguing its linguistic relations to for instance homophobia and islamophobia. Looking to German theologian and existential philosopher Paul Tillich and his work on fear and anxiety as well as the definitions and discussions of fear, anxiety and phobia in European Psychoanalysis, I wish to explore fear as basic human condition and the human proneness to anxiety and phobia to come closer to an understanding of the term fatphobia and to compare fatphobia to other words for structural oppression.

"Tonight we'll surely score!": An analysis of hogging as an expression of violence against fat women
Nina Navajas-Pertegás, Universitat de València, Spain

The global feminist movement has driven manifold advances in gender equality policies. In response, a misogynistic backlash driven by the belief that feminist values have eroded our societies has been articulated. Western societies are characterized by a deep fear of fatness rooted in medicalized discourses on fat and the influence of neoliberal values on body perception and bodywork. Misogyny and fatphobia often intersect in both real life and the manosphere. A stark example of this backlash is violence against women. Specifically, I will refer to “hogging”, a practice directed at fat women in dating scenarios by young heterosexual men through sexual harassment, non-consensual sharing of explicit images, deceitful methods for sexual gratification, amongst others. This study focuses on hogging within the Spanish context employing a qualitative methodology that includes twenty-four semi-structured interviews with fat women, analysis of press coverage, and messages published on the social network Forocoches. Through a discoursive analysis with a Foucauldian and feminist approach my findings reveal that hogging was articulated as a predatory practice to recreate patriarchal masculinity, a sadistic “amusement” that men engage in when they can't have sex with women deemed attractive. This reveals a broader pattern in patriarchal societies where men feel entitled to women's bodies, suggesting that they may feel entitled too to punish those who deviate from the feminine beauty ideal. Thus, hogging exemplifies the intersection of the systemic misogyny and fatphobia present in our societies.

Examining the fat-bodied boundaries of sexual norms
Sunniva Árja Tobiasen, University of Bergen, Norway

The concept compulsory sexuality has mainly been developed within asexuality studies and can provide a theoretical framework to discuss sexual norms and fatness. Compulsory sexuality describes the general assumption that all people are sexual in a similar way, as well as the norms and practices that marginalize various forms of non-sexuality and how these norms and practices compel people to experience themselves as desiring subjects, take up sexual identities, and engage in sexual activity (Gupta, 2015). But not all people are met with the same sexual assumptions. Fat people can experience both desexualization and hypersexualization, or fetishization. Why is that? Kim (2011) argues that disabled people can face desexualization due to the close connection between notions of health and sexuality – can there be similar notions that leads to desexualization or hypersexualization of fat people? This presentation will consist of an introduction to compulsory sexuality and will discuss the concept in relation to fat sexuality, with examples from existing fat studies research to further explore the fat-bodied boundaries of sexual norms. The topic for this presentation is part of an ongoing PhD-project with the working title “Sizing up desirable bodies – examining the fat-bodied boundaries of sexuality and gender”.

Exploring Challenges and Positive Narratives in Fat Women’s Physical Activity
Anna Puhakka, University of Jyväskylä

My presentation provides an overview of research addressing challenges and positive narratives regarding fat women’s physical activity. I choose this focus because due to gendered body norms, fatness is particularly stigmatizing for women. I argue that a better understanding is needed not only as regards the problems that fat women face when engaging in exercise, but also vis-à-vis the manifold possibilities for the enjoyment thereof. On one hand, this overview introduces research on pervasive problems that stem from the stigma faced by fat women in fitness environments. Fitness professionals contribute to marginalization, and co-exercisers may foster unwelcoming spaces. Material barriers, such as inadequate exercise apparel, pose additional challenges. On the other hand, despite these obstacles, evidence suggests that physical activity can positively impact the lives of fat women, offering diverse pleasures. Creating respectful corporeal learning environments and weight-inclusive spaces emerges as crucial. Community-building, exemplified in runners’ or softball teams, becomes a powerful response to institutional inequalities, fostering solidarity and fat pleasure activism. This overview constitutes a part of my postdoctoral research project, currently in the planning phase.

Fat, funny and fierce – reflecting the representations of fatness and body size in burlesque
Salli-Sofia Ritola, University of Jyväskylä

When talking about the embodiment of burlesque, the significance of body positivity and the Love Your Body discourses as the core of burlesque often come up in the discussion, and how they serve as a collective guideline for bodily acceptance. In this presentation, I will reflect the themes of fatness and body size in burlesque, and how burlesque performers address these topics in their performances in terms of body activism within Finnish burlesque collective. As liberating and challenging the body politics of burlesque appears to be, the emphasis on loving the body can also be experienced as ‘a prerequisite for perpetual bodily positivity’. Representations of embodiment can serve as guidelines for discussions within the art form reflecting on burlesque’s internal body political power structures. The reflexivity towards the appreciation of body diversity and normalizing non-normative bodies in the community and society is emphasized, as is the hope that visibility would not only be given only to cisgender bodies that fit Western beauty ideals.

Fatness, Gender, and Relationships of Power in Makeover Television Shows from Finland and the United States
Susanne Ritter, Tampere University

This talk presents the results of the research for my doctoral dissertation which deals with fatness in weight-loss makeover shows from Finland and the US, focusing on three shows from Finland (Jutta ja Superdieetit – Jutta and the Super Diet, Jutta ja Puolen Vuoden Superdieetit – Jutta and the Half-Year Super Diet, and Rakas, sinusta on tullut pullukka – Honey, You’ve Become Chubby) and two shows from the US (Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian and Fat Chance). Inspired by feminist critical discourse analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis, I examine how the ways of representing the fat female body construct, reproduce, and potentially reflect societal discourses of gender, power, relationships, and identity. My research aims to uncover structures of control that are enacted on the fat body in general and the fat female body in particular by asking “how are the representations of fat female bodies in makeover TV shows in Finland and the US connected to societal discourses of gender, power, and the body?”. The results of the research suggest that controlling the fat female body and aiming at normalizing it – and with it, individuals’ lives – appears to remain an important feature of dieting makeover shows. The similarity in the shows’ contents, representations, and constructions regardless of country of origin may point towards similar views on norms regarding the ideal (female) body as well as appropriate behaviour and lifestyle.

The FAT research project: between research dissemination and activism
Lene Bull Christiansen & Maj Hedegaard Heiselberg, Roskilde University, Denmark

In this presentation we reflect upon our experiences with doing “fat research” as we are reaching the final stage of the FAT (Feminist Activism in Transition) research project. The presentation will focus on the tensions and ambivalences that arise from simultaneously striving for academic knowledge and knowledge dissemination, whilst also being situated as academics and persons in the fat accepting movement. As scholars, we have approached the study of fat embodiment, representation and activism from different perspectives. Lene has primarily focused on discursive shifts in Danish media in relation to fatness, whereas Maj has studied fat activism on social media. The FAT project draws from a feminist theoretical framework, recognizing our knowledge production as both situated and political (Haraway 1998). However, this research position has proven challenging in a highly polarized political landscape as well as in relation to our activist interlocutors. On the one hand, stake-holders interpret us as ‘activists’, while on the other hand, our position in the Danish fat activist community has been ambiguous and ambivalent. In this presentation, we reflect upon the ways this tension has shaped our research findings and dissemination as well as our relationship with the fat accepting movement.

Haraway, D., 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Fem. Stud. 14, 575–599.

From #bodypositive to #weightlossjourney – exploring fat social media narratives
Ella Holi, University of Bergen, Norway

Recently, there has been a noticeable increase of weight loss narratives – both in popular media stories on Ozempic, the “miracle cure” against “obesity”, and my fat positive social media feeds. Social media content creators and activists previously calling for people to love their bodies in the name of #bodypositivity, have now started documenting their #weightlossjourney, announcing their departure from the fat community. In my PhD project I’m interested in different forms of social media fat narratives either resisting, negotiating or conforming to the master narratives of fatness. Master narratives are culturally shared stories that “provide guidance for how to be a ‘good’ member of a culture”, “framing self-perceptions, identity and behavior” (Hochman & Spector‐Mersel, 2020, p. 1045). The master narratives of fatness, such as the “obesity epidemic” and weight loss narratives, have contributed to the marginalization and stigmatization of fat people, leaning on the idea that fatness is a liminal state and within the control of the individual (e.g. Harjunen, 2009; Maor, 2014). With digital ethnographic methods, this part of my PhD research explores weight loss narratives from within the fat community, as well as the response from the fat community. While the fat activist and body positive social media community has traditionally resisted these master narratives, the weight loss narratives emerging from within the community represent a turn back to the master narratives and a return of the “good fatty” (e.g. Gibson, 2022). Furthermore, the responses from the fat community can be seen as an act of redrawing the boundaries of the movement (Meleo-Erwin, 2011).

Gibson, G. (2022). Health(ism) at every size: The duties of the “good fatty.” Fat Studies, 11(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1906526

Harjunen, H. (2009). Women and Fat: Approaches to the Social Study of Fatness. University of Jyväskylä.

Hochman, Y., & Spector‐Mersel, G. (2020). Three strategies for doing narrative resistance: Navigating between master narratives. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(4), 1043–1061. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12376

Maor, M. (2014). Stories that matter: Subverting the before-and-after weight-loss narrative. Social Semiotics, 24(1), 88–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2013.827359

Meleo-Erwin, Z. C. (2011). ‘A beautiful show of strength’: Weight loss and the fat activist self. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 15(2), 188–205. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459310361601

Regressive body politics in the 2020s
Saara Särmä, Tampere University

This presentation starts with the assumption and observation that at least the last decade or so has been largely defined by progressive body politics, evidenced by, among others, the rise of the academic discipline of fat studies, feminist research on differences and intersectionality and the fat acceptance and body positivity movement into a mainstream discourse in many nations in the global north. However, on the spring of 2020, fat-phobic imagery in the form of memes started to circulate on social media along with other forms of lockdown weight panic. Hannele Harjunen and I started to observe this phenomena and named it regressive body politics. It was suggested in social media and journalistic media that the body positivity movement had gone “too far” and "old-fashioned" fatphobia and –shaming re-emerged. Even "woke" feminists who had been speaking for body diversity and had expressed body positive views seemed to be part of this. In this presentation I offer analysis of the fat-phobic covid memes and examine some other recent developments, such as co-optation of body positive language by diet industry, which seems to suggest that we have indeed entered an era of regressive body politics. Furthermore, I aim to connect this to other backlashes currently underway and pose some questions about the relationship between regressive body politics and weight stigma.

Beyond “the Fat Lady Sings” – Analysing Fat Vocality in Pop Music Performance
Riikka Juntunen, University of Turku

This presentation explores the analytical and political potentials of studying fat corporeality and subjectivity as they are formed in singing performances. The voice is a material phenomenon that transcends bodily boundaries and brings bodies into resonance with each other. It is also imbued with various cultural meanings regarding e.g. gender, race, ability, class, and physical appearance. In this presentation, I discuss how fat singers' performances may be experienced and interpreted in certain sociocultural contexts, such as mainstream pop music and reality TV. I analyse what kinds of affective resonances and connections can emerge between a fat singer and their listeners and explore what kinds of personal and political impacts these encounters may have. Thus, I come to suggest some approaches and thematic orientations for mapping out these connections and their impacts on both personal and cultural levels. These include analysing how singing can function as a form of affective labour in negotiating vulnerability between the singer, their audiences, and the culture surrounding them; how the voice may work to reinforce or deconstruct the gendered meanings of fatness; and how a fat singer’s voice may participate in creating pleasurable experiences of abundance with liberatory potential. I aim to demonstrate how fat studies and voice studies can enrich each other in acknowledging the significance of fat pop singers’ affective agency in how fatness is experienced, encountered and understood in society at large, and how the singing voice specifically works to perform these functions.

FAT EMBODIMENT: PLEASURE AND ALIENATION IN E. L. KARHU’S "FOR MY BROTHER", A READING
E. L. Karhu

FOR MY BROTHER is what I call a “läskiromaani”, a “fat novel” about a fat protagonist and on the themes of corporeality, pleasure and growing up fat in the patriarchy. In the novel, I deal with the ambivalence associated with fat embodiment: the main character both enjoys their body, hates their body, lives alienated from their body, and lives happily, ecstatically one with their body. The title of the novel refers to a classic of fat art history, the French director Catherine Breillat’s film A MA SOEUR (To My Sister). A MA SOEUR is the protagonist’s favorite film in the world of the FOR MY BROTHER novel, so the novel also explores the question about writing in the fat art tradition. The work is set in a time before the internet; I made this choice as an author because I wanted it not to be possible for a person to socially separate themselves from their body in the work's world. The work also deals with the discrimination faced by the protagonist and the exclusion mechanisms related to the social role of a fat girl/woman. In FOR MY BROTHER there is an emancipation arc in which the main character, through being excluded, builds their own world in the end through surrender to physical movement. The conference event consists of approximately 15-20 minutes of reading from the novel and a discussion.

Fatness and affects – body normativity in Finnish universities
Jatta Sammalkangas

My presentation is based on the topic I studied in my master's degree and did my master's thesis (2023) about body normativity in Finnish universities. I approached my research with the question of how fat university students and those working at the university talk about fatness. I narrowed down the topic through emotions, behavior and appearance. The guiding background theory was feminist research and especially intersectionality. The material consisted of 37 essays of different lengths, which painted a picture of what it is like to be fat at the university, participate in events, move around the university premises and use various university-related services, such as health care. I analyzed the data with thematic analysis and narrative analysis. The result is a picture of how a fat person plans, organizes and takes responsibility for the feelings of others and themselves in advance. Fat controls their own body and the affects it causes almost constantly. Fatness shows itself through feelings and affects in a very comprehensive way. I separated the university facilities, events and behavior into their own themes to be addressed. Health care (FSHS Finnish Student Health Service, YTHS in Finnish) also received a lot of mentions in essays. At the Finnish university, fatness manifests itself as affects, i.e. bodily feelings, such as shame, anxiety and guilt, constant vigilance, awareness of one's body and body size, and embarrassment of one's bodily functions and hiding them. Fatness affects being and behaving in mostly negative ways. One's fatness is constantly related to others as part of the socialization process. My presentation partly responds to how fatness is constantly lived in a fat-hostile environment and how the research brings to light the norms and assumptions that affect the corporeality and feelings of the fat person within various institutions.

The conference rooms are equipped with computers that have internet access, allowing for the playback of video and sound clips. Please bring your presentation on a USB flash drive.

You may also use your own laptop for the presentation. Please note that the University of Jyväskylä does not provide adapters for connecting Mac laptops to the data projector.

Each paper presentation is given a maximum of 20 minutes and is ensued by a discussion. A chairperson will be in charge of each session, making sure the timetable is followed and leading the discussion.