Queer Theological Approach to Fat Flourishing

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In the UK, fat people are characterised as lazy, greedy and a drain on a constrained healthcare system.This characterisation is shaped by three frames (the free-market frame, the biomedical frame, and the social justice frame) and is a barrier to fat people's flourishing.Each frame provides a distinct route to flourishing; however, these routes are incomplete, often contradictory and create irreconcilable positions.Despite the growing field of fat-studies, the current fat theological literature does not adequately address how fat people might flourish in this negative and complex context.This study examines the work of Lisa Isherwood to assess the extent to which queer theology might assist fat flourishing.This examination finds four ways fat flourishing might be assisted: 1) by providing justification for fat-inclusion; 2) by challenging the single negative narrative of fatness to reduce stigma; 3) by critically examining how power structures impact fat flourishing; 4) by providing robust justification for the inclusion of fat people's experience and pleasure in informing ethical action.This study recognises that distinctions between queerness and fatness limit the usefulness of queer theology to assist fat flourishing and recommends that other theologies such as liberation theology and Disability theology might similarly assist fat flourishing.______________________________________________________________________________ BCW, VOL.4:1 54 healthcare resources. 4 Fatness is used to depict villains, buffoons and undesirables in TV and film. 5I argue that this framing impacts fat flourishing and therefore needs challenging.'Fat' is a divisive term and there is power in who gets to define it.Some fat activists are trying to reclaim fat as a neutral descriptor, but some ethicists argue neutrality is unachievable. 6 Each framing of fatness understands fatness in different ways.These categories can appear stable, but they change over time and in different contexts.Throughout this paper I use fatness to describe people whose body size results in them experiencing medical and or social barriers.Defining fatness more tightly is difficult because there is not an identifiable size at which a person becomes fat and starts experiencing medical or social barriers.In medical settings a scale, the Body Mass Index (BMI), is used to categorise fat people.This scale pinpoints precise moments at which the ratio of a person's hight and weight becomes a medical concern.As I will discuss at some length, this categorization of fatness does not neatly correlate with worse health outcomes and fails to recognise the social aspects of fatness.Fat liberation movements categorise fat people based on the level of discrimination they experience 'small fats' experiencing the least barriers to public life and 'super fats' or 'inifi fats' experiencing the most.However this model fails to recognise any medical or physical barriers fat people might face and speaks only to the social aspects of fatness.For this reason I will not be using either of these methods to define fat people, opting instead for a loser but, I hope, more holistic view of fatness that recognises the large spectrum of physical, medical and social experience encompassed in the phrase 'fat people' and the extent to which this experience is always shaped by an individual's context.This article assesses the extent to which Lisa Isherwood's queer theology can be used to assist fat flourishing and challenge the dominant understanding of fatness in the UK.In part one I critically examine the frames through which fatness is understood, finding they each assist and hamper fat flourishing.Absolutist beliefs create seemingly irreconcilable positions about fatness and fat flourishing.Therefore, these frames must be disrupted to realise fat flourishing.To define fat flourishing, I utilise Neil Messer's theology, determining that fat flourishing requires: flourishing in relationship with God creation and one's self; pursuing a life that aligns with God's 4 Kate Pickles, 'How Obesity Is Draining the NHS of Billions ', Mail Online, 17 May 2023.