Exposure and erasure: Fat kids in gym class, fat adults as athletes

Using autoethnography and a personal essay format, this essay explores the process of exposure and erasure—both successively and simultaneously—endured by fat children in gym classes and by fat athletes in adulthood. The social narrative about fat bodies and fat people as lazy, ineffective, and uninterested in physical pursuits is so powerful and pervasive that fat bodies are erased or persistently seen as novel or anomalous, despite their persistence through time and across athletic pursuits. The essay also handles the temporal stretching that photography allows, wherein viewers can bring what they’re seeing into existence through the proof of a static image. The author’s own collusion with social messages is also explored here, along with the shift in her self-erasure practices.