Fishbucket

the waitlist seems like a special kind of hell. My instinct is to decline any waitlist spots I'm offered, but we'll see...

Srsly, what's the problem with discussing Fat Studies? Hmmmmmmm?

You just posted AGAIN in a thread you don't like, again causing more people to read it, when your point was to get people to stop reading it? Sounds like that critical thinking is doing wonders for you.

I started this thread because I am genuinely curious about how people think about Fat Studies. The people who think my curiosity is annoying can go somewhere else, they don't have to contribute to the discussion. In any case, it seems that political correctness has proved a detriment to critical thinking on this thread. As it usually does in the humanities in general. I suppose this answers my curiosity.

Why is everybody insulting the thread? The thread in itself is innocent! I think YOU are the problem

Dear Internet, I want to tell you about my acceptance into a program but it feels weird to talk about it with strangers. Love, Fishbucket

I believe this was best expressed by Thumper the rabbit in the movie Bambi. Still, I don't think Thumper meant this to be a rule for policing academic discourse. If I disagree with something, I will say so. It's not a contest over who can be the nicest. I also don't think that challenging a weak premise is "mean."

definitions of awesome vary widely

Not if you want to be hardcore about it. Read the book. Shit's cray

P.S. how the hell did this become a conversation about people's diets? Think about it for a second. Weirdness to the max. Also boring to the max.

I don't understand, from a purely phenomenological perspective, what it must be like to experience the world on a daily basis without a belief in free will. I mean, I guess I don't expect that you make decisions any differently -- it's more of a theoretical belief than a practical one, right? Because if you truly felt that all your actions were determined by something other than yourself, would you even bother to get out of bed in the morning?

I'm curious what you mean by "I don't believe in free will"?

Age is just a number you guys. What matters is the joy in your hearts. Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

If you read the Fat Studies Reader, they equate their work with the Civil Rights Movement. They are trying to argue for a "Fat Culture." So Pepper's criticism seems more than fair to me.

If we really want to know an insider's view of poverty and what kind of food the poor like to eat, we could always ask the grad students at UT-Austin. ooo burn

How about next we do PMS studies, and then Bad Haircut Studies, Unflattering Outfit Studies, Shrill Voice Studies... Basically reduce every trait that people find naturally repellant into an "unfairly marginalized minority group" and build an academic sub-discipline around it. I think that will move the humanities in the right direction, and certainly real minority groups won't be insulted at all.

Interesting point. I do think a blind person would find it fairly offensive for his lifelong disability to be compared to a bodily state that can be changed over the course of several weeks on a reality tv show.

We can definitely study it, but not just to create a new narrative to describe why disabled people are actually better-abled than un-disabled people. I feel like that falls more into the realm of Chicken Soup For The Soul and self-affirmation than rigorous academic research and theory.

If you mean, should we medicalize certain disabilities in order to find ways to cure them? Then my answer is yes

But you're missing the point of Fat Studies. They don't want to analyze how fatness arises and thus how to combat it. They want to celebrate it as a legitimate body form that has been unfairly maligned. What you're discussing is a public health problem. Fat Studies wants to remove "health" from the discussion entirely.

I think that it's interesting that most of the contributors to the Fat Studies Reader are not fat. They are morbidly obese. I agree that our society seems to have a pretty insane problem with (particularly female) body image, but morbid obesity is a medical term that I'm inclined not to read in any sort of "cultural studies" way. It really is an incredibly unhealthy state. If we try and create a minority identity label for it rather than treating it as a medical condition, I don't think we're helping anyone.

What about "mass studies"? That way we could also study it on the moon.

Well, first tell me what you know and think about it and then I'll respond.

Yeah it's a real thing. I just don't know if it should be...