The Future Is Fat: Theorizing Time in Relation to Body Weight and Stigma

This book explores the relationship between fat experience and the social construction of time, drawing from diverse fields to generate renewed understandings of the relationship between fatness and temporality. It reimagines understandings of time to allow for new expressions of fat experience.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 130 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The prevailing notion holds that fat bodies of today lack any prospects for the future. In this mindset, a fat life is perceived as a failure, leading inexorably to death. Meanwhile, the histories of modern fat existence, communities, activists, and artists have been largely ignored, erased from their origins and existence. Most medical and cultural evaluations of fat have heightened the visibility of the fat body, yet the lived experiences of fat people continue to be disregarded.

At a time when scholars across various disciplines are engaged in a debate about who holds a future, this book delves into the intricate relationship between fat experience and the social construction of time. The contributions in this volume originate from diverse fields such as social geography, women and gender studies, critical race theory, disability studies, cultural studies, visual art and craft, social work, communication studies, and queer theory, fostering a renewed understanding of the interplay between fatness and temporality.

The Future Is Fat challenges prevailing notions of time to create space for fresh expressions of fat experience.

The chapters in this book were originally featured as a special issue of Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367714949