Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement by Charlotte Cooper

Author:Charlotte Cooper [Cooper, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bariatrics, Obesity - Psychological Aspects, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Sciences
ISBN: 9781910849002
Google: yufQjwEACAAJ
Publisher: HammerOn Press
Published: 2016-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

So I’m picturing sitting in a room in a circle, there would be a topic and then they would start trying to get a conversation going and, you know, [Verity and Charlotte laugh] it wasn’t always easy! (Verity)

With a growing support base, more ambitious gatherings took place. In April 1980 two meetings were convened over three days: The Feminist Fat Activist’s Working Meeting and The New Haven Fat Women’s Health Conference. These were organised by BAFL and The New Haven Fat Liberation Front, a short-lived group formed in 1976 consisting of Karen Scott-Jones (later Karen Stimson) and her then husband Darryl Scott-Jones as well as ex-Fat Underground members Aldebaran and Sharon Bas Hannah.7 Scott-Jones had written about fat feminism for the National Organisation of Women and was part of NAAFA’s Fat Feminist Caucus.8 The April gatherings produced documentation and Fat Activists Together (F.A.T.) which, according to Stimson, was the first coalition of fat feminists, who went on to help publish Shadow On A Tightrope and circulated newsletters until 1982.9

Stein continued to publish a number of articles on fat and Jewish feminism, and wrote and circulated an information sheet about fat liberation at the Jewish Feminist Conference in San Francisco in 1982, according to Dykewomon’s essay, “Travelling Fat.”10 A feminist health worker, Stein advised the editorial collective for Our Bodies, Ourselves and ensured that fat feminism was included in several US editions of the book.11 In 1984 and 1985 Stein and Lawrence presented fat feminist radio shows on local radio for International Women’s Day.12 This work enabled them to reach larger audiences for fat feminism and develop alliances with Jewish feminist activism, the women’s health communities surrounding Our Bodies, Ourselves, as described by Davis, and in higher education institutions.

Fat feminism was able to travel across the US because of national kinship networks of the type described by Verity:

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