18 - Historical Development. cover art

18 - Historical Development.

18 - Historical Development.

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 Historical Development. 1960s–1970s: Foundations in Second-Wave Feminism. The fat acceptance movement, a precursor to explicit fat feminism, gained initial traction in the late 1960s through protests modeled on civil rights tactics, such as the 1967 "fat-in" in New York City's Central Park, where approximately 500 participants gathered to challenge anti-fat discrimination and dieting culture as forms of social control. This event drew inspiration from broader liberation struggles, including the civil rights movement's sit-ins and second-wave feminism's emphasis on rejecting imposed beauty standards amid women's push for autonomy. In 1969, engineer Bill Fabrey founded the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (later renamed NAAFA), spurred by discrimination faced by his wife, with the organization focusing on advocacy against weight-based bias in employment, healthcare, and public life as a response to pervasive dieting pressures. NAAFA's early work aligned with second-wave feminist critiques of patriarchal control over women's bodies, positioning fat stigma as an extension of sexist norms that prioritized thinness to enforce conformity. Radical offshoots emerged by the early 1970s, notably the Fat Underground collective formed in 1973, which produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto framing fatness as a site of intersectional oppression tied to sexism, medical authority, and capitalism; members like Aldebaran declared "doctors are the enemy" and equated dieting with "genocide against fat people." This group splintered from NAAFA, advocating for fat pride within feminist consciousness-raising circles and viewing body size scrutiny as a mechanism to suppress female agency. Susie Orbach's 1978 book Fat Is a Feminist Issue synthesized these ideas into a psychoanalytic framework, positing that women's fat accumulation often resulted from internalized patriarchal rage and using excess weight as psychological armor against objectification or unwanted advances. Drawing from her therapy groups, Orbach attributed overeating to repressed emotions under male-dominated structures rather than individual failing, urging women to address societal roots over caloric restriction. While these foundations promoted fat acceptance through feminist lens in small groups, they exerted negligible influence on population-level trends; National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys recorded adult obesity prevalence at 13.4% in 1960–1962, rising slightly to 14.5% by 1971–1974 and 15.0% by 1976–1980, with no evidence of reversal amid growing caloric intake and sedentary shifts. 1980s–1990s: Emergence of Fat Activism Networks. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), originally founded in 1969, expanded its activities in the 1980s through increased publications and advocacy efforts targeting size-based discrimination in employment and healthcare settings. NAAFA produced educational brochures addressing eating disorders among fat individuals, guidance for therapists and providers on non-discriminatory care, and resources for fat children facing bias, aiming to reframe obesity as a civil rights issue rather than a medical failing. These initiatives coincided with a marked rise in U.S. adult obesity prevalence, from 15% in 1976–1980 to 23.3% by 1988–1994, driven by factors including dietary shifts and reduced physical activity, though NAAFA's materials emphasized societal prejudice over behavioral causes. In the 1990s, NAAFA supported fat pride events, including annual conferences that facilitated community building, social dances, and protests against fatphobic advertising, such as pickets outside gyms and government buildings. These gatherings promoted self-acceptance and visibility for fat individuals, paralleling the decade's obesity surge to 30.9% among adults by 1999. Concurrently, independent zines like Marilyn Wann's Fat!So?, launched in 1994, circulated DIY manifestos celebrating fat bodies and critiquing diet culture, influencing a nascent subculture of fat-positive media. Early fat activism networks began intersecting with queer communities, particularly through lesbian and dyke-focused initiatives; the 1989 Fat Dykes Statement emerged from NAAFA circles, advocating for fat visibility within feminist and LGBTQ spaces, while zines like FaT GiRL (1994–1997) fostered queer fat subcultures in urban centers like San Francisco. However, these efforts drew implicit critiques for insufficient attention to empirical disparities, as obesity rates were disproportionately higher among lower-income groups (with incidence rising from 21.8% to 35.2% for overweight men across decades ending in the 1990s) and certain racial minorities, patterns rooted in socioeconomic and environmental factors rather than uniform acceptance narratives. 2000s–2010s: Academic and Cultural Expansion. During the 2000s and 2010s, fat studies emerged as a distinct academic field, with scholars ...
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