Editor’s Note
Since the 1990s, associations such as Allegro Fortissimo and, more recently, Gras Politique, as well as activists and authors like Gabrielle Deydier, have introduced a new term to speak about weight-based discrimination: fatphobia. The “body positive” movement, born of these mobilizations against dominant aesthetic and weight norms, has renewed the issues at stake within feminist and queer movements, once again placing the question of the body at the heart of activists’ demands worldwide.
And yet, social networks remain saturated with fatphobic “humor,” and the tyranny of thinness continues to prevail, generating distress, eating disorders, and even self-censorship. More serious still, quantitative studies on fatphobia show that beyond a certain weight, discrimination becomes systematic. It occurs during hiring, at work, but also on dating apps, in gyms, at the doctor’s office, and even in intimate settings, within the family.
With this book, Solenne Carof offers one of the first sociological studies of fatphobia in France. What do very large-bodied people experience in a society like ours? What does the stigma of being “fat,” for men and women alike, reveal about the norms that weigh differently on each? What consequences does this stigmatization have for those concerned? Throughout her investigation, the author uncovers the power relations embedded in the issue of weight – relations that structure the hierarchies of our society.
A decisive study that highlights the importance of a form of discrimination still rarely condemned, whether socially or legally.
Solenne Carof is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sorbonne University. She is also a member of the GEMASS laboratory as well as of the Biomedical Humanities Initiative of the Sorbonne University Alliance.