Fat Tactics

Erec Smith is associate professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania.

In this slender volume, Smith (rhetoric, York College) offers readers an overview of fat activism, understanding, acceptance, and discrimination, as well as challenges to traditional European whiteness and gender. He reviews medical issues, social issues, and ideologies as they relate to standards, activism, normalization, and intersectionality. Smith's approach focuses especially on language and rhetoric; issues addressed include the fat acceptance movement (and its critics), fat as a feminist issue, fat studies, language, and the issue's inclusion with civil rights and disability rights (all contentious issues). Smith confronts the medical community and discourse with its war on fat as the last acceptable form of discrimination, and challenges the reader's notions of fat and fatness. Importantly, he also outlines groups, websites, and activism that relates to ideology, discourse, and structuration—all of which offer avenues for further study to the interested reader. This book brings to light many important issues in an area that is often overlooked.Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

• Introduction: The “Spirit” of Fat AcceptanceChapter One: Setting the Stage for Fat ActivismChapter Two: Signification, Legitimation, and Domination in the Fat Acceptance MovementChapter Three: Fat Tactics and the Pragmatics of Fat ActivismChapter Four: Anti-fat Rhetoric and Social MediaChapter Five: The Power of Narrative in Fat AcceptanceConclusion