Feminist theology and contemporary dieting culture: sin, salvation and women’s weight loss narratives

Chabot, Roger

doi:10.1080/21604851.2022.2093476

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“…I have not experienced weightbased discrimination in employment and have usually been able to shop for clothes on the high street (for example), but I have always been aware of my size growing up, compared with my twin sister as the 'chubbier' one, and immersed within cultural discourses that make me see my body as too big. I have felt the need to be smaller and have engaged in weight-loss dieting to try and become smaller (Bacon 2019).…”

Section: Feminist Participatory Action Research (Fpar): a Disruptive ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat Liberation

Bacon

2023

Religions

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In contemporary Western society, fatness speaks for itself, affirming the fat person as an aesthetic and moral failure even before they say a word. Fat bodies, and fat female bodies in particular, are produced and reproduced as sites of excess and obscenity. Christian theology has protected itself from the contaminating touch of fat by ignoring fatness in theological discourse. Especially concerning is the relative absence of ‘fat talk’ from liberation and feminist theologies. It is time for a different word to be offered on fat that does not speak for itself and that emerges from the lived experiences of diverse women as they interpret their own faith and fatness. This essay explores the need for critical feminist theologies on fat liberation and identifies some features they might display. Here, I discuss Feminist Participatory Action Research and ethnography as methodologies that might help feminist theologians researching fat to prioritise the overlooked bodies and stories of fat women, and to continue liberation theology’s longstanding commitment to constructing historical projects oriented towards social change. Fat liberation, as a historical and theological project, calls for a ‘conversion’ to fatness and for a critical questioning of assumed ‘truths’ about fat. It positions the struggle against fat hatred as a pursuit of life and as faithful participation in the liberating activity of the God of Life.

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Section: Feminist Participatory Action Research (Fpar): a Disruptive ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat Liberation

Bacon

2023

Religions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Feminist theology and contemporary dieting culture: sin, salvation and women’s weight loss narratives

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat Liberation

Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat Liberation

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