Fat and Furious: Igniting Radical Fat Resistance

A bold takedown of the ways women are terrorized about fatness, and a treatise on the revolutionary power of fat fury

Anti-fatness and fat-shaming are used most often as a way to inspire fear in others about being or becoming fat. Scholar and therapist Breanne Fahs breaks down how the dread of fatness is used to control and capitalize on women’s fears of their unruly bodies and demonstrates how rejecting shame and instead igniting feelings of anger can help us collectively move towards justice.

Weaving together the voices of fat people and activists with damning psychological and sociological evidence, Fahs chronicles how fat oppression and fear-mongering impacts every aspect of our lives, from media representation to workplace and healthcare discrimination to the problem with body positivity movements, and even how we handle fat death. She argues that rage, or fat fury, becomes the necessary antidote to the resignation and powerlessness that anti-fatness so often generates.

Illuminating and infuriating, Fahs intertwines the personal and systemic impacts of anti-fatness and calls on all of us—fatter and thinner alike—to reflect and revolt.

Breanne Fahs is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, where she specializes in studying women's sexuality, critical embodiment studies, feminist histories, and political activism. She has authored many books, including most recently Unshaved and Burn It Down! Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution. She is the founder and director of the Feminist Research on Gender and Sexuality Group at Arizona State University, and she also works as a clinical psychologist in private practice.