Gay’s reasoning is, however, more nuanced and complex than simple celebrations of ”bodies of all sizes”. There are obvious connections between Hungerand the body/fat activist movements, whose questioning of homogeneous body norms has caused increasing attention in recent years, especially through social media. Responsibility for this is placed on the individual, surrounded by powerful body norms and a highly profitable industry of diet and fitness products, services and coaches.
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Obesity is frequently, in popular culture as well as in medical discourse, represented and presented as a choice and as something that can, and should be, addressed and transformed. These fields have drawn attention to how health has emerged as a superior value and prime life project in late modern society, and also have come to be equal to the display of a slender, ”fit” body.įurthermore, this essay discusses how obesity as a dimension for oppression is similar to, but also differs from, other such dimensions. In this essay, I discuss Gay’s book in relation to feminist research tradition as well as to the 21st century’s emerging field of research for Critical health studies and Critical weight studies (the latter sometimes referred to as Critical fat studies). In these processes, as Gay’s book shows, insights, criticisms and resistance can also be created.
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Here the body appear as position and situation, shaped by life events, traumas and diet and activity practices, which in turn generate experiences. Gay’s memoir of (her) body illustrate how the body emerges, and is formed and interpreted, through the dynamics between the individual and personal, and the sociocultural, contextual. It is a book that, in an in-depth and touching manner, depicts the violence (physical, verbal and symbolic), abuse and restraints that the obese body is subjected to in public as well as private spaces. In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017), writer and Associate professor of English at Purdue University, Roxane Gay, recounts her life through embodied experiences, observations and trauma.