Fat and Furious: Interrogating Fat Phobia and Nurturing Resistance in Medical Framings of Fat Bodies

This is a commentary on Ward and McPhail’s (2019) article “Fat Shame and Blame in Reproductive Care: Implications for Ethical Health Care Interactions.” Here I examine three aspects of fatness and health care that deserve more attention by researchers and clinical practitioners. First is the nature of fat phobia and the ways that hatred of fatness permeates the world, including health care. Second is the ways that fat studies scholars and fat activists can work together to reduce fat phobia and improve fat women’s lives and health. Third is training and promotion of fat-affirmative psychotherapy to provide supportive space for healing from the effects of fat phobia and stigmatization of fat bodies.