New Zealand’s first Fat Studies conference will be held this week.
The seminar will be held at Massey’s Wellington campus.
Massey lecturer in human development Dr Cat Pausé said Fat Studies was an interdisciplinary field that challenged existing assumptions about fatness and fat people.
Dr Pausé said stereotypes and stigma were placed on fat body, but the relationship between weight and health is more complicated than people think.
“As a fat activist and a fat scholar I want to change the national discourse on fatness and hopefully this conference will take another step in that direction," she said.
“Fat people deserve the same rights and dignity as non-fat people, which we currently don’t have.”
Topics discussed at the conference, being held on Thursday and Friday, range from fat pride to children’s lessons in fitness and fatness, weight anxiety, the obesity panic and unfixing body size and shape.
Fat Studies is a small but emerging field and recently published its first journal, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society.
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