https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2458-2060
I remember first reading Esther Rothblum’s work when I was an undergraduate student studying psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan in the 1990s. I was a fat, lesbian, budding-feminist, first-generation, Midwestern, college student who’d grown up in a rural town and was encountering knowledge and ways of knowing to which I’d never before had access. Struggling through the jargon of academic journal articles and books, my brain and heart were being cracked open and reassembled in wondrous new ways that made me super annoying to my parents and often a mystery to myself. Critical theorists would likely term this uncomfortable and magical experience, “conscientization,”Footnote1 while feminists might refer to it as “consciousness-raising,”Footnote2 and sociologists would say I was developing my “sociological imagination.”Footnote3 All I knew is that I felt lost and found, all at the same time. It is fascinating to read and listen today to some of the many print and video interviewsFootnote4 that Esther has given across the years, discussing her life and experiences as a fat, lesbian, feminist psychologist whose work has always been groundbreaking across numerous fronts. Her candor, humor, humility, composure, and insight across these testimonies are both instructional and enviable.
Quite simply put, Esther’s fat, lesbian, feminist life and career provided evidence that my own was not only possible, but that I might even be able to thrive while working collectively with others so that they might also flourish. Over these past nearly thirty years since I first encountered academia, it’s never remained far from my mind that the difficult and uncomfortable work that Esther and her contemporaries committed to and struggled through metaphorically paved the way for me and many of my peers. Esther has long highlighted the importance of friendship in her life and, oddly, I’ve carried Esther along with me as one of my “scholarly friends,” long before I ever had the opportunity to actually meet her. These “scholarly friends” were the names and writings that I engaged with over long nights studying, during exams, through classroom dialogues, in spirited debates with professors and peers, and across various musings as I’ve carved out my own unique style and way of engaging within academia. When I’m feeling frustrated over disciplinary divides, academic gatekeeping, and institutions’ slowness to change and inclusion, I think of the work of these “scholarly friends” and all the resistance and roadblocks they encountered and fought through. Esther founded not one but two cutting-edge journals over her career – the Journal of Lesbian Studies (established in 1997) and Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society (established in 2012).
Academia can be a fairly inhospitable place. It is frequently dominated by fragile and warring egos, increasing scarcity and precarity, and spiraling bureaucracy and demands for production. It is also a space that isn’t always welcoming to feminists, queer people, and those who are fat. Yet we find and connect with one another at various intersections, build solidarity, and create new spaces for ourselves and one another to serve as accomplices for making productive trouble. This can mean speaking up about the importance of becoming “slow professors”Footnote5 (even as we may fail repeatedly at that task), ensuring that we quite literally have a place at the table (and with armless chairs), advocating for the importance of “fringe” voices and perspectives (so they spend less time trapped on the margins), and making sure that our partners are named and included (and referred to with the correct pronouns), along with the partners of our cishet colleagues, at social events. As scholars, we hold the potential to set the scholarly agenda for the next generation, creating possibilities instead of barriers to their success and groundbreaking achievements. None of it is easy, of course, but all of it is worthwhile and necessary.
I eventually went on to earn my Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan and the first article I ever published on my own work, focusing on the cisgender (non-transgender) women partners of transgender men, was published in the Journal of Lesbian Studies.Footnote6 While I recall feeling terrified about putting my own “voice” out there for a scholarly audience for the first time, I remember Esther’s editorial feedback as both constructive and kind. After more than ten years of leadership as founding editor of Fat Studies, Esther is now moving more fully into her retirement (she is Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University since 2021). Over the past year, Esther graciously allowed me to apprentice as incoming editor of Fat Studies. I cannot imagine taking on this task without her first showing me the ropes and easing me into various editorial processes over these past months. She has been characteristically patient and encouraging, nudging me when I needed to be nudged, and providing encouragement and leadership by example along the way. These are quite obviously some very big shoes to fill and I am so grateful for the opportunity to lead, in my own fat, feminist, lesbian, and queer way.
It has been wonderful to watch fat studies develop into such an interdisciplinary and community-driven area of study. It is a space where humanists, direct-service professionals, social scientists, medical scientists, and various methodological and theoretical approaches each offer important contributions. Over these next years of its development, I would love to see even more dialogue and collaboration across these intersections and approaches. Covid laid bare just how important it is for us to figure things out together. From the earliest waves of the pandemic, it became apparent that fat people, older people, and people of color were dying at far greater numbers than their peers. The factors driving these disparities are complicated and require careful consideration of biological, social-systemic, cultural, and historical factors to understand. Today, bariatric surgeries and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists and other drugs (marketed by pharmaceutical companies under names such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Monjouro, and Zepbound) are on the increase, in great consumer demand, often not covered by insurance, and inaccessible to many. These procedures and pharmaceuticals are quite literally changing the shape of the population – but for how long and for whom? Discussions of the safety, efficacy, and long-term impacts of these “cures” for fatness (medicalized as “obesity”) raise many important questions, many of which are only being addressed by fat studies scholars. For example: How might medical weight-loss procedures and pharmaceuticals relate to eugenicist social practices? What are the socioemotional impacts, on fat people, of attempts to eradicate “obesity”? Are engagements with medicalized weight loss by fat people akin to or entirely distinct from engagements by transgender people with medical systems as they engage in gender transition? How might we better understand the messy entanglements between bodily autonomy, informed consent, anti-fat discrimination, corporatized medicine, and intentional weight loss? How do the answers to each of these questions shift or transform when people of color, queer and trans people, superfats and infinifats, disabled people, and those who are poor are most directly impacted or taken under central consideration? Who has the power to set the agenda in fat studies and fat activist communities and who remains on the sidelines? Which topics are verboten in fat studies or in fat activist communities? These are difficult questions that drive many of my own engagements with (and commitments to) fat studies, despite their inherent thorniness.
This issue of Fat Studies, the first in our 2024 volume, includes articles addressing: how fat people navigate pregnancy, birth, and fertility; intersections of the patriarchal horror genre and fat liberation; the fat-shaming “war on fat” in postwar Finland; fatness and the celebrity of Lizzo in “Watch Out For the Big Grrrls;” fatness and masculinity in superhero films; and the complex negotiations of fatness and non-normative bodies in online medical crowdfunding. There are also a number of excellent reviews of some of the latest book releases with relevance to fat studies. I thank all of the authors, reviewers, and the Taylor & Francis editorial and production team (Alexandra Kanovsky, Jessica Valenti, Cleon Abitria, and Irudayaraj Edward) for their work to get this content into the pages of Fat Studies and out to the reading public. I also thank Esther Rothblum, forever and always.
The next issue of Fat Studies, which will be published in May 2024, will focus on a special theme: “Fat Social Justice Now!” I edited this special issue collection because social justice must certainly be at the forefront during these difficult times. In addition to the articles that will appear in that issue, I would love to continue with our celebration of Esther Rothblum’s visionary leadership, mentorship, scholarship, and friendship. It has surely contributed to social justice and tributes should be for the living and making life more livable. I welcome any and all reflections on Esther that you may wish to contribute to our next issue – it could be a sentence, a paragraph, a photograph, a drawing, or whatever you’d like to send along. Please send your contributions to me at: [email protected] by March 01, 2024. I have also been busy assembling a fantastic editorial board because, as we queer editors born in the 1970s all know: it takes a village, people <insert groan here>! You can learn more about who these wonderful folks are, below. They will each be serving a three-year term from 2024–2026. I also want to encourage you to consider guest editing a special issue. If you have ideas that you’d like to chat with me about, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via e-mail.
In solidarity, with gratitude and excitement for the future of Fat Studies,
Editor-in-Chief
Carla A. Pfeffer, M.S.W., Ph.D. – Michigan State University, USA
Editorial Board
Hanne Blank Boyd, Ph.D. – independent scholar, United States
Layla Cameron, Ph.D. – Simon Fraser University, Canada
Lina Casadó-Marín, Ph.D. – University Rovira i Virgili, Spain
Genaro Castro-Vázquez, Ph.D. – Kansai Gaidai University, Japan
Athia N. Choudhury, Ph.D. – Duke University, United States
E. Cassandra Dame-Griff, Ph.D. – Gonzaga University, United States
Ashlea Gillon, M.P.H., Ph.D. Candidate – University of Auckland, Aotearea New Zealand
Hannele Harjunen, Ph.D. – University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Erin N. Harrop, L.I.C.S.W., Ph.D. – University of Denver, United States
April Herndon, Ph.D. – Winona State University, United States
David J. Hutson, Ph.D. – Pennsylvania State University, Abington, United States
Eve Hyrkäs, Ph.D. – University of Oulu, Finland
Anna Kirkland, J.D., Ph.D. – University of Michigan, United States
Neha Kumari, Ph.D. – Sri Balaji University, India
Caleb Luna, Ph.D. – University of California, Santa Barbara, United States
Nina Mackert, Ph.D. – University of Leipzig, Germany
Katie Manthey, Ph.D. – Salem College, United States
Hailey Nicole Otis, Ph.D. – University of Maryland, College Park, United States
Emily Allen Paine, Ph.D. – Columbia University, United States
Courtney J. Patterson-Faye, Ph.D. – Wesleyan University, United States
Paula Rawlins, Ph.D. – Yale University, United States
Joelle Ryan, Ph.D. – University of New Hampshire, United States
Sonya Satinsky, M.P.H., Ph.D. – Tufts University, United States
Mary Senyonga, Ph.D. – Sacramento State University, United States
Shailendra Singh, Ph.D. – Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India
Stefanie Snider, Ph.D. – Columbus College of Art and Design, Lindenwood University, Ohio University, and University of South Carolina Upstate, United States
Carey Jean Sojka, Ph.D. – Southern Oregon University, United States
Yofi Tirosh, S.J.D. – Tel Aviv University, Israel
Thea Werkhoven, Ph.D. – independent scholar, Australia
Francis Ray White, Ph.D. – University of Westminster, United Kingdom
Jason Whitesel, Ph.D. – Illinois State University, United States
Cookie Woolner, Ph.D. – University of Memphis, United States
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.
2. Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. (1971). How to start your own consciousness-raising group. Black Maria. https://web.archive.org/web/20031229042323/http://cwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/crcwlu.html
3. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
4. For example, see: https://theoutwordsarchive.org/interview/esther-rothblum/; https://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=78473; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GyKdwXVVqw;
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36458842/;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pGDEh0VNKE; https://feministvoices.com/files/profiles/pdf/Esther-Rothblum-Transcript.pdf; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=−9YmBSprtrY;
5. Berg, M, & Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.
6. Pfeffer, Carla A. (2008). Bodies in relation – bodies in transition: Lesbian partners of trans men. and body image. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 12(4), 325–345. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10894160802278184