“We’re number fat!”: reflections on fat fastpitch with the heavy hitters

ABSTRACT

This paper tells the story about the formation of the Heavy Hitters, a fat-identified softball team in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Heavy Hitters responded to chronic fatphobia in the city by building fat community through organized sports. Since physical activity is categorized as “something only ‘the athletes’ do”, fat people often negotiate fatphobic discourses when participating in group sports. These discourses negatively prescribe fat subjectivity while also emphasizing feelings of “alienation, dread, and disembodiment”. Further, in group sports, many fat people carry lifelong memories and feelings of humiliation, vulnerability and incompetency resulting from multi-layered experiences of fat stigma and exclusion. Utilizing collaborative autoethnography, the authors synthesize their experiences forming and playing on the Heavies within relevant literature and theories of fat activism (e.g. Ellison et al., 2016). This paper brings together the authors’ previous interdisciplinary approaches to issues of fatphobia and gatekeeping in organized and individual sports in efforts to challenge academic conventions which continue to center medicalized and healthist understandings of the “whys” fat people move their bodies. By focusing on the Heavies’ shared and intentional activisms against fat stigma, this paper offers new ways to imagine a future where fat athletes inject activism into physical activity by rejecting weight-loss culture and enjoying sports in the bodies that they have right now.

KEYWORDS:

• Fat activism
• fat athletes
• team sports
• queer softball
• collaborative autoethnography

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge that this work was created while residing on multiple unceded territories including those of the Səl̓ílwətaɬ, Skwxwú7mesh, Xʷməθkwəy̓əm and Gidimt’en territories. We recognize the many ways that Indigenous resistance and dedication to the land deeply informs our own activisms, both within and outside of the academy. Together we would also like to acknowledge players and supporters of the Heavy Hitters who have all contributed to its ongoing success as a fat activist initiative. Specifically, we would like to acknowledge Kate Paterson, Kathleen Lehan, Amanda Goulding and Samantha Nock for their leadership work, guidance, and for helping make this team a reality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Fastpitch is a form of softball where the pitcher uses a circular or windmill motion to pitch the ball at a faster speed.

2. The League’s members are “lesbians, bisexual women, queer women, trans* people, and women allies”, which includes ciswomen of varying sexual identities including heterosexual, asexual, and/or aromantic women (Mabel League, n.d.).

3. For further reading on the spectrum of fatness, see Luna (2019).

4. The Heavy Hitters mutually agreed that nonfat people could be involved with the team through scorekeeping, financial donations, providing snacks at games, or serving as allies by taking on the labor of disputes with the league regarding the status of the team as a fats-only space.

5. A “fat tax” is a term that refers to the additional costs associated with goods and services made available to fat people, such as applying higher prices to plus-size clothing in comparison to similar clothing in straight sizes. For more, see Snider (2018) and Cameron et al. (2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diandra Oliver

Diandra Oliver is PhD Candidate at SFU Geography. A writer and organizer, they cope with late capitalism by spending much of their time outside. Learn more at www.sinkships.ca.

Layla Cameron

Layla Cameron is a PhD Candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She also works as an artist, filmmaker, and journalist. You can read more about her work at www.laylacameron.com.