Disparate But Disabled: Fat Embodiment and Disability Studies

This paper explores questions of fat embodiment and how tensions between and among biologically based descriptions of fatness and disability feature in the lives of women. In tracing the medicalization of fatness and disability and exploring important shared experiences of fat women and disabled people, this paper dislodges both fatness and disability from biological moorings and examines them within cultural and political contexts. In particular, the experiences of oppression and pathology are analyzed to expose the commonalities between what might initially appear to be disparate groups. By illustrating why medicalized rubrics cannot usefully account for the stigma associated with fat and/or disabled embodiments, this paper seeks to set the stage for a feminist disability studies that recognizes disability as a diverse social category and meaningfully incorporates fat embodiments.