Holding Space For People Just Trying To Survive: The Inclusion Of Fat Students In Higher Education
| Author(s) | Moreno, Francisca | |
| Date Accessioned | 2022-07-21T16:56:21Z | |
| Date Available | 2022-07-21T16:56:21Z | |
| Publication Date | 2022-05 | |
| Abstract | Fatness is not a part of the analysis surrounding the inclusion of students in Higher Education. Oppression based on body-size, and critical obesity scholarship is integral to understanding how institutions welcome people. Examining support provided to fat students, this analysis provides space for fat students to talk about their experiences using focus groups from a snowball sample of people who self-identify as fat. This analysis deliberately avoids a focus on fatness through the lens of disability or disease. Utilizing primarily lexicon sourced from grassroots Fat activists, this paper expands upon the fat spectrum and how fatness cannot be plotted linearly. With intersectionality in mind, this paper uses Queer theory to challenge binary conceptions of fatness and the shorthand fat people use to discuss inequities. The interviews from this project led to the existence of a “fat ecosystem” which emerges from this project to better describe the fluidity of people’s identities. While participants detailed the rigidness of their opportunities within higher education, their own introspection is dynamic and ever-changning much like an ecosystem. Despite participant’s willingness to adapt to stressful situations, this project also resulted in the coining of the theory “fat essentialism.” This theory acknoledges the rigid path that is set forth for fat people, which includes loss of opportunities and pigeonholing them into labels they do not claim. Most participants had been labeled as fat before they knew what body size diversity meant and for some participants this condemned them from pursuing their life’s passions. Fat students use survival tactics to cope with their determined paths. These tactics includes fight, flight, and appease, these instincts are used in Adeverse Childhood Experiences to explain how survivors of gender-based violence experience trauma but had not yet been applied to fat students. This project examines how fat people’s wellbeing and health outcomes are in danger because of the way they are treated and limited by the labeling of fatness. Instead of addressing fatness through a health-centered approach this project challenges institutions to have discussions about the fat student experience in spaces of diversity, equity, and inclusion to encourage institutional restructuring. | en_US |
| Advisor | Chrysanthi Leon | |
| Program | Women and Gender Studies | |
| URL | https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/31140 | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| Keywords | Fat essentialism | en_US |
| Keywords | Queer theory | en_US |
| Keywords | Body size diversity | en_US |
| Title | Holding Space For People Just Trying To Survive: The Inclusion Of Fat Students In Higher Education | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |