Well, the producers of Borat certainly won’t be short of material if they ever plan on making a sequel. The U.S. is so politically conscientious it’s making a laughing stock of itself. Read about the new discipline.
“Why should I be ashamed?” said Director, 22, a graduate student in women’s studies at San Diego State University, who wields the word with both defiance and pride, the way the gay community uses queer.
“I’m fat. So what?”
Even as science, medicine and government are targeting obesity as a threat to the nation’s health and treasury, fat studies is emerging as a new interdisciplinary area of study on campuses across the United States and is gaining interest in Australia and Britain. Nestled within the humanities and social sciences fields, fat studies explores the social and political consequences of being fat.
Proponents of fat studies see it as the sister subject – and it is most often women promoting the study, many of whom are lesbian activists – to women’s studies, queer studies, disability studies and ethnic studies. In many of its permutations, then, it is the study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society.
Juxtaposing obesity against ethnicity is highly debatable at best, patently ludicrous at worst. Most. People. Aren’t. Born. Fat. There are no fat-only bathrooms, schools or drinking fountains. You will never be forced to sit at the back of the bus on account of your fatness. Go and work out already!
