An exploration of contemporary fat politics from critical legal, cultural, and historical perspectives, this book is informed by an intersectional analysis of fat as it relates to race, class, and disability in the struggle for equal rights.

Despite an increasing percentage of the U.S. population who are overweight, dismantling the negative framework around fat bodies has been extremely challenging for changemakers who are interested in securing fundamental human rights and equal protection for fat people in the law, in healthcare, and in society.



Body Sovereignty: Fat Politics and the Fight for Human Rights examines not only weight-based discrimination, but the underlying politics that benefit and encourage it to thrive. The authors simultaneously call attention to the fat liberation movement's intersections with race, class, and disability politics and the real people whose lives are affected by their outsider status. They highlight fat injustice from various perspectives, such as health and law, and uplift the often-overlooked voices of people of color, disabled people, superfat people, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Body Sovereignty invites readers to consider fat bodies and the politics of fatness from a nuanced, forward-thinking vantage point that values the voices of fat people as experts of their own experience and people worthy of equal rights.


* Provides the missing intersectional analysis in theorizing fat liberation movements and is written by movement leaders with significant media experience

* Fills a timely, critical gap in the current field of fat studies by exploring the politics of fat through a legal lens

* Humanizes the victims of the war on fat by showing both its known and hidden casualties

* Includes short interviews and quoted scholarship from intellectual/academic and activist leaders thinking about fat liberation in diverse fields

* Offers opportunities for changemakers to re-envision organizing frameworks