The Body Positivity Movement: A Story of ’Acceptable’ Fatness

During the 2010s, the body positivity movement experienced a meteoric rise in mainstream recognition. It became a cultural phenomenon, generating celebrities, boosts in industries and a modest body diversity in popular media representation. However, body positivity’s celebration was not without critique, as its popularity grew, criticisms relating to the types of bodies that became the focus of body positivity demonstrated the movement’s shortcomings and complexities.

The Body Positivity Movement: A Story of ’Acceptable’ Fatness investigates the contemporary body positivity movement, its triumphs and its shortcomings. Using memoirs and life writing from activists, body positive advocates, and her own personal recollections, author Gemma Gibson traces body positive activities and practices through the fat activist movement in the UK and North America. The Body Positive Movement demonstrates how body positivity has been an important tool for many fat activists, but also how the movement has been vulnerable to political dilution in mainstream media, advertising and social media.

This research uses an activist perspective to explore body positivity through the lens of fat activism. This thought-provoking work has resonance in Sociology, Cultural Studies, Fat Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies. Students, instructors and activists will find The Body Positivity Movement useful for exploring body positivity and popular feminism.

Gemma Lucy Gibson is a feminist researcher and writer who also teaches in universities. Her research focuses on the social constructions of the body and the embedded stigma within institutions. The Body Positivity Movement is her first monograph and is based on her PhD thesis, which she completed at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York.