Fatness, friendship, and “corpu-allyhood” stratagems

ABSTRACT The practice, theory, and critique of allyship have been central to feminist scholarship and activism. Identities once not regarded as identities at all but as neutral givens, such as maleness, whiteness, cisnormativity, heterosexuality, abledness, and settlerhood, have all become politicized planes of analysis and action. Yet little scholarship, praxis, and activism has held people with thin privilege accountable for the role they play in fueling the fires of fatphobia in the day to day. Even while fat studies and fat activisms have worked to dismantle fatphobia, thin people have rarely been asked to play pivotal roles in dismantling fatphobic worldviews. In this piece, we draw on anti-racist feminism, disability studies, and fat activism to think about what it might take to become a fat ally. Grounded in our collaborative corporeality as a (very) fat and (very) thin person, we hone the method of research-practice in this part theoretical essay and part action zine. Specifically, we argue that for fat allyhood to be possible, allies need to hone anti- rather than non-fatphobic commitments and practices grounded in what Mia Mingus frames as “access intimacy.”