It is okay to be fat. This is the basic premise of fat activism, a social movement that has existed in Canada since the 1970s. Being Fat focuses on the earliest strands of the movement, covering the last decades of the twentieth century. The book explores how fat activists wrestled with feminist issues of the era, including femininity, sexuality, and health.

Showcasing the earliest efforts of fat activists in Canada, such as the growth of social initiatives “for fat women only,” Being Fat helps us recognize the long reach of second-wave feminism and how it shaped activists’ approaches to everyday experiences like shopping, exercise, and going to the doctor.

Jenny Ellison is a curator of the exhibition on Hockey in Canada for the Canadian Museum of History and Curator of Sport and Leisure at the Canadian Museum of History. She is the co-editor of Obesity in Canada: Historical and Critical Perspectives (University of Toronto Press).

Jenny Ellison's profile page

"Being Fat is an important text that provides a historical and political grounding of fat women organizations in Canada. […] This scholarship is imperative to recognizing and understanding how the fat liberation movement began and provides insight to contemporary forms of resistance."

<em>Fat Studies</em>