Examining the fat body

Today’s society thinks of fat people as being defective, unhealthy and deviant. PhD student Samantha Murray is interested in questioning the ways in which these stereotypical notions construct the bodily experience of fat women in western culture.

“I am specifically talking about what it is to be fat, how we actually experience our bodies, and how we often embody negative stereotypes and notions of fatness,” says Murray.

Her research is based on personal experience.

“I have lived in a fat body for 26 years, lived through bulimia and embodied all the dominant, negative notions about fatness,” she explains. “So I am using a lot of personal anecdotes and personal narrative to talk about the fat bodily experience, particularly for women.”

Australia is in the grip of an obesity epidemic according to the ‘experts’ but Murray contests that this is a convenient way of fuelling negative attitudes and prejudice.

“That isn’t to say there are not some real health concerns for people who are fat,” she points out. “But I think that the obesity epidemic has become a blanket buzz-word for a series of health problems and negative readings of the fat body that aren’t necessarily all about ill health.”

Murray has experienced first hand the angst of mistreatment by the medical profession. “To go to a doctor and have them say to you ‘well you are fat and that’s the problem’ even before you tell them your health concern is very frustrating,” she says.

What concerns Murray and her contemporaries is the medical sanctioning of the moral panic over fatness.  Narratives of medical science are held up as unquestionable forms of knowledge, and when medicine proclaims that ‘it’s bad to be fat’, this serves to further legitimise public prejudice and negative attitudes.

Through her thesis she also plans to look at the size acceptance movement and examine the sort of personal empowerment it claims it offers fat people.

“I think it is really interesting that there is a fairly singular idea of what the body is supposed to be,” Murray says. “I hope to investigate ways we can attempt to rethink dominant frameworks concerning bodily aesthetics, and simultaneously, to look at the power and persistence of these frameworks in shaping who we are and the way we know ourselves. I think it is something that is deserving of critical attention.”

Fat theory in demand

As fat theory is an emerging field of study, Murray has been in demand on the national and international speaking circuit. She has spoken at Trinity College in Dublin and will present at Hope University in the United Kingdom this June. She is also currently editing her own special journal edition on fat theory for publication later this year.

PhD as a personal insight

“A lot of people have told me that it is very brave to speak about this issue as a fat woman,” says Murray. “With some theses there can be a distance between yourself and what you are writing about. There is something really powerful about situating yourself in your work and looking at your own experience and lived reality, then theorising and writing about it.”

For further information contact Murray’s supervisor Dr Nikki Sullivan in the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies: Nikki.Sullivan@scmp.mq.edu.au

More Humanities and Language stories here