A fatter gender and sexuality research

What is our PhD project about?

In my project, I investigate gender, sexuality and body normativity with a particular focus on fatness. When we see how fat people are met and treated in regard to gender and sexuality, it is obvious that the normative ideals for gender and sexuality also has a bodily dimension related to body size. For instance: If you are to picture a sexual person who experiences sexual attraction and who is sexually active, what does this person look like? Fat people are often desexualized or hypersexualized, which means that they can be rejected or ridiculed, or that one expects them to be "open for anything". This can lead to fat people having a particularly hard time setting sexual boundaries. These presumptions about someone’s sexuality depend on context and can tell us something about what or who is seen as adhering to the norm.

I will interview fat people and talk to them about their view of and experiences with gender and sexuality. This will give us insight into how the normative is reproduced and maintained in regard to how fat people are treated, how they understand themselves, and how they navigate gender and sexuality. 

I also want to investigate the importance of language. How does it affect you as a person when there’s no neutral way in which to talk about your body? We have medical terms like “overweight” and “obesity”, as well as terms like “fat”, which can have negative associations.

Also, "fat" is an unresolved analytical category; there is no clear boundary for when someone is perceived as fat or not. It is subjective and socioculturally contextual. The medical weight categories are based on Body Mass Index (BMI), which only describes the relationship between height and weight. Being classified as "overweight" does not automatically mean that one is perceived as fat.

Fatness is more than biological matter and medical categories. There is a great deal of moral judgment attached to body size and weight. Weight stigma is well‑documented and increases the mortality of those who are exposed to it. 

Fat studies is the field of research which critically examines society’s attitudes towards and treatment of fat people, as well as representations of fat people in the public debate and media, amongst other things. I use the words fat and fatness actively, because that's what I'm researching. I translate the English "fat studies" to the Norwegian "tjukkstudier" or "tjukkforskning."

What is the background for your choice of topic?

In my master thesis I wrote about sexual normativity, more concretely the concepts compulsory sexuality and asexuality. Compulsory sexuality describes the often-assumed notion that all people are sexual in approximately the same way; that everyone experiences sexual desire and sexual attraction in a fairly similar way. This is of course not the reality.

Asexuality is a sexual identity in the same way as, for instance, heterosexuality or bisexuality, and is defined based on a person who experiences little or no sexual attraction to anyone, regardless of gender.

When I worked with this project, I learnt about desexualisation and hypersexualization, which describes how certain groups, based on for instance functional ability, age, race/ethnicity and body size, can experience having their sexuality ridiculed or not taken seriously.

Some groups can also experience that their sexuality is seen as something that needs to be controlled; that they are “dangerous” or “inappropriate” in some way. They can suffer discrimination; for instance by being denied necessary healthcare.

When looking into research on this, I found very little about fat people, and in general, there is a lack of research on fat people in Norway outside of the medical and health science fields. My PhD project is thus a continuation of my interest in and exploration of compulsory sexuality, sexuality norms and the importance of language when it comes to articulating, understanding and communicating one’s own sexuality. I want to illuminate and incorporate the fatness perspective into Norwegian gender and sexuality research.

Which methodology do you intend to use?

As a starting point, I will interview fat people in Norway. In my interviews, I will emphasize gender, sexual identity, age and race/ethnicity. I will also include functional ability and class if it makes sense, since all these dimensions are represented in existing fat studies.

In addition, I will examine how the ways fatness is understood and talked about are connected to people’s overall situations and experiences. I will spend time developing the interview questions, as the use of language is something I intend to work carefully with in the project. I will not place restrictions on which words or terms the participants choose to use, and I am interested in how they describe themselves.

What makes your research relevant to the public?

There is very little research in Norway and the Norwegian context that simultaneously explores fat people’s experiences about sexuality and gender, while also taking a critical approach.

I would like to contribute to the establishing fat studies in Norway. I want to contribute to discussions about how we talk about fat people and fatness, how they talk about themselves, and how we can recognize being fat as a genuine dimension in people’s lives; something we need to consider, and not just as something one should wish to avoid or change.