What lies behind the slogan, ‘fat is a feminist issue’? Obviously a book: Susie Orbach’s (1978) text. Many today are surprised to learn that the phrase originated as a title. On a 2007 blog, ‘PastaQueen’ writes she thought it was just ‘a phrase I’d heard thrown about’ (2007). Legions of women have found solace in Orbach’s work, which has been all to the good. However, at the level of feminist theory and methodology, I want to argue that the slogan has morphed into an incoherent perspective called ‘body image’, the effects of which greatly hinder feminist understandings of fat.

To use a precise term from Foucault’s (1982) methodology for the analysis of discourse, one can say that the ‘body image’ discourse is now a rarefied and pervasive form of knowledge, spreading across government programmes (in Australia, the ‘Body Think’ initiative in Victoria, in the UK the ‘Body Image’ summit), hospital treatment programmes for eating disorders, school curricula and education programmes, academic analyses in several disciplines (many not equipped with any methodological expertise in media analysis) to, of course, the media itself.

To be schematic, the fixation on the image tends to fix bodies in the sense it renders understandings of bodies as static – and here I intend the double sense: the analyses themselves are static and they produce bodies as static, something that is image but not feelings, emotions and affects, as something untouched by economics, class and ethnic positioning. Translated into identity politics, this imparts a hyper surveillance to what bodies look like, and obviates the different feelings bodies experience both in terms of intra-experience (background, per- sonal history, etc.) and inter-experience (in terms of insults, praise, etc.).

Fat is still a feminist issue. However, the ways in which it has been articulated as feminist desperately need to be revisited and profoundly changed. There is

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much at stake: both in the West and in developing countries the effects of obesity are causing medical and emotional havoc; the widespread demand for ever cheaper food is destroying the environment and people’s lives. The key terms of feminist engagement remain crucial but need to be rearticulated. Food, eating and fat are very much coded in terms of social class, but increasingly food habits produce class rather than merely reflect it. Gender is essential, but not in a way that translates into presenting women as victims. A feminist counter-critique of the dominant discourse on fat needs to be critical of the moralizing tone that defines both feminist and so-called progressive accounts of food, eating and fat.

An over-reliance on a simplistically framed notion of representation has produced a body of argument that can only focus on the body as image. Drawing on much the same methods as other identity politics, including queer, the end point is seen as accepting and celebrating super-sized female bodies. In feminist media studies, a constant theme is the analysis of television and other media to determine that fat bodies are not acceptable in the mainstream media. For instance, in 2005, Feminist Media Studies – which often publishes good material – published a section on ‘Gender and the Plus-size Body’. The overall objective was the advancement of fat acceptance. Melinda Young argued that using the methods of semiotic reversal in regards to ‘fat’, ‘[f]eminism could use this tech- nique to advance fatness as a culturally viable, uncontested form’ (2005: 251). In another article, Natalie Wilson is outraged at the fact that ‘in New Zealand, an official proposal to tax food based on fat content was put forward’ (2005: 252).

Theoretically and politically, these articles seem to be blind to the history of feminist/cultural studies. The idea that politics can be served by methodological- ly simply effecting a semiotic reversal has been deeply critiqued by many, includ- ing Kobena Mercer’s (1994) incisive critique. Given the global and economic realities of the world, there is much more that feminism needs to do beyond ‘reclaim[ing] fat and us[ing] it as a political strategy’ (to quote Young, 2005). There is something seriously wrong with an analysis that leaves untouched the socioeconomic structures that are producing ever larger bodies. What of the immense changes in global flows of capital and agribusiness, which are putting millions out of traditional work and forcing them into cities? What of the cheap and bad products that seemingly everyone in the world now eats?

Analyses that proceed by superficially noting the putative worth or evil of images of bodies rely on an historical context in which Orbach’s original message has been seriously misread. Orbach’s point was to look at why women used fat as armour against patriarchal society. The use of Orbach’s argument to claim ‘fat acceptance’ has been accompanied by a pervasive argument, which draws on a very narrow reading of Foucault’s ideas about power and discipline. To be schematic, fat becomes objectified as a mode of resistance. This encourages numerous textual readings of the various and variously horrendous reality TV shows that feature fat kids and bad parents. In terms of methods, this engages an extraordinarily thin version of textual analysis, whereby preconceived meanings are read off advertising or televised images. Deploying a catch-all cry against

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neoliberalism and governmentality, countless articles remark on how fat bodies are shamed and classed. The usual conclusion is that fat bodies are rendered fodder for the machine that produces ‘better’ citizens – the spectacular analysis of the obvious. Little reflection is given to how these bodies also become grist in the mill of feminist cultural critique. In other words, they prove an obvious point but do little to intervene in a situation where people are increasingly terrorized and seriously damaged by what they eat.

It’s hard to believe that 30 years of quite sophisticated theoretical and method- ological debates within feminism are now reduced to complaints about the lack of images of ‘plus-sized’ women or to the outcry at the emaciated state of catwalk models. This has been accompanied by a pervasive argument that drew on a very narrow reading of Foucault’s ideas about power and discipline. The refrain of ‘docile bodies’, passively awaiting discursive inscription, and the accompanying obsession on resistance closes down more than it illuminates. I profoundly doubt that this is what Foucault meant when he exhorted us to study the heavy materi- ality of discourse. In the stead of his meticulous scientific analysis of the laws of discourse, fat becomes objectified as a mode of resistance. As a viable strategy for social intervention this is painfully limited, and can have quite disastrous political consequences. In human terms, the focus on image and fat acceptance reduces woman’s image to that of ‘fat woman’. Whether she is a proud fat woman or not, this is a sad way to understand human subjectivity.

The secrets and lies behind the mantra of fat is a feminist issue need to be exorcized if as feminists we are to address the structural, political and emotional reasons that are producing a widespread dissatisfaction with bodies, diet and selves.

NOTE

Elsewhere (Probyn, 2005) I elaborate on a methodology for the analysis of power that takes from Foucault and Deleuze in order to rearticulate Martha Nussbaum’s model of universal capacities. There are, of course, many fine feminist uses of Foucault’s under- standing of power but in general too often reading centres on Discipline and Punish.

REFERENCES

Foucault, M. (1982) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books.

Mercer, K. (1994) Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.

Orbach, S. (1978) Fat is a Feminist Issue. New York: Paddington Press. PastaQueen (2007) ‘Fat is a feminist issue’, accessed September 2007. Available:

http://www.pastaqueen.com Probyn, E. (2005) ‘Sex and Power: Capillaries, Capabilities and Capacities’, in C. Calhoun,

Special Feature: PROBYN: Silences Behind the Mantra 403

C. Rojek and B. Turner (eds) The Sage Handbook of Sociology, pp. 516–29. London: Sage.

Wilson, N. (2005) ‘Vilifying Former Fatties: Media Representations of Weight Loss Surgery’, Feminist Media Studies 5(2): 252–5.

Young, M. (2005) ‘One Size Fits All: Disrupting the Consumerized, Pathologized, Fat Female Form’, Feminist Media Studies 5(2): 249–52.

Elspeth PROBYN is the Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her most recent book is Blush: Faces of Shame (University of Minnesota Press, 2005). She is currently working on a project about taste, and social taste, entitled Tasteless (Reaktion Press). ADDRESS: Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. [email: [email protected]]

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