Harvard to offer course on ‘Fat Talk and Thin Ideals’
The course will look at “the emergence of pervasive weight stigma—as manifest in ‘fat shaming’ and even in policy interventions that have had unintended consequences.”
The course seems to follow a trend of universities offering courses on obesity and ‘Fat Studies.’
Harvard University is set to offer a new course on obesity.
In “Fat Talk and Thin Ideals: Culture, Social Norms and Weight,” which will be offered in the spring semester in 2025, students will discuss how “heaviness in the U.S. migrate[d] from signifying prestige to stigmatizing” and “examine the bio-social dimensions of disordered eating and being overweight as well as the volatility of weight ideals and their enduring moral salience.”
The class will “draw from anthropological and clinical perspectives to explore the rapidly shifting landscape of body shape ideals in the U.S. over the last century, the arrival of eating disorders in the Global South, the medicalization of obesity, and the emergence of pervasive weight stigma—as manifest in ‘fat shaming’ and even in policy interventions that have had unintended consequences.”
[RELATED: Penn State hires ‘non-binary’ activist of ‘fat liberation’ who once made a font for ‘people of size’]
The course instructor, Professor Anne Becker, is a medical professor and the Dean for Clinical and Academic Affairs. She is an “anthropologist and psychiatrist whose research focus includes the social and cultural mediation of presentation and risk of eating disorders, social barriers to care for mental disorders and school-based mental health promotion,” according to the course description.
Offering courses on “fatness” seems to be a growing trend among many universities.
The New School in New York is also offering a course on the subject next semester titled “Fat Fashion: Fashion Design for Large Bodies,” which “honors the work of fat activists by intentionally reclaiming the word ‘fat’ as a celebration of larger bodies.”
The University of Maryland will start a new course as an “Intro to Fat Studies” that looks at “fatness” through the lens of intersectionality, considering how it supposedly “intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability.”
Northwestern University let students enroll in a “Critical Fat Studies” class, which similarly focused on intersectional themes. The university also instituted a new policy to crack down on fat jokes.
Brown University also offered a “Fat Studies” course on “Examining the Science, Culture, and Politics of Fatness,” which discussed “the pathologization of fatness in the medical community.”
Campus Reform has reached out to Harvard and Professor Becker for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
