Hits and Shits of 2009

It's time to say goodbye to the last year of a decade in which the global obesity epidemicTM turned a lot of people who should know better into a bunch of fat panic-stricken Chicken Lickens. It's been a fabulously profitable time for those who benefit from fat hatred – motherfuckers! At this juncture it might be appropriate to be eaten up with helpless rage but...I...will...resist because, paraphrasing Newton, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So whilst gastric band surgeons, government obesity tsars, academic researchers supported by weight loss corporations, obesity charities, and fatphobic media producers are currently on a merry groove, their actions have provided a rich seam of material for an emerging band of critics to rip apart. It's a great time to be involved with fat lib and the decade has been busy and productive for fat activists, Health At Every Size proponents, Fat Studies scholars, and everyone else who's sick of fat hatred.

Anyway, here's a purely personal and short-ish pick of the hits and shits of the past year.

Hits

Beth Ditto
Not only did she work the paparazzi and the most prominent and fatphobic fashionistas in the world, she did it with humour, style, intelligence and talent. She created the most bizarre intersection of fat activism and pop culture that I have ever witnessed at the launch for her clothes range in July (karaoke and Chubster donut hands with Kate Moss, Simon Cowell glowering over the scene, various z-listers too, wha'?!) She broke all the rules. Oh yeah, and she's still an amazing singer. Keep doing what you're doing Beth, keep going up, up, up.

Philly Flesh Mob
Funny, wild, zany, daft, culminating in a shoddily-executed human pyramid on Philadelphia's Rocky Steps. Life-affirming wonderfulness indeed.

ESRC Fat Studies and Health At Every Size seminars
Thanks to official funding from the UK government's academic research department, Fat Studies and Health At Every Size are about to get some righteous and rigorous attention with a series of low-cost, one-day seminars in the UK. Not only will this expand possibilities for these fields, not only will it help develop new alliances between activists, academics and other parties, but it's happening outside the US (though, yeah, the western English-speaking stranglehold on critical fat work is still strong, despite new developments in Asia and Europe, and I hope that shifts in the new decade).

The Fat of the Land: A Queer Chub Harvest Festival
Was a lot of hard work, and also a hoot. Read the queerchub blog.

Fat Studies
You wait for ages and then it all arrives at once. Two landmark books got published this year, Fat Studies in the UK, and The Fat Studies Reader. The Pop Culture Association's Fat Studies panels in New Orleans were beautifully expansive and intellectually exciting. More please!

The Chubsters
This year this girl gang metamorphosed into something really weird and thrilling. Somehow we became a platform for stonemasonry and home made electric games, we made friends with supermodels and the people of Hamburg, made people cry with joy at the British Film Institute, became the object of academic attention, and embarked on a mysterious trajectory that will end god knows where. The future looks bright for misfit fat freaks.

Late inclusion: The Wellcome Library
Yes, yes, o yes!

And now, the Shits!

LighterLife
Another woman died this year who had been following the LighterLife diet but her death, and the others, had nothing whatsoever to do with the company, ok? Meanwhile LighterLife's impressive PR campaign continues apace with sponsorship of at least one well-regarded obesity research association and saturation advertising on cable TV.

Size Matters?
The organisers of this academic conference could have used their power for good but they chose the dark side of the force instead. Shame, shame, shame.

Obesity Cost Calculator
How much do fat people cost the US economy? Now you can find out with this methodologically execrable online calculator, paid for with the few leftover tax dollars that haven't been spent on aggressive American military interventions overseas, I suspect. Guaranteed to scapegoat and stigmatise people.

Stupid Media
It's stating the obvious and this year's bullshit was pretty similar to any other year's, only with added Emine Saner at the always-ready-to-hand-wring-over-the-obesity-epidemic-Guardian, climate change, and general crapulousness. I wish I could enjoy this stuff in an evil way but I haven't evolved that far yet.

Susie Orbach
It's beyond me how she manages to maintain any credibility. Her turn at ASDAH this year was an embarrassment, she should never have been invited onto that platform; she talks absolute rubbish, she's a fatphobe, and yet she remains a hot property, courted and revered. She pops up with such irritating regularity, like a pernicious case of haemorrhoids, that I've given her her own tag.

Bullying in the Fatosphere
Shutting people up, closing down discussions because you don't like them, playing favourites and creating enemies, bunker mentalities, petty self-righteousness, arbitrary rules, US cultural imperialism. I've seen it all happen in 2009 and I'm not into it, it's not my idea of liberation and I'm not joining in. Buck up, people, I know you've got better in you.