Fatness and the Need for a Public

This chapter discusses the intersection of fatness and the public sphere, exploring the need for a public to fully realize the aims of body size activism. It also delves more deeply into the concept of republican political economy and how it reinforces anti-fat bias, ableism, and racism in society. Counter to popular belief, it is not solely a corporate or neoliberal political economy that contributes to anti-fat bias. Instead, there is an older assumption about “fitness” and “health” that argues individuals in society must maintain a body size and range of body abilities to be “good” members of a community. This ableism is seen as a requirement of free, democratic societies that supposedly require a healthy citizenry. As this chapter shows, too, much like the criticism of body positivity—specifically that it is personally focused on individual psychological states and allows a privileging of thin to average-size, able-bodied people—fat people need to be able to access the public, be seen and recognized as equal beings in public, and should not through design or social bias be excluded in physical public or online public spaces.