Report: Colleges Dropping ‘Fat Studies’ Courses in 2018

Colleges around the country are quietly dropping their “Fat Studies” courses, according to a report by Campus Reform.

“Fat Studies,” a trendy new academic discipline dedicated to making the case that the modern world discriminates against the overweight, may be on its last legs. According to a report by Toni Airaksinen at Campus Reform, several of the institutions that offered “Fat Studies” courses in 2017 are slimming down their offerings in 2018. This may be evidence that the “Healthy at Any Size” movement is losing steam.

One such class offered at Oregon State University last year was designed for the purpose of exploring oppression based upon weight.

Examines body weight, shape, and size as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability. Employs a multi-disciplinary approach spanning the behavioral sciences and humanities. Frames weight-based oppression as a social justice issue, exploring forms of activism used to counter weightism perpetuated throughout various societal institutions.

According to Campus Reform, Within the last two years, Oregon State University, Tufts University, Dickinson College, Willamette College, the University of Maryland-College Park, and Portland State University have all offered courses in “Fat Studies.”

Now, only two of those colleges will offer similar courses in 2018. Dickinson College and Oregon State University still have “Fat Studies” courses listed as a part of their academic program in the new year.

In December, Breitbart News reported on a “Fat Studies” professor at York University who wrote an academic journal article that referred to obese stomachs as “glorious.”

Pencil drawing depicts a friend’s gunt—a colloquial term for a fat pubis area between the genitals and the stomach (sometimes called F.U.P.A. or fat upper pubis area). Simply put, gunt is the combination of the words gut and cunt. Deuce (2002) on Urban Dictionary referred to the gunt as “the dreaded gut-cunt. Usually hanging out from beneath a belly-shirt on a girl who has no right wearing one.” This “definition” is followed by deeply fatphobic and misogynist examples of how this term may be utilized. Gunts are not born but grow over time. It takes years to cultivate this part of the body. It takes time and gravity to bring that down, to round it out, and to create its glory. It is queer to love the gunt because gunts are generally despised in normative culture.