Crystal Kotow 
The Hidden Lives of Big Beautiful Women [PDF ebook] 

This book is a deep dive into the largely unexplored space of BBW “bashes”—multi-day gatherings of fat women and their admirers. Using a range of feminist theories of embodiment and affect, the project is guided by autoethnography and in-depth interviews with twelve participants. Participant experiences are first analyzed with a key focus on experiences that cause grief and disenfranchisement; subsequently, the book looks at experiences that may be radical or revelatory. The book does not seek to either villainize or valorize BBW spaces but instead sheds a bright light on the experience of this cultural subspace and all it may offer to analyses of fat life.

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Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Ways of Knowing and Seeing Fat.- Chapter 3: Methods and epistemologies.- Chapter 4: Interrupting Embodiment—Normalizing Gazes and Diet Culture in BBW.- Chapter 5: Bashes as Spaces for Healing Everyday Trauma of Fatphobia.- Chapter 6: Conclusion

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The incomparable Crystal Kotow was a brilliant writer, activist, and educator whose research explored fat women’s relationships with their bodies. She got her Ph D from York University and was a self-identified fat feminist killjoy who practiced radical vulnerability in her activism, storytelling, and community building. 




May Friedman is a faculty member at Toronto Metropolitan University.  Much of May’s work explores issues of fat activism and weight stigma in many different settings.  Using a range of arts-based methods including digital storytelling as well as analyses of treasured garments, May has explored meaning making and representation in relation to embodiment and experience.