Fat Church

Emphasizing “original sin,” or the fall from grace that supposedly happened with Eve in the garden, the white western Church has made sure its followers remember their sinful nature and spend their lives in repentance from even thought-of sins. We can point to times in church history where this has been used for social control, with pietistic purity culture falling hardest on non-normative folks, especially those in female, femme, disabled, and q***r bodies. It’s as if the Church has feared that spiritual self esteem - the idea that humans are beloved and whole, and that this world is a good, abundant place rather than broken and evil - might keep us from needing Church at all.

But what if Church wasn’t a place where sinful, shameful folks got their weekly dose of repentance, but rather a place where the already-whole, trying-our-best, loving full bodied people of God came to worship the abundance of community and Creation? Shame not included. IDK about you, but I like that version better.

So grateful for everybody who reads and reviews Fat Church! I’m so humbled when I read them, and I do read every one! Thank you, whoever you are! 🥹🫶🏼😍

One of the most pernicious lies of anti-fat culture is that “health” (with thinness its visual proxy) somehow equates to “goodness.” “Health” is not a permanent state of achievement. It is a temporary state for some bodies, and completely out of reach for many more of us - at least as it is defined by the weight-obsessed health and wellness industries. Fat liberation dreams of a day when the most marginalized bodies are given the dignified care they damn well deserve, and when society becomes reordered to provide access and inclusive support no matter one’s embodiment.

The lifting up of white, thin, abled embodiment as the “healthy ideal” of both the medical and beauty industries is not a coincidence. And if you are unsure as to why this is, let me offer a couple of great books for your learning: Sabrina Strings’ “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia” is an incredible history of anti-fatness in this country, and Da’Shaun L. Harrison’s “Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness” is a prophetic witness to the ways intersectional marginalizations deal death to fat Black bodies each and every day. “The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love” by Sonya Renee Taylor and “You Have the Right to Remain Fat” by Virgie Tovar both have sections speaking about just how much consumerism uses body shame to market products and “fixes” for bodies perfectly good as they are. Oh yeah, and if you haven’t read my book Fat Church yet, it’s set up as a primer for those starting to unravel the anti-fat BS and return to the goodness of their bodies. Happy reading!

So excited that the episode on “When Weight Loss Becomes Idolatry” is now out in the world! It was such a wonderful conversation with .life and .

Check out the full podcast linked in my bio or on Sophia’s pages! 🥳

So grateful to be included in the Abolition Advent Calendar of the UCC’s Join the Movement Campaign this year! To have fat liberation included in the work of broader liberation means the message is spreading! To read my full Christmas Eve reflection, see the link in the bio. Merry Fat Liberation to all!!! 🎁

So very honored to be invited to speak among the incredible performers and humans attending this year’s Drag & Spirituality Conference in San Francisco next week!

If you haven’t already registered for the conference, there are both in-person and livestream options available through their bio . Hope to see you there!! ❤️

So grateful to be featured this week in Bostonia magazine! Thanks so much to Rich Barlow for the feature and Cydney Scott for the photography. All my love!

If you’d like to read the full article, there’s a link to it in the bio! ❤️

I've been doing little fat liberation drawings for a while now and thought this one could make a cute sticker and I'm really pleased with how they came out! Now I want to share them with y'all!

As a thank you 🫂 for 1,200 followers, we're giving away 12 sticker packs (swipe to see the sticker up close) as a token of our appreciation!!

To enter to win a pack, like this post and tag 2 friends in the comments! (Each comment counts for an additional entry!)

The giveaway will close on Friday, September 29. Winners will be announced and contacted shortly after! Giveaway is not affiliated with Instagram.

Thank you all so much for being here, part of this lovely fat liberation space. We cannot thank you for your continued support enough! ❤️

I’ve been doing little fat liberation drawings for a while now and thought this one could make a cute sticker and I’m really pleased with how they came out! Now I want to share them with y’all!

As a thank you 🫂 for 1,200 followers, we’re giving away 12 sticker packs (swipe to see the sticker up close) as a token of our appreciation!!

To enter to win a pack, like this post and tag 2 friends in the comments! (Each comment counts for an additional entry!)

The giveaway will close on Friday, September 29. Winners will be announced and contacted shortly after! Giveaway is not affiliated with Instagram.

Thank you all so much for being here, part of this lovely fat liberation space. We cannot thank you for your continued support enough! ❤️

Many of us were raised with the idea that our bodies took away from our wholeness and holiness. That our lust, desires for food, wants for pleasure were all sinfulness—the antithesis to invoking the kindom of God. It was in denying ourselves of these things that true spiritual understanding can arise.

But what if our mortal desires are not sinful things from which we must be freed, but signposts toward even greater communion and revelation? What if God wants our bodies, in all their copiousness and want, to be fully satisfied? What if this generosity is part of God’s good gifts to all of Creation? What if soul and body are inextricably connected?

The life and ministry of Jesus is an invitation to reorder society away from a cultural hierarchy of bodies, toward liberative relationships with our own and others’ bodies, rooted in God’s abundance for all.

Here are some thoughts on the notion of “glorifying ob*sity,” which is a cliched phrase trolls always level against us in the fat liberation space 🙄. But what might it mean to ACTUALLY “glorify” fatness as a body shape, to revel in fat images as holy and good expressions of human bodies, to trust that we are equally valid and “good” creations of a God who loves us exactly as we are, jiggles, ripples, rolls, and all.

If you were told that your fat body keeps you from anything other than holiness, I’m so sorry. You are holy because of your body, not in spite of it.

We are so grateful for all of the recognition Fat Church is getting and love sharing the good news of fat liberation with everyone 🥰 a special thanks to and Georgia Hall for this piece!

If you’d like to read the full article, click the link in bio!

Ready to do some fat liberation learning? 📚📝🧐 Let’s get to know the word “healthism” and how it functions in society.

How does healthism undermine any real systemic change in the many health disparities of our country? Good question. You get an A+!⭐️

Public health officials have long understood that the social determinants of health (non-medical factors like economic access, political systems, social policies, education, etc.) strongly influence people’s health and wellness.

This is especially problematic for fat people, people of color, disabled people, trans and genderq***r people, and all who live in non-normative, marginalized bodies, due to lack of access and privileges that socially-centered bodies have.

This is well documented and lamented in public health circles. However, when society sees a marginalized body not performing health, they almost always focus on what that individual must do to be “healthy” rather than what systems might change to affect the entire society for the better.

The focus on individual responsibility for one’s own health is a major distraction, and it’s the reason there is little public awareness of or support for the systemic cultural changes that would be needed to improve collective health outcomes. 🤯

I've been asked by a lot of folks lately how to get started with fat activism.

Like any activism, it's a lifelong journey, but here are a few steps to get you going if you'd like to begin!

Those of us who have been here for a while have a space ready for you. And snacks. 🌮🍗🍎🍦

I’ve been asked by a lot of folks lately how to get started with fat activism.

Like any activism, it’s a lifelong journey, but here are a few steps to get you going if you’d like to begin.

Those of us who have been here for a while have a space ready for you. And snacks. 🌮🍗🍎🍦

Fat Activist Barbie! Comes with three accessories: a pair of chub rub shorts, a bookshelf full of fat studies literature, and a comfortable sturdy chair! 😍💅❤️

Thank you all so much for your continued support and praise of Fat Church!! We love seeing all the ways the book has been impactful, inspirational, and insightful.

If you or any folks you know have been impacted by the book, feel free to leave a review on any platform you like!!

Dr. Keys’ experiment showed all the way back in the 1940s the dangerous effects of restricting food to only 1600 calories a day.

For the purposes of this study, that was considered “semi-starvation,” and pause here to note that this is the same number of calories the FDA has recommended daily to fight “ob*sity.” When we look at the adverse health and psychological consequences associated with eating too little, and of restrictive diets in general, we can note that symptoms mirror those typically attributed to “ob*sity” itself.

What if it’s not our fat that’s causing those symptoms but the effects of diet culture and weight stigma on our bodies? Plenty of research says just this exactly. In addition to reading more in Fat Church, check out the podcast, particularly the “Is Being Fat Bad for You” episode from November 16, 2021, which succinctly reviews some of this research.

The message that healthcare in this country is a broken system is not news to many of us. But those who navigate healthcare while fat (or in any marginalized body) know its limitations and cruelties particularly well.

Doctors who pre-judge our ailments and always prescribe weight loss to treat them. Surgeries and tests that we cannot access because of our size. And don’t get me started on insurance. 🙄 Weight stigma in healthcare leads to fat people not receiving care as often, being diagnosed at advanced stages of disease, and having negative outcomes at higher rates than others.

Jesus taught in small stories known as “parables,” which always culminated in a moral lesson. When writing the book I wondered how this format might be applied to teach about anti-fatness in the healthcare industry.

The Parable of the Two Knees is a short story based on women I know, both middle-aged, who inhabit two very different bodies and therefore have had two distinct experiences of healthcare around their knee injuries.

It all starts with you. With the words you say about your own body and food. With the judgments you hold. With the small but constant apologies you make for your size. With the disparaging side looks you give your mirror.

Disrupting anti-fatness in the world is this huge undertaking that will take generations. But it begins with each individual person who can be brave and patient enough to cultivate a counter-cultural narrative within their own bodies first, then in wider society, that fatness is okay, or even beloved. Because it is. ❤️

Hello wonderful people! If you’re in Indianapolis or planning to attend the UCC General Synod, come visit Anna on Friday for a book signing!! 🥳📖

Anna will be selling & signing copies of Fat Church (but no purchase necessary to come say hey!) on Friday at 2 pm at the Pilgrim Press display in the Convention Center.

If you would like to grab a copy of the book online, head to the link in our bio!!

The powers that oppress us in this world are always eager to create a hierarchy of bodies - a ladder toward an impossible ideal that serves the narrative that only some bodies are worthy of dignity and care.

But Jesus’ ministry said otherwise. Jesus practiced an upending of this disparity. He preached about a God whose love pours out indiscriminately on all people because all are equally worthy of dignity as children of God.

Oftentimes the church has served (or even created 😬) society’s hierarchies throughout history, saying who is righteous and who is not. Arbitrating belovedness based on compliance. This was not Jesus’ way. To reclaim the ministry of Jesus as the basis of our liberation we must, like him, work to dismantle all systems that undermine human dignity and equality.

I’m looking at you, sizeism, racism, patriarchy, ableism, homophobia, classism, and allllll those hateful “-isms.” The church must educate and organize itself to get away from these structures that it has often perpetuated.

In case you needed a reminder today, your body is part of a kinship of good bodies that are worthy of dignity and care. Through the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s spirit was poured out on all flesh, not just some flesh.

These bodies of ours are sacred and good and enough. May you remember that today and all days!

Always humbled by the kindness of your reviews of the book. 🫶🏼

I, too, needed something like this in my younger years. Instead, like most fat people, I got “well-meaning” concerns and policing of my bodies, which did so much harm.

Yay for a growing lot of us who have found another way is possible!

Have y’all checked out new book Fat Talk? If not, it’s a must-read about the intergenerational harm we do through societal anti-fatness and diet culture.

It’s fascinating to think that food policing and body shame shows up in the very first story of the Genesis narrative.

This is considered the “original sin” that Eve’s apple snacking brings on all of humanity, according to the tradition. This has been claimed and remixed by theologians of the church into anti-femme and anti-body rhetoric for centuries. Women can’t be trusted, and their appetites especially can’t be. Thus, the white, Western church has made control of its people’s “sinful” body behaviors a real on-brand narrative.

But what if there’s an alternative reading of Genesis that points to original goodness, wholeness, and mutuality? Where staying in God’s creation paradise wasn’t lost through a “gotcha” test of willpower but just a free gift of grace to everyone? What if there was no “original sin” at all? 👀

The book explores this in detail, so give it a read if you’re interested in thinking about this more fully, but suffice it to say that part of theologically reclaiming a narrative of body liberation is diving into and rethinking the Genesis story of creation and the “original sin” of Eve. And thereby beginning to undo the narratives of body shame the white, Western church has written throughout the centuries.

Shame is not the only narrative out there. It’s just as faithful a theological view to claim the alternative narrative that points to original GOODNESS and body liberation. Hope you’ll read the book to learn more. 😘❤️

Whether you are a fat or straight-sized faith leader, you can make a difference in the struggle for fat acceptance and body liberation.

Your community learns from you about how to disrupt and resist other social oppressions. Here are some tips you can use as a starting place to add fatness to your social justice conversations and spiritual practices.

And if you have any other ideas, please share them in the comments below! 👇🏼

“This very tweet was a big impetus for me writing the book. Because this was exactly what I was feeling about the progressive Christian spaces in which I find myself. Q***r pastors, liberation theologians, passionate community organizers - I spent time with all of these fantastic people who were still so wrapped up in diet culture and anti-fatness and couldn’t see the connections between their own progressive commitments and the harm they were doing to the fat folks around them. And how that harm was related to the racism, homophobia, ableism, and misogyny they were actively fighting against. So, I wanted to make an argument as to why these progressive people of faith should include fat folks in their struggles for social justice.” -Ana

To read more about anti-fat bias in the “safe places,” buy a copy of Fat Church at the 🔗 in our bio.

Thank you to everyone who has purchased, read, and reviewed Fat Church so far, we are so grateful!! Reviews like this are so heartwarming.

If you have read FC and you have something to say about it, leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon is an immensely helpful way to amplify the book & get this work into the hands of folks who need it.

To those who have left reviews already as well, thank you!!! 🫶🏼✨📚

Fat Church critiques anti-fat prejudice and the Church’s historic participation in it, calling for a fatphobic reckoning for the sake of God’s gospel of freedom. It’s partly educational, partly memoir, and holds SO much to ponder.

If you’ve learned something from Fat Church, let us know what it is in the comments below! ⬇️