Photography is a site of ongoing objectification and dehumanization of fat people, and many fat artists and activists contest and reclaim the medium in their work to redefine fatness. Fat Studies scholars aptly critique the “headless fatty” photograph—depicting a portion of a fat person’s body, typically as an embellishment for a news article related to “obesity”—as positioning fat people as abject failures, incapable of overcoming the burden of embodiment (Cooper, 2007). The “before” photograph is the other common photographic representation of fatness, redeemed through its “after” counterpart, which triumphs over unruly embodiment through weight loss. A wide range of photographic counter-practices emerge to challenge these visual narratives of dehumanization and create new representations.

Johnston Hurst, R. A. (2019). Photographing fatness: Resisting assimilation through fat activist calendars. In M. Friedman, C. Rice, & J. Rinaldi (Eds.), Thickening fat: Fat studies, intersectionality and social justice (pp.171–182). Routledge.