I have grown fat again. My body size waxes and wanes like phases of the moon. As a fledgling professor, I worry how my fat impacts my ability to obtain a tenure-track position in Mi’kmaki, the traditional territory of my people, the Mi’kmaq, on what is currently Canada’s eastern seaboard. Authority and truth, qualities valued by students, colleagues, and tenure or promotion committees, are not often ascribed to fat bodies (Fisanick, 2007). Instead, fatness is uncritically associated with “laziness, greed, and moral slackness” (p. 237), posing challenges for the academic credibility and success of people with larger bodies (Bacon, 2009; Cameron, 2016; Fisanick, 2006; Hunt & Rhodes, 2018). As a queer woman whose Indigeneity already evokes negative stereotypes, I worry my intersecting identities stretch the boundaries of academic collegiality too far, as my chest stretches the blazer that fit me last summer. So I control what I eat, skip meals, and walk to work and back, but feel complicit in shaping my body to meet colonial standards beyond my reach.

Robinson, M. (2019). The big colonial bones of Indigenous North America’s “obesity epidemic.” In M. Friedman, C. Rice, & J. Rinaldi (Eds.), Thickening fat: Fat studies, intersectionality and social justice (pp. 15–28). Routledge.