Sizing Up Gender: Intersectional Narratives of Fat and Gender through Fashion is a SSHRC and FCAD supported research project that explores the relationship between fat, gender and fashion using a collaborative arts-based methodology.

From left to right: A photo of Anshuman’s leopard-print pants and bright orange suspenders, hanging from a wooden clothes hanger. The hanger is attached to clear fishing wire beneath a silver metal rod, so it appears to be levitating in midair. The background is white. Photo by Calla Evans. A photo by Calla Evans of Anshuman, a small fat South Asian person wearing leopard-print pants held up by bright orange suspenders. They are holding their belly and looking confidently straight at the camera, with their lips slightly pursed below their mustache. They have large tattoos, a nipple ring, and are wearing wire-framed glasses. They are bald, with a single pearl earring visible in their left earlobe. An extreme close-up photo of Anshuman’s brown skin. The bright orange of their suspenders is out of focus on the left third of the image, and almost looks like it could be a light leak on a film photo. The angled crease of what might be their elbow fills most of the frame. Photo by Mindy Stricke.

“What I love about fatness is, as you approach a certain size, the hard markers of gender that society has forced onto us dissolve…. The gender binary, the expectations of gender performance, all based on something as arbitrary as this bag of seawater which will always fail no matter how pious you are.”

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