Weight and Wisdom: Find Yourself in Fat History
[Image description: The book cover of Weight and Wisdom.]
Our executive director, Tigress Osborn, is the co-editor of the recently released book, Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Working for Body Liberation (Pearlsong Press 2025). Caleb Luna called the anthology “a soft, fleshy, warm hug from the living ancestors who have been on the frontlines of this movement for decades.” In this exclusive excerpt from the book’s afterward, Tigress discusses the book’s origin and the history of fat liberation. Note: this excerpt is edited for length and clarity.
In the fall of 2021, I posted a note on Facebook telling folks that I was hoping to collect stories from People of Color who had a long history in the fat liberation movement. I soon found a note from Nancy Ellis-Ordway in my inbox. "I'm working on a history project, too," she wrote. "Can we talk?"
On our first call, Nancy explained that she wanted to gather stories from people who had been working in Health at Every Size (HAES)®, eating disorder treatment and prevention, or fat acceptance for at least 25 years. And although I have many years of experience as an advocate for fat people, and way more years of lived experience as a fat Black woman, I was ten years shy of the vintage Nancy was aiming for in collecting the untold tales of these movements. Nancy assured me this was precisely why we would make a good team– we have the same commitment to making the world a better place for fat people, but we approach that commitment with different lenses based on our lived experiences and professional expertise in different areas.
At the time of Nancy's invitation, I had been spending several hours a week tracking down or talking to people with a deep investment and/or very strong critical opinions of NAAFA. Until 2023, I was not a paid employee of NAAFA – no one had been in over two decades– but I was the board chair working intensely to strengthen infrastructure there and to create a much more intersectional approach to the organization's work. The history project I'd had in mind was specifically focused on identifying People of Color from fat liberation's first and second waves, especially those who had been directly involved in NAAFA at some point. Many of them are unnamed and under-remembered, and most never racked up 25 consecutive years of participation in these spaces, in large part because these spaces were often not as warm and welcoming to us. They weren't on Nancy's draft list, and I couldn't even add very many to the list because I hadn't found very many yet. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take time away from working on my Black and Brown project to work on one that was likely to involve few POC voices.
Still, I'm quite a bit of a geek when it comes to fat history, and I thought I could learn a lot from Nancy and from the many contributors to this collection. I was right about that. I also thought I could continue to give a lot of time to seeking out more about the PoC past of body liberation work. I will always be collecting bits and pieces of that past and trying to figure out how to weave those stories into our present and into our future.
I am also someone who likes to see those who have been around this movement for a long time take responsibility for harms they caused – whether intentional or not– and help lead the way to others doing better. There were a few people on the list of contributors to this book who I knew could and would do that. As we worked on this project, I was pleasantly surprised that several more owned up to the white privilege and heteronormativity they had upheld in their own work. I am thankful for this accountability. And I am especially thankful to the People of Color and queer folks in this collection who were forthcoming and vulnerable in sharing their realities in these movements, even though doing so in the past has often cost them dearly.
It has been nearly four years since Nancy extended the invite to work on what became Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Working for Body Liberation. During the course of our work on this book, HAES, ED, and fat liberation worlds faced many individual and collective challenges. Many of us involved lost loved ones to the pandemic, to other crises, or simply to time. Our communities have also grappled with major disagreements and disappointments involving prominent people and organizations from these histories, including some referenced in this book. There’s been stress and distress, hopelessness and anger, misunderstanding and mistrust. Many relationships–between individuals, between organizations, between communities– were damaged in what still appear to be irreparable ways.
But there has been repair, too. In many HAES, ED, and fat liberation spaces, we’ve developed a deeper understanding of and commitment to intersectionality. We’ve made more room, literally and figuratively, for fat people from all identities. We’ve learned to better partner with other social justice movements, including the movement for Black Lives, disability justice, and 2SLGBTQIA+ rights. New connections and friendships have been forged, new voices and perspectives have emerged, and new research has added nuance to our knowledge.
I hope that the history and perspectives collected in this book invite those who were there to take another look through different lenses. I hope, too, that those who weren’t there will find answers to questions they may not even have known they had. I hope readers, regardless of generation, see themselves somewhere in these pages.
For more info about Weight and Wisdom and other fat-positive books from Pearlsong, visit PearlsongPress.com. Follow @weightandwisdom for updates about the book and contributors.
