Towards an embodied political ecology of fat masculinities

Abstract

The purpose of this brief critical review is to show voluptuous interconnections between fat studies and embodied urban political ecology. By shifting the inquiry to men’s bodies, I make a case towards a shared space of theoretical resonance concerning differential and embodied justice. The review advances three key observations. First, by and large, fat studies and the subfield of urban political ecology heavily focused on women’s experiences and by implication position men and the performance of masculinity as de-gendered. Second, the mutual entanglement of fat and urban processes has been sparse, and those studies that do tend to shift its explanatory weight on the latter (i.e. ‘fattening’ of the urban). Third, there are already existing intellectual resources in and beyond geography that assert complex performances of masculinities, but are seldom activated in enriching inquiries that used urban political ecology. Taking all these into consideration, I strive towards a more inclusive and embodied fat-urban geographies outside public health’s thin frame.