Above: Brooke Hull. “Overlay of Fat Letterform Illustrations on Type Anatomy Guide.” 2023. Type Anatomy guide image via Material Design. “Understanding typography.” nd. https://m2.material.io/design/typography/understanding-typography.html#type-properties
How can we disrupt design canons & fight fatphobia intersectionally through embodied typography?
This research began as I discovered and accepted my own fat, nonbinary body for the first time at the age of 23-24. I was in graduate school having to not only expand my knowledge about the systems within the world around me but having to understand how those systems impacted my own body. As a person who has been fat my whole life, I never accepted this reality until I learned about the system of oppression known as fatphobia.
Fatphobia, as defined by Dina Amlund, is “the name of the structure and the social hierarchy that place people of size, or fat people, beneath slender people” (2017).
Fat people face proven discrimination at work, in relationships, in healthcare, and in the media (Cooper Stoll 2019). Fatphobia, like all other systems of oppression, is intersectional (Crenshaw 1989), further harming folks who embody multiple systems of oppression, like race, gender, sexuality, and disability. While learning about these intersecting systems of oppression, I wanted to use design to relate these systems to my own body and bodies like mine. This is where the idea of fat typography began.
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