The Power of Fat Liberation: Rereading Laura Aguilar’s Nude Self-PortraitS

Most analysis of Laura Aguilar’s self-portrait photography focuses on her identities as a working-class, disabled, Chicana lesbian yet fails to investigate her fatness. Perhaps fatness has been eschewed due to our underlying fatphobic culture that ignores marginalized bodies in mass media in tandem with medical interventions permeated with fallacies. Yet, research shows that fat individuals tend to have a longer life expectancy than their thin counterparts, and that cardiovascular health is a much better indicator of health than weight. This is to say, it is possible to be fat and healthy, and conversely, thin and unhealthy. Furthermore, scholarly excavation indicates that much of our fat bias dates far before the medicalization of weight, as fatphobia is rooted in racism, more specifically, anti-Blackness. This essay integrates research from the emerging field of fat studies to investigate various elements of fat discrimination explored in Aguilar’s photography. Fat liberation activist groups developed the groundwork for fat studies to investigate fat bias, what the medical industry fails to understand about weight, and the racist origins of fatphobia and how these themes change our perspective of Aguilar’s photography. The expansive field of fat studies intersects with race, ability, class, and gender, though this essay focuses specifically on fatphobia and fat discrimination in the presence of visual art. Interpreting Aguilar’s photography through these topics develops a complex conversation of body liberation and her attempts to confront and resist fat phobia.