5 Questions with Lesleigh Owen, PhD

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Welcome to this month’s installment of the 5 Questions With… If you’re a new reader (welcome!) this is a series where we learn a bit about experts in the field. Previous interviewees include Dr. Lesley Williams, Mikey Mercedes, Aaron Flores, Dr. Gregory Dodell, Lisa Du Breuil, Dr. Asher Larmie, members of Medical Students for Size Inclusivity, Chrissy King, Jessica Jones, Leslie Jordan Garcia, Dr. Mara Gordon, Dr. Whitney Trotter, Dr. Anna Whelan, Angela Goens, and Maayan Simckes

Today I am honored to bring you five questions with the brilliant Lesleigh Owen, PhD.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your work

I'm Lesleigh Owen, and I'm an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Black Hills State University in South Dakota. I wrote my dissertation on the everyday experiences--including labeling, occupying, and coping with--fat and fat stigma. Since then, I've wanted to teach a class on Fat Studies, but you might be shocked to learn many academic milieux aren't keen to make space for the topic.

Speaking of which, I have also served as the Chair of the Fat Studies Area of the Popular Culture Association for the past 19 years. I have had the endless privilege of observing brilliant fat and Fat Studies scholars, activists, and artists present their work.

I focus my own academic research on personal and interpersonal experiences of fatness and fat stigma.

I've also been enormously privileged to work as a fat activist and a writer of fat-positive poetry and novels.

2. How did you learn about the concept of weight-inclusive, body affirming care?

Speaking as an academic and activist, I've picked it up osmotically throughout the years. As a queer, superfat person living her life, I've encountered it by living a life that has experienced far too much of its opposite.

3. How have you/do you apply those concepts to your work?

TW: Fat-related harm, suffering

Fat harm is a concept motivating, well, almost all of my work in fat lib and Fat Studies. Fat joy and fat health are vital to explore, too, of course, but as long as fat folks remain stigmatized and excluded from representation, employment, healthcare, etc. ad infinitum, I feel charting fat harm is my political and ethical obligation. I've written journal articles and poetry about literally not fitting into the world, about fat folks' symbolic annihilation in pop culture, about the emotional and physical harms of medical fatphobia.

I'm exploring some of the spaces of anti-fat care so other folks can fill those gaps with examples of body- and weight- and disability-affirming care.

4. What’s one thing that you wish people who are still working from a weight-focused paradigm could learn/know?

I look so forward to the day when our weight is just one more, neutral slice of info we offer loved ones and professionals. I look forward to not having to suffer through anti-fat stigma, representations, and institutions when moving through the world. I am excited about the day when all healthcare professionals join us fat activists in examining and weeding out all the fat hatred and disinformation underpinning their institutions.

5. How and where do we find you and your work?

I thoroughly encourage everyone to buy fat-pride-themed poetry by searching "Fat Poets' Society." Academic stuff? Email me directly at Lesleigh.Owen@bhsu.edu

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*Note on language: I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, I use “ob*se” and “overw*ight” to acknowledge that these are terms that were created to medicalize and pathologize fat bodies, with roots in racism and specifically anti-Blackness. Please read Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body – the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Da’Shaun Harrison’