…that explore the political and social consequences of being fat are all the rage in academe, and the first “Fat Studies Reader,” an anthology of research on fat, has been submitted to university presses. Its inviting chapter titles include “Jiggle in My Walk: The Iconic Power of the Big Butt in American Pop Culture” and “The Roseanne Benedict Arnolds: How Fat Women are Betrayed by their Celebrity Icons.”

The New York Times notes that those championing these studies view them:

as the sister subject — and it is most often women promoting the study, many of whom are lesbian activists — to women’s studies, queer studies, disability studies and ethnic studies. In many of its permutations, then, it is the study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society.

So our own Steve Balch is quite right in remarking that:

in one field after another, passion and venting…[and] vindicating the grievances of some particular group have come to define the nature of what academics do…That’s not what the academy should be about.

Big Arm Woman, a blogger, is also on the mark in stating:

I don’t care if people are fat or thin. I do, however, care that universities are spending money on scholarship about the ‘politics of fatness’ when half of the freshman class can’t read or write at the college level.

Fat victim studies are the latest manifestation of the breakdown of scholarly and financial discipline on campuses. Their basic undergraduate mission is in a centripetal state, and the allocation of scarce resources for advocacy courses such as these on “weightism” a travesty.