Comic launches new web series about body positivity

Desiree Burch has made a new online series about fat activism and the prejudices faced by larger women.

Over the six-part series Profiles In Fatness, which launched last night, the comedian speaks to experts on societal norms, highlights  from history and, traces the roots of fatphobia.

Burch said: ‘I'm just someone trying to exist in the wonderful world that the fat activists who came before me created, and tell others it’s okay to as well.  You. You reading this right now. Your body is awesome. And I know for a fact you can’t be told that enough. Even while you are hating on some part of it, when all it wants to do is hold you up, hold you together, and take you all the places you want to go.

‘This series is for everyone with a body, because a society hell-bent on our productivity, consumption and obedience has conditioned you to hate the one thing that is truly yours.  

‘This series is me taking a swing at my own form of oppression by celebrating bodies like mine and voices like mine, all of which have the power to fly in the face of a world full of hate.’

In episode one, she talks to writer Aubrey Gordon, creator of the Your Fat Friend blog, to talk about media portrayals of the issue. She said: ‘Desiree Burch is incredibly thoughtful, astute, hilarious, and a joy to talk to.’

They discuss how there were plenty of fat men celebrated in 1990s Hollywood comedies, but such women were always marginalised or mocked.

‘I feel like for fat women, it was this constant state of expectation that everyone in the audience would identify with a thin woman,’ Gordon said. ‘And that folks would identify with rejecting a fat person.'

The forthcoming episodes will cover music, sport, fashion, power and glory hate.

The Profiles in Fatness has been made by digital content agency Little Dot Studios and is a follow-up to their 2021 series Dane Baptiste's The A-Z of Blackness.

Published: 25 Feb 2022