Can ambivalence hold potential for fat activism? An analysis of conflicting discourses on fatness in the Finnish column series Jenny’s Life Change

Abstract

In 2017, a publicly funded, nationwide campaign called the Scale Rebellion set out to address fatness through body positivity and fat activism in Finland, with a fat woman named Jenny Lehtinen having a particularly visible role as its figurehead. Some critics of the campaign maintained that Lehtinen’s communication lacked focus and was self-contradicting, especially concerning her wish to lose weight. I conducted discourse analysis of a pertinent element of the Scale Rebellion campaign, a 13-part column series called Jenny’s Life Change, written by Lehtinen herself. The findings suggest that diverse, conflicting discourses on fatness are indeed present in her texts; of these, I have named anti-“obesity,” fatphobic, size acceptance, and societal discourses. However, in line with scholars such as Michalinos Zembylas, I argue that Lehtinen’s conflicting messaging on fatness is not (only) an expression of her personal opinions but in fact linked to ambivalent fatness discourses circulating in Finnish society and abroad. Further, Samantha Murray has noted that fat activism would do well in welcoming the multivocality often present in (narratives on) fatness, since ambivalence might actually contain potential. One such possibility is the very observation that ambivalence vis-à-vis fatness is not necessarily a sign of being a sell-out or a “fake” fat activist. Instead, it is an indication that at a time when fatness is a stigmatized trait, almost everyone is exposed to conflicting messages about it. Therefore fat activists’ ambivalence in relation to fatness should not be judged but rather seen in this larger context.