Is Bodybuilding Fat-phobic? | Helen Pluckrose

In 2018, as part of their effort to expose ideological bias in certain academic fields, Helen Pluckrose and her colleagues wrote a deliberately absurd paper claiming that bodybuilding is “fat-exclusionary” and rooted in oppressive standards of fitness and beauty. The paper proposed a new concept: “fat bodybuilding”, in which obese individuals would perform strength and body-positive movements not to lose weight, but to challenge dominant norms in physical culture. Framed in academic jargon and infused with social justice language, the paper was submitted under a fake identity, “Richard Baldwin,” to the journal Fat Studies—and it was accepted for publication in 2018.

The goal of this hoax, like others in the Grievance Studies Affair, was to show that academic journals in fields like gender studies, critical race theory, and fat studies would sometimes prioritize ideology over evidence, rigor, or coherent argumentation. By getting absurd or even satirical papers accepted, Pluckrose and her colleagues aimed to demonstrate how some areas of academia had become vulnerable to dogma, where ideas that aligned with activist narratives were accepted without proper scrutiny.

#woke #progressive #fatphobia #fatpride