The Body that Does Not Diminish Itself: Fat Acceptance in Israel's Lesbian Queer Communities

This article follows Charlotte Cooper's call to widen fat studies scholarship to contexts outside the United States, and Adrianne Hill's call to locate historically specific connections between lesbian communities and promotion of fat acceptance. Three in-depth interviews were conducted with Jewish-Israeli fat women. Through the development of their ability to appreciate their fat body and the fat bodies of other women, participants employed a mixture of disparate feminist-lesbian and queer discourses, in a similar, albeit not identical manner to the one used in the U.S. context. One of the major differences is that queer/lesbian communities in Israel are not in contact with the Israeli fat acceptance movement.