This article interrogates how body positive and fat activist blogs offer
alternative ways of feeling one’s body, using the Finnish More to Love (MTL, 2009–2013) and its successor PlusMimmi (PM, 2013–) and the American Queer Fat Femme Guide to Life (QFF,
2008–) as its examples. We investigate how these blogs, despite their
differences, invite their publics not only to feel positive about their
own and others’ norm-exceeding bodies, but to feel in their bodies.
While previous studies have criticized body positive discourses for
employing a simplistic language of choice and relying on heteronormative
logics of feminine attractiveness, they have not paid specific
attention to how exactly body positive media attract and engage people
affectively. In this article, MTL, PM, and QFF’s
strategies of inviting their followers to feel in their bodies are
analyzed in the context of three key themes: exercise, fashion, and sex.
We argue that when explored through the framework of affect, fat
activist blogs do not present body positivity simply as a matter of
choice but offer a space to feel through the affective contradictions of
inhabiting a fat feminine body in a sizeist society. At their best,
body positive blogs open up spaces of comfort which can be radical for
bodies accustomed to discomfort.