Abstract

ABSTRACT
Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Fat Body in Medicine and Society
Rachel M. Thomas, Ph.D
Concordia University 2023

This dissertation contextualizes data collected and synthesized in the research creation project Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl: a two-hundred-page graphic novel that examines the fat body in contemporary Western culture. It is a collection and critical examination of the current medical and sociological views on fatness from a pluridisciplinary perspective using specific examples from Shrink as a base for argument.
The aim of Shrink is to question the discourse around fatness, from extensive research and
personal experience. Graphic novels are a format that are accessible to a larger public. The graphic novel now has a place in the growing field of graphic medicine which seeks to connect with individuals in both academic and non-institutional formats.

Shrink is the experiential journey of the book’s unlikely hero as she chooses to lose weight in a world that has dictated the medical and social dangers of being too fat. The novel takes the reader through the social complications of fatness, the medical gaze upon the female body, monstrous bodies, and diet culture. It examines the notion that weight loss is the only solution for a fat person. Shrink also reviews the damaging myths of the ‘perfect’ body, obsessions about healthism, pushback from activists and why, ultimately, it is so important for a person to demand autonomy over their own body. Shrink is about choices; to lose weight or not in a society of contradictions.