There’s, as you’ll be able to think about, numerous planning that goes into writing a e-book. I’d spent a few years on my e-book proposal, chapter outlines, and story mapping earlier than I wrote any of Grasping Guts, my memoir, and I didn’t anticipate to come across any surprises when the writing course of would truly start. In spite of everything, it’s primarily recollections with some principle and ideas woven by way of – what can truly shock you about how you concentrate on your life to date?
In direction of the top of the e-book, I shift the narrative (spoiler alert) from one which has been negatively affected by fatphobia to 1 that has been positively uplifted by the fats liberation motion.
One of many key experiences to this standpoint was acting at Fats Delight, a stage takeover at Manchester’s Delight festivities in 2021 that has remained part of the lineup since its inception on the 2020 digital celebrations. Fats Delight is strictly what it says on the tin – an occasion to acknowledge and lift a drink to the fats expertise. Not simply that, however to enjoy fats positivity, and to take action particularly by getting a gaggle of fats performers on stage to go-go dance to the tunes of a fats DJ for an viewers of whoever desires to attend an occasion as explicitly straightforwardly physique constructive because the identify and programming presents.
Mitchell Severs
I acquired concerned on this occasion by way of understanding its organisers, Joe and Niall, who had labored for Manchester Delight beforehand and pitched, curated and produced the stage takeover on the occasion. We have been mates from going out in Manchester’s queer scene in addition to from prolonged chats about fats lib over espresso. I used to be honoured to be invited to take the stage and shake my tits as a part of the celebration, and the expertise is one I’ll at all times maintain near my coronary heart.
In writing concerning the sticky summer season night the place I danced for lots of on a stage in a carpark simply off Manchester’s notorious Canal Avenue, I needed to make use of the chapter to discover how fatness and queerness have intersected for me and all through historical past. I detailed the earlier than, throughout and after of the Fats Delight occasion whereas additionally discussing the affect of fats queer celebrities on the artistic consciousness. From Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Divine to Beth Ditto and past, this piece in Grasping Guts was all concerning the indelible intersection of queer and fats identities.
Whereas exploring what Delight itself met – each LGBTQ+ and fats iterations – I discovered myself an increasing number of drawn to anti-assimilatory queer principle. Summed up artfully by RM Barton for Wussy magazine, “Queer anti-assimilationists search options to current norms; particularly, options that problem heteronormativity and the prescriptive ethical and moral codes which can be enforced on society from the highest down. They recognise that conformity is a social development and make the purpose that it is usually a political weapon.”