(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) The City of Brotherly Love seems to be embracing “high calorie” lifestyles in a big way.
In late October, Temple University will host FatCon, which is touted as Philadelphia’s (and perhaps the country’s) “first fat-focused convention curated by fat people, for fat people.”
View this post on Instagram
With overweight celebrities, influencers and activists pushing “body positivity” as part of a new wave in wokeism, at least one similar event is scheduled for Seattle, another far-left enclave, in January 2024.
The Philly event’s “judgment-free” weekend features panel discussions, fitness-classes (including twerk-lesque) that are meant to be “fat-friendly,” a Halloween costume party and a marketplace with lots of vendors.
A plus-size clothing swap is also part of the festivities.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the trio who organized the event “want you to know there are a ton of fat people in Philly who are perfectly fine with who they are.”
One of the organizers told the Inquirer that the conference is meant, in part, to assist people in making their way through “this fatphobic world and society in a different way.”
The phrase body positivity “has become bogged down with relating to body image,” explained Adrienne Ray, an event co-organizer and proprietor of the shop Curve Conscious.
“What people in larger bodies need is to step away from constantly talking about body image, because that can be very triggering for folks who have disabilities, chronic illness, have been dieting on and off all their lives and developed eating disorders because of it,” she added.
Those who splurge on a VIP ticket to the event can attend a meet and greet with the convention’s keynote speaker, clinical social worker Sonalee Rashatwar, aka the Fat Sex Therapist, whose stated pronouns are they/he, according to an Instagram post.
View this post on Instagram
According to the speaker’s website, “they are a superfat, queer bisexual non-binary therapist” who co-owns a local therapy center that provides treatment for several kinds of trauma as well as “offering fast positive sexual healthcare.”
Rashatwar has led at least 14 recent workshops including one titled “Understanding the White Supremacist Origins of Fatphobia.”
The Washington Examiner’s Christopher Tremoglie, a Philly resident who said he personally struggled with weight issues, wrote that the “con” part of the gathering came from its whitewashing of the serious health and social implications surrounding obesity.
“Instead, a conference should educate overweight people on proper dieting and exercise plans to get healthy,” Tremoglie wrote. “FatCon is only enabling people to future pain, illnesses, loneliness, and, quite possibly, an early grave.”
However, Ray said that fat people had plenty of time to hate themselves and the conference hoped simply to offer a momentary reprieve.
“People just want to be able to be themselves—that’s the dire need for something like Philly FatCon,” she said. “Some people are not in love with their body every day, but this is the body that they exist in.”
FatCon hoped to give plump Philadelphia-area residents (and presumably those from anywhere else who are living large) the opportunity to have a good time and “connect with other people that look like you, think like you, feel like you, and that understand you,” she added.
