The first New Zealand conference on the subject ‘fat studies’ was organized last week, at the Wellington campus of Massey University, by US-born pioneer fat activist, Dr Cat Pause.

With proud descriptions of her own self as “fat,” “chunky,” and chubby,” Cat Pause is a US-born academic, who is a pioneer in the fast-growing field of fat studies, which she feels is as academic a discipline as History, Political Science or English.

Though Cat Pause is of the opinion that an academic discipline like fat studies essentially examines society’s behavior towards fat people, challenging the premise that anybody who has a bulging waistline is unhealthy, she detests the apparent value-laden tags like “obese” or "overweight."

Drawing attention to the reality that some people are just ‘bigger’ than others, a fact that fat studies want the society to accept, Cat Pause said that having big bodies does not mean that fat people “don't ever exercise and eat nothing but junk."

Cat Pause further adding that having a fat body does not automatically imply that the body is “unhealthy” or “diseased,” and said that society should accept fat people as they are, “rather than constantly judging them or pushing them to lose weight.”

Towards that end, the conference had scholars from different countries discussed papers like "Fat hatred and the Left in the time of 'the obesity epidemic'" and "The role of diagnosis in marginalising corpulence."