Edinburgh Napier University

  Sexualised weight gain, also known as feederism, has become the subject of documentaries, films, and media coverage over the last 15 years. A growing internet community and online presence has brought this fetish to mainstream attention and it has become an easy target for concern, ridicule, and disgust. Through careful sociological and psychological analysis this text challenges assumptions around the power dynamics and coercion thought to exist in feederism. Discussions with feeders and feedees from a range of backgrounds explore their childhood fascination with fat along with a lifelong sexual preference for weight gain. This allows stereotypes centred on gender and sexuality to be broken down as the diversity of the community becomes apparent. The implications for the ways in which health professionals advise overweight patients are also discussed with a critical evaluation of the Health at Any Size movement. This text provides the most comprehensive analysis of this topic published so far.