'A must read' JAMIE WINDUST 'A beautifully honest book' JUNO ROCHE 'A superb and necessary book' BEN PECHEY As a young, queer, plus-size person, Essie Dennis has spent a lot of time feeling like they weren't enough - not queer enough, not feminine enough, not perfect enough. When they took to social media to share how they felt, they were overwhelmed by how many others felt the same. I look too masculine to be non-binary I look too feminine to be a lesbian Am I too fat for drag? Inviting you to challenge accepted beauty standards and the concept of 'the perfect body', Essie takes everything they have learned on their journey to self-acceptance and body satisfaction to help guide you towards loving your queer body. From gender, sexuality and reclaiming your body, through to food, politics, social media and fatphobia, this radical book starts a conversation about body image and mental health that queer people are so often left out of. Fiercely and unapologetically written, and with honest advice and powerful stories from a diverse range of queer people throughout, this is an inspiring and necessary book that will show you that you are enough.

AASECT Book Award for General Audience 'A joy to read' ESSIE DENNIS 'A beautifully written collection' JUNO ROCHE We're here. We're queer. We're fat. This one-of-a-kind collection of prose and poetry radically explores the intersection of fat and queer identities, showcasing new, emerging and established queer and trans writers from around the world. Celebrating fat and queer bodies and lives, this book challenges negative and damaging representations of queer and fat bodies and offers readers ways to reclaim their bodies, providing stories of support, inspiration and empowerment. In writing that is intimate, luminous and emotionally raw, this anthology is a testament to the diversity and power of fat queer voices and experiences, and they deserve to be heard.

'This book is here to hold your hand; to answer your questions; soothe your soul; help you understand yourself in new ways. The best place to start is at the beginning. The best time is now! So, turn the page and let's explore who you are!' If you are at the start of your journey with gender identity, or looking to help someone who is, this insightful guide offers a safe space to celebrate you becoming your true - and most joyful - self. With fun activities, resources and LGBTQ+ role models throughout, this book sheds light on everything from gender identity, sex, pronouns and expression, to barriers, mental health, allyship and finding happiness. Written in Ben Pechey's trademark witty, upbeat and vibrant style, this empowering tool will help you engage with your gender creatively and become your most authentic self.

In a world that persistently teaches us to critique and alter our bodies, where are the lessons on embracing and loving them? Understanding body acceptance isn’t as simple as ticking boxes on a checklist. It’s not about showering ourselves with compliments or indulging in self-care rituals and then magically achieving self-love. It’s a journey, much like navigating a vast, never-ending theme park. With a myriad of rides, from the thrilling roller coasters to the gentle carousels, everyone’s adventure is unique. Some may crave the adrenaline of the high-speed rides, while others find joy in the calm of the tea cups. That’s the beauty of it – our differences. Just as theme parks cater to diverse tastes, body acceptance is about finding what resonates with you. This book serves as your guide, the map you’re handed at the entrance. It offers directions and insights, but the real experience? That’s up to you to explore and embrace. Your adventure awaits. Are you ready to embark on this journey of self-discovery and love?

Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture is a fascinating study of queer nostalgia in films, animation and music videos as means of empowerment, re-evaluating and recreating lost gay youth, coming to terms with one's sexual otherness and homoerotic desires, and creatively challenging homophobia, chauvinism, ageism and racism.

The book provides a critical examination of discrimination based on sexuality, gender, and body size in Canadian physical education. It illustrates how students with queer bodies--whether lesbian, gay, trans-gendered, or overweight or fat--cope with homophobia, transphobia, and fat phobia in physical education. Drawing from qualitative interviews, the book reveals how students are marginalized because they do not conform to taken-for-granted ideas about healthy or athletic bodies.

This interdisciplinary volume of thirty original essays engages with four key concerns of queer theoretical work - identity, discourse, normativity and relationality. The terms ’queer’ and ’theory’ are put under interrogation by a combination of distinguished and emerging scholars from a wide range of international locations, in an effort to map the relations and disjunctions between them. These contributors are especially attendant to the many theoretical discourses intersecting with queer theory, including feminist theory, LGBT studies, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, disability studies, Marxism, poststructuralism, critical race studies and posthumanism, to name a few. This Companion provides an up to the minute snapshot of queer scholarship from the past two decades and identifies many current directions queer theorizing is taking, while also signposting several fruitful avenues for future research. This book is both an invaluable and authoritative resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom.

Holding queer theory to its promise to revolutionise our ways of thinking, Nir Kedem offers a forceful encounter between Deleuze's work and contemporary queer thought to provide both critical and practical means to re-evaluate and rework key concepts and methods, especially sexuality. Kedem provides a new pragmatic approach to working with Deleuze across multiple disciplines, a rigorous demonstration of its critical and creative power, as well as extensive analysis of the relations between Deleuze and queer thought. All of which exemplify that despite - if not owing to - the unassuming role of sexuality in his thought, Deleuze proves to be queer thought's true ally.

Queering Wolverine in Comics and Fanfiction: A Fastball Special interrogates the ways in which the Marvel Comics character Wolverine is a queer hero and examines his representation as an open, vulnerable, and kinship-oriented queer hero in both comics and fanfiction. Despite claims that Wolverine embodies Reagan-era conservatism or hegemonic hypermasculinity, Wolverine does not conform to gender or sex norms, not only because of his mutant status, but also because his character, throughout his publication history, resists normalization, making him a site for a queer-heroic futurity. Rather than focusing on overt queer representations that have appeared in some comic forms, this book explores the queer representations that have preceded Wolverine’s bisexual and gay characterizations and in particular focuses on his porous and vulnerable body. Through important, but not overly analyzed storylines, representations of his open body that is always in process (both visually and narratively), his creation of queer kinships with his fellow mutants, and his eroticized same-sex relationships as depicted in fanfiction, this book traces a queer genealogy of Wolverine. This book is ideal reading for students and scholars of comics studies, cultural studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, and literature.

This visionary volume examines how queer bodies are theatrically represented on the Cuban stage in ways that challenge one of the state’s primary revolutionary tools, the categorization and homogenization of individuals. Bretton White critically analyzes contemporary performances that upset traditional understandings of performer and spectator, as well as what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry. Following the 1959 revolution, nonconformists were monitored and reported by local committees and punished or reformed by the government. Censorship was rampant, and Cuban art suffered as the state tried to control the national message. Through the lens of queer theory, White explores how the body has been central to the state’s fear-based marginalization of gay life and looks at the ways these theatrical performances defuse that fear. She highlights the revolutionary model of masculinity and the role it plays in excluding people based upon visible queer difference. White finds that, through experimental performances of sexuality, actors create connections with audiences to evoke shared feelings of discomfort, intimacy, shame, longing, frustration, and failure, which echo the prevalence of these feelings in other Cuban spaces. By performing queerness, these plays question the state’s narrative of heteronormativity and empower citizens to negotiate alternative understandings of Cuban identity.