Education Does Broaden One: University Hires “Fatness Studies” Prof

“Fat liberation” and “representation” used to mean liberating fat from your body so it wouldn’t be overrepresented there anymore and you could fit into last year’s swimsuit. Now it’s the business of a new breed of activists, one of whom was just hired by Pennsylvania State University to teach students about, among other things, “fat representation and liberation.”

So parents of prospective undergraduates can know that the kids will be finally getting more than just “sexuality and gender” studies and “transgenderism” info for their $35,000 in Penn State tuition, room, board, and fees.

Penn State, notorious for the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia sexual-abuse scandal, announced the new hire in a press release. “The Stuckeman School’s Department of Graphic Design in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture has announced that designer, activist and educator Brooke Hull will join its faculty ranks as an assistant professor, effective Aug. 1,” the university relates.

“Hull focuses their research on fatness and marginalized identity with the goal of expanding design education — and education, in general — for every human body.” (Yes, well, expansion is something Hull apparently knows a lot about.)

One could think that referencing the generously proportioned Hull with a plural pronoun (“their” above) could be offensive. Is the implication that she could be three people? But the blog here explains the method to the madness, writing that “Brooke Hull (they/them) is a white, fat, queer, trans non-binary, and neurodivergent MFA candidate in design and visual communication who is both a researcher and a teacher. Their research centers fat lived experiences….”

Whether there are such things as “un-lived experiences,” fat or thin, was not reported.

For more insight into Hull’s qualifications, know that on her Instagram page she writes that she’s a “queer designer and ever evolving human #freepalestine.”

It’s not clear how “freeing Palestine” relates to Hull’s cause, though the common theme could be expansion (of waistlines and Dār al-Islam’s borders).

Interestingly, Hull only has a master’s degree, The College Fix informs, even though a Ph.D. is generally a prerequisite for professorships. On the other hand, her defenders may say, she’s remarkably well rounded….

Additionally, “Hull has other experience relevant to the classroom,” The College Fix avers.

“For example, the professor ‘also is an invited guest teacher of activism with the University of Copenhagen, DIS study abroad program, focusing on fat and queer activism,” the site writes.

The Fix further informs that Hull’s past “projects include: ‘Designing for Intersectional Fat Liberation: Leveraging Co-design & Ethnographic Methods to Document Fat Lived Experiences,’ ‘Researching through Critical Making: Using Illustrated Letterforms to Represent Fat, Intersectional Bodies within Design,’ and ‘(The Struggle for) Queer Existence within Design History.’” Yes, unless I’m mistaken, this was also part of the program when Aristotle tutored the young Alexander the Great.

As for Penn State’s state of mind when hiring Hull, “The new professor’s experience fits in with the Stuckeman School’s goal of promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ according to the dean,” the Fix further reports.

In fairness and literally taken, total “inclusion” certainly would mean including in curricula not just Truth but lies. In practice it means excluding the Truth.

Penn State is, however, staying true to form. In fact, “Hull’s hiring comes less than two months after the College of Arts & Architecture presented a ‘prestigious’ award to one of its architectural students for ‘investigating the gender binary’ of the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” Young America’s Foundation relates. “After determining that the train station’s design was not sufficiently ‘queer,’ the award-winning student proposed a remodel.”

As for “fat studies,” it may be a field that’s just hitting its stride (slow and waddling though it may be). After all, the College Fix wrote in 2019 already that two professors at a Midwestern university were “working to develop and legitimize the field…, a discipline that examines the cultural and sociological phenomenon of overweight and obese human beings.”

Joking aside, this all underlines how we’ve ceased being a serious society. It brings to mind something a nonagenarian I know observed recently, too.

After listening to the song “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” — a nice tune that discusses the inner struggles Superman might experience if he existed — the elderly person stated that if people were busy enough, they wouldn’t have time to worry about such things. You may say she was taking the song too seriously, but she had a point:

People are far too self-involved today.

For example, Hull heads her LinkedIn page with “I am for equity because who I am matters.” It’s standard for left-wing activists to fixate on “My race, my ‘gender,’ my problems, my identity, myself” — as if the world should revolved around them. Of course, the saying “An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop” could occur to one. But this also reflects a lack of love.

This manifests itself in the intense anger left-wing activists often exhibit, but here’s the point: As you become more loving, you start focusing on other people more and yourself less. You then begin fading into the background — and your problems, “identities,” etc., fade into it along with you. This not only makes you a far better person, but also a happier one. You then cease trying to destroy the good because you then, instinctively, identify with it, not with its opposite.

For those still concerned about “fat liberation” and returning to a humorous note, check out “Weird Al” Yankovic’s spoof song “Fat” (patterned after Michael Jackson’s “Bad.”)