REMEMBER that time you saw those two fat people having sex on TV? No you don’t because fat people are rarely depicted having sex anywhere in the mainstream media.

But Dr Cat Pausé, a senior lecturer and fat studies researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, thinks that given how many of us are overweight, fat sex should be normal daytime viewing.

“Guess what? Fat people do have sex and a lot of them have really hot sex,” she says.

Dr Cat Pausé, who describes herself as “super fat,” has just written a chapter for an upcoming book about fat sexuality called Fat sex: New directions in theory and activism.

During her research Dr Pausé found fat sexuality was generally treated with “disgust” in popular culture and attraction to fat bodies was seen as “deviant” by some academics.

“The scholarship that exists around fat sex is primarily obesity research that is saying, ‘Right, so how does how does being fat ruin someone’s sex life?’” Dr Pausé says.

She takes a wildly different approach to the issue, arguing we shouldn’t “exclude part of the population from taking part in a healthy, normal aspect of what it means to be human because of their size.”

Dr Pausé says that on both the big and small screen fat, people are often relegated to “sidekick” roles, but instead should be portrayed as “protagonists and heroines.”

“I’d very much like to see fat bodies simply included in everyday representation.

“I think that would help slowly change the culture,” she says.

“Even if being fat is the absolute worst thing in the world morally, health-wise … why does that then mean that fat people are deserving of less human dignity and less human respect?” she continues.

Dr Pausé is part of a growing worldwide fat acceptance movement that aims to see fat people treated equally in every aspect of life.

Va Va Boombah Fat Burlesque is a Melbourne-based performance group that kicked off three years ago with the aim of giving fat bodies more representation.

Lisa-Skye, Co-Artistic Director of Va Va Boombah, says the mainstream media deals with the issue of fat sexuality “poorly” and her group seeks to address this.

“We embrace body diversity. All bodies are sexy, and all bodies are capable of wonderful things.

“The dimensions don’t matter. It’s how you feel inside your shell,” she says.

But not everyone wants to throw their arms around the notion of fat acceptance. The World Health Organisation labels our widening girths as a “global obesity epidemic” and states on it’s website that “2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obese.”

Those obesity statistics are largely based on a measure called “Body Mass Index” or BMI, a nearly 200-hundred-year-old formula that is now used to calculate a person’s healthy weight.

However, BMI is coming under increasing criticism as a measure of health. Dr Pausé is among those who believe it is “methodologically flawed.”

“In the last hundred years, as a population, we’ve gotten heavier through technology and better nutrition.

“And if we were using the BMI as a normal representation of the population like it was designed to be, as we got heavier, it would have changed to reflect that,” she says.

Dr Pausé also points to a growing body of research outlining the so-called “obesity paradox”. On the one hand being overweight may increase your risk of serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. On the other hand a few extra kilos may actually help you fight and survive chronic illness.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 3 in 5 Australian adults are considered overweight or obese. Is it weird then that we don’t want to watch fat people — like ourselves — having sex on TV or in films?

Dr Cat Pausé says no, it’s not.

“Fat people are just as likely to hold anti-fat attitudes as non-fat people because they grew up in a fat-hating culture … it’s not something that you can just turn off,” she says.

Anti-fat attitudes extend far beyond sexuality, influencing “employment opportunities, educational opportunities and housing opportunities,” Dr Pause says.

Dr Pausé hasn’t jumped on the scales for some time but estimates her weight to be about 140 kilos. This means she has copped her fair share of scorn and abuse, including strangers snickering and sneering in public, taking photos of her while she is eating and mooing at her from passing cars.

One man even brushed past her on a busy footpath and yelled out: “Hey, fat f***!”

Given the stigma and “concern” from family and friends, Dr Pausé says accepting her body was a “process.”

“I think that is really hard especially for women of all sizes, right? It’s not just fat women that experience body-image dissatisfaction,” she says.

“Regardless of what my size was, I had to learn to be comfortable and happy with my body before I could be comfortable and happy with being a sexual being and engaging in sexual activity,” says Dr Pausé.

And no matter what you think about the politics of fat activism, body acceptance is something we can all strive for.

Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism is coming out in July with Ashgate Press.

Follow Ginger Gorman on twitter @freshchilli