Fat Girl Starving

Jessie Field
James Martinez Salem

Cam is fat, but she’s finally found the road to recovery: starving! Oh. Wait. No, that’s no good.

Fat Girl Starving follows Cam as she joins a support group for Atypical Anorexia - the clinical name for starving yourself in a fat body. (We use fat as a non-judgmental descriptor of body size. If “fat” seems like a bad thing, that’s anti-fat bias sneaking in - but don’t worry, we’re here to help unpack that!)

At the Flatbush YMCA, the support group is formed consisting of:

• Cam, a sarcastic jokester lesbian who feels she’s unworthy of love because of her body and past failed relationships (which she blames on her body);

• Rachel, a high-energy cheerleader type who claims to have fully bought into the support group’s ideals and tries to take care of all her fellow recoverees (while she struggles in secret);

• Ollie, an intellectual enby (maybe transmasc? They’re figuring it out!) boi who is questioning the anti-fat bias in everything after a traumatic experience with their doctor;

• Elle, a mean girl (or is she just being funny? No. No, she’s mean. But it is funny!) who is actively trying to undermine her own recovery;

• Arthur, a campy gay fashionista whose parents totally support his queerness but also sent him to fat camp.

Although the group starts at odds, together they begin to navigate past traumas, present roadblocks, and the horrors of eating in public. They also start dating each other (it’s a hot gay mess). Can they overcome anti-fat bias in order to love each other and themselves?

Fat Girl Starving is a darkly humorous pop-punk musical that challenges societal conceptions around dieting and body size, centers fat characters with full and nuanced arcs containing both their traumas and their joys, and unblinkingly asks the audience to examine its connection to the widely accepted and overlooked stigma of fatphobia.