From Laura Nathan [at InTheFray.org]

This June, INTHEFRAY Magazine will get the skinny on the 21st century's obsession with fat.

With meanings ranging from obese to wealthy, from productive to foolish, fat has many faces today. While the diet industry rakes in billions and the fashion industry glamorizes anorexia, public health experts have declared an obesity epidemic of unprecedented proportions. Meanwhile, public officials and corporate executives are dealing in a different kind of fat — politicians skim the fat off taxpayer dollars to finance a war from which their fat cat friends profit, while CEOs cook the books to fatten up company profits and feed their own growing compensation packages.

With fat shaping our lives at every turn, we invite artists and writers to our big fat June issue. Possible questions to explore include: Is the obesity epidemic a hoax? Do fat studies departments have a place in academia? When it comes to discrimination, is fat the new black? How do race and class influence what we eat and what we consider to be beautiful? What does obesity say about affluence in our society? How will bans on transfats change dining experiences? How is newly acquired affluence affecting health in developing countries? How is fat related to phat? Who is getting fat off the war in Iraq?

Contributors interested in pitching relevant news features, poetry/fiction, cultural criticism, commentary pieces, personal essays, visual essays, travel stories, or book reviews should e-mail us at fat-at-inthefray-dot-org. Send us a well-developed, one-paragraph pitch for your proposed piece NO LATER THAN APRIL 30, 2007. First-time contributors to ITF should familiarize themselves with the type of content we publish, our submission guidelines, and the honorarium and publishing rights we offer beforehand by visiting http://submit.inthefray.org.