Research meets art in new graphic novel, Shrink
A new graphic novel melds fine arts and medical research as a way of challenging weight bias in medicine and advocating for body neutrality.
Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl is the product of Creemore native Rachel Thomas’ doctoral thesis for a Ph.D in Interdisciplinary Humanities awarded from Concordia University in 2023. Thomas’ graphic novel is one half of the thesis (the other being a 200- page paper that contextualizes her research) and one that she always hoped would be published, making it accessible to the public and healthcare professionals as a means of education. Thomas worked on Shrink over four years, creating hundreds of digital drawings for the 178-page book.
She said she knew as early as high school that she wanted to teach at the post secondary level and pursue a career in academia, so she never shied away from the 12 years of schooling that would eventually land her a job at Teesside University in England where she is a senior lecturer in comics, graphic novels and sequential arts.
Having parents who worked in the performing arts, Thomas said she was encouraged to try many different art forms. She found she had an aptitude for drawing and sculpture. With encouragement from a supportive high school teacher, Thomas decided to pursue visual arts post secondary, starting with a bachelor of fine arts at York University, followed by a master’s degree in sculpture at The University of Calgary, where she started to integrate health research into her work.
Shrink falls into the genre of graphic medicine, the intersection between comics and health care, as a means to synthesize the data she was collecting.
Thomas chose a crime noir style for the memoir for its associations with that perfect femme fatale hourglass figure.
“With comics you can leave a lot to the imagination, which I really like, because there is an interpretive power of comics that you don’t necessarily get from other forms of visual art,” said Thomas, adding there is an under-representation and a misrepresentation of fat bodies in comics and the media in general. “Having a hero that isn’t that perfect body kind of troubles those stereotypes.”
“I wanted a way to have my research accessible to the general public because these are all issues that are really applicable to a lot of different people,” said Thomas.
She said there are a number of barriers to research data, including access to scientific articles and the academic jargon they contain.
“I realized if I am going to do this type of research specifically into obesity and fatness, it makes the most sense to do it through a graphic novel,” said Thomas.
Shrink tells Thomas’ story of being teased about her weight as a teenager and her mission to shed pounds through extreme dieting and exercise – which led to a number of health problems – after hearing the same unsolicited advice from doctors throughout her life,“you could stand to lose some weight.”
With the exception of one part, the novel is autobiographical.
“It was quite difficult at times, to be that vulnerable, but I think because at the time I was going through this process of losing weight and trying to come to terms with this body that was changing, it also served as a bit of a diary for me as well, to track how I was feeling and comparing it to the literature that I was reading and finding a way to tie it all together in a nice little story,” said Thomas. “So it was difficult, but it was worth going through the pain of doing that.”
Shrink includes the fictionalized storyline about aspirations of becoming a paramedic to illustrate the healthcare bias she was seeing in her research.
“Even if you’re going to school in medicine… if you’re a fat body there is bias from other doctors against you,” said Thomas. “I wanted to tap into that because it’s not something that we really talk about a lot. We know there is bias from healthcare professionals towards fat bodies as patients but not necessarily towards colleagues.”
Health doesn’t look the same for everyone, said Thomas. Typically, the healthcare system does not take into account social determinants of health – genetics, gender, socio-economic status.
Thomas advocates for public health policy reform, to do away with the outdated body mass index (BMI), measured solely on height and weight, as the primary indicator of health when it comes to weight, and a change in the way doctors are educated. She challenges the common belief that all fat bodies are unhealthy, and all thin bodies are healthy.
“The expectation as a fat person is that you’re always supposed to be on a diet, you’re always supposed to be exercising, you’re always supposed to be trying to change your body,” she said. “As soon as you see a fat person, the expectation is it’s a personal failure.”
As opposed to the stringent confines of the BMI, Shrink also explores the immeasurable concept of happiness. Thomas writes, “somewhere along the way I was taught that thin women are happy, and because I wasn’t thin, I couldn’t be.”
“It’s conditioned in all of us to assume things about fat bodies and that if we’re miserable, that’s normal. The expectation is that we’re not allowed to be happy until we’ve achieved the body that we’re supposed to have, which is a non-fat body,” said Thomas.
“This concept of happiness is synonymous with normal, in the context of Shrink particularly. Like, if I can reach this certain state of normal then I’ll be happy but we know that’s not the case. It doesn’t work like that. In fact, losing weight makes you realize that everything around you is really shallow, people are miserable all time no matter their body size, and there really is no such thing as normal either,” said Thomas. “That’s one of the major takeaways of Shrink is that we have to figure out what it is that is right for our bodies, what it is that makes us happy, and maybe be more body neutral… The normal for you is the normal for you alone, and that we can listen to all these voices around us telling us what needs to be done or what needs to happen to our bodies, but ultimately it’s our choice.”
Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl is published by Penn State Press’ Graphic Mundi. It is available online and at bookstores.
