Cat Pausé

Caitlin Clare "Cat" Pausé (May 29, 1979 – March 25, 2022) was an American academic specialising in fat studies and a fat activist. From 2008 until her death in 2022 she was a senior lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand.

Education Caitlin Clare Pausé was born in Midland, Texas on 29 May 1979. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in sociology at Southwest Texas State University in 1999. She attained her Master of Arts at Texas Tech University in 2002, and completed her Doctorate of Philosophy in human development at Texas Tech in 2007. Pausé's doctoral work was done under Gwendolyn T. Sorell and included work on the Adult Identity Development Project. Her dissertation explored weight identity in women who were categorized by health systems as "morbidly obese." the barriers to health for fat people, and the role of social media in fat activism and scholarship. She was also interested in "fat pedagogies" and fat ethics.

Pausé was the lead editor of Queering Fat Embodiment (2014). This volume brought together scholarship from various disciplines in order to examine experiences of fat people and intersectionality.

Pausé hosted two international Fat Studies conferences. The first, took place in 2012 and covered topics such as "fat pride", "obesity panic", and teaching children about fatness and fitness. Pausé guest-edited a special issue of the Fat Studies journal on Reflective Intersections. The second conference took place in 2016. and topics covered included "fat embodiment" and public health, the intersections between race and fatness, and how food corporations marketed themselves as addressing childhood obesity.

Public work and activism

Pausé was recognised as a public intellectual in the area of fat studies within New Zealand and abroad. Her work was featured in The Huffington Post, Jezebel, and the New Zealand programme 20/20, among others. She was regularly invited to comment on stories related to fatness by national and international media outlets, including ones in Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Across New Zealand, she spoke to Rotary clubs, district health boards, secondary schools, and other groups. She also spoke to Permian Basin Mensa in the United States. She was the keynote speaker at the Women's Health Action Trust Suffrage Breakfast in 2012 in Auckland.

Pausé believed that disseminating scholarship through social media provided for opportunities to broaden academic spaces, enable the participation of different voices, and address the academy's commitment to social justice. Inside Higher Education, Conditionally Accepted, and the Health at Every Size blog. She also wrote two op-eds for national New Zealand media outlets.

Pausé's research and activism has garnered controversy. Shortly before her death, Steven Crowder, an American conservative comedian, uploaded a video on YouTube of himself infiltrating a 2020 online fat studies conference in which Pausé was involved at Massey University. Crowder, under a made-up name, portrayed himself as a gender-queer fat studies activist and scholar, and presented a fake academic paper that was accepted by the conference. Crowder claimed being accepted without question to the conference showed the "idiocy" of the fat studies field. Comments on the video were critical of Pausé. In response, Pausé's friend and former Tertiary Education Union representative Heather Warren said: "A lot of Cat's research is around how fat bodies and fat people are dehumanised in our society, and the comments online further go to validate that even in death fat people are dehumanised by society and discriminated against by our society."

Friend of Marilyn podcast The Friend of Marilyn podcast began in 2011, hosted by 999AM Access Manawatu. Friend of Marilyn had over 500 regular listeners from across the world. Her work included speaking about what she perceived as discrimination against fat people in numerous areas of life, including the workplace, what she claimed was a lack of legal protections that fat people were afforded, "fat shaming" in the medical community, and what she called the erasure of fat people's sexuality.

Fuck, Yeah! Fat PhDs Fuck, Yeah! Fat PhDs was a Tumblr created by Pausé.

Tertiary Education Union

Pausé was involved with the Tertiary Education Union at a national level, sitting on the national council as Women’s Vice-President for six years and also academic representative.

Death At the age of 42, Pausé died suddenly in her sleep at her home in Palmerston North on 25 March 2022. Her cause of death was not disclosed.

Selected works Books Pausé, C. J., Wykes, J., & Murray, S (Eds). (2014). Queering fat embodiment. London: Ashgate. Pausé, C. J. (2014). "Causing a commotion: Queering fatness in cyberspace." In C. J. Pausé, J. Wykes, & S. Murray (Eds.), Queering fat embodiment (pp. 75–88). London: Ashgate. Pausé, C. J., Waitere, H., Wright, J., Powell, K., & gilling, m. (2012). "We say what we are & we do as we say: Feminisms in practice." Feminist Review, 102, 79–96. DOI: 10.1057/fr.2011.50 Pausé, C. J. (2012). "Live to tell: Coming out as fat." Somatechnics, 2 (1), 42–56.