#20: Dr Joy Cox
Website: https://freshoutthecocoon.com/ | Instagram: @freshoutthecocoon
New Jersey-based activist and researcher Joy Cox, Ph.D. focuses on fat acceptance and intersecting identities, having studied stigma and identity management. Her area of interest is centered on the body positive movement, women, and fat bodies. Her mission is “to give fat women who view their bodies positively a voice that can be found in research journals, book chapters, and abroad, in and out of the Ivory towers“.
Her book Fat Girls in Black Bodies will be released this year and we’re sure it’s going to be a must-read. Through her writing, Cox talks about the importance of reclaiming space and create belonging in a hostile world where many of us just exist. She tackles issues that many won’t, being an advocate for fat women of color in an effort to dispel those ingrained myths about race, size, gender, and worth that deny fat Black women their selfhood.
She continues to travel the world, either in a keynote speaker role or as a panelist. If you have the chance to hear her speak, we highly recommend you do.