An Interview with Rachel M. Thomas on Weight Bias and <em>Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl</em>

Rachel M. Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Comics, Graphic Novels, and Sequential Arts at Teesside University; she is also, in her own words, a fat girl. This is not pejorative. In her remarkable graphic memoir Shrink: Story of a Fat Girl (Graphic Mundi, 2024), Thomas not only reveals her history and her struggle with size but also recounts society’s ugliness and the medical profession’s hypocrisies in terms of weight. Comics scholar A. David Lewis had the opportunity to speak with Thomas both about her process and about her research, particularly body neutrality, the potential future of semaglutides, and the comics medium’s versatility for artists’ self-depiction.