Celebrating the legacy of Dr. Crystal Kotow

In 2022 our dear friend Dr. Crystal Kotow died suddenly, two years after defending her PhD in Gender, Women and Feminist Studies. We each had our own experiences of knowing Crystal and our own experiences of navigating the grief of her loss. May, a member of Crystal’s doctoral committee, sought permission from her family to get her dissertation published, and in spring 2024, Crystal’s book The Hidden Lives of Big Beautiful Women was published by Palgrave. In this piece we briefly explore the origins of our relationships with each other and Crystal and then consider the impact of her scholarship.