Olympics/Uhlympics: Living in the Shadow of the Beast

Abstract

This essay explores some of the ways that the Olympics intervenes and intrudes on local life. Using a dialogue between two fat queer women who live close to the 2012 Olympic site in East London, UK, this work explores the ways that change and hype by the development agencies are experienced by local people. Such responses are characterised by anger and anxiety, resistance, activist humour, and imaginative possibilities which contrast powerfully with dominant commercial Olympic discourses. This reflexive essay acknowledges the intersections of fat and queer identities, and the use of public rhetoric and private gendered dialogue.