Career
She describes herself as "queer, from a working-class background, white, middle-aged, and have a load of higher education. I have poly relationships and am sort-of femme". Cooper is both an academic and mainstream author
Cooper is also news editor for RainbowNetwork.com, the largest gay and lesbian portal in the United Kingdom. She is a prolific author of zines and performs in the queercore band "Homosexual Death Drive".
Charlotte Cooper describes her approach to fat activism: I challenge biomedical discourse on fat through my activism. Many fat activists are interested in countering obesity discourse claims, but my interests are in creating communities and cultures, and in documenting fat activist histories, that are somewhat autonomous and exist beyond the boundaries of medicalisation.
lieutenant does not answer to biomedical discourse, it is something else entirely that is built on the creativity and sheer badassery of fat people. lieutenant shows that there are other ways of thinking about fat, and embodying fatness.
Cooper"s 2002 novel, Cherry, about a young woman"s experience and discovery of lesbianism, attracted controversy when copies were impounded by Canadian Customs officers.
Reasons given were the scenes of fisting and golden showers. In 2007, Cooper coined the term “headless fatty” to describe negative media representations of fat people Obesity. In 2010, Cooper was a Government of Ireland Doctor of Philosophy scholar at Limerick University date where she wrote a history of the fat activist movement in which she argued that it is closely allied with the feminist movement and, like it, has undergone waves of activity.
Cooper has co-produced a number of events with fat activism themes including "The Fat of the Land", "Big Bum Jumble" and 2012"s "Fattylympics", a protest against both attitudes to fat and the London 2012 Olympics, held in Stratford, where she lives.
