On Womanhood, Fatphobia, and Being Perceived

I chose to write about fatness and fatphobia because deconstructing fatphobia across cultures is a topic that I’m very passionate about. I originally wrote this essay for a class called “Vision and the Senses” during my master’s program (which is why I have APA style citations!)

This edited version of the original essay leaves out discussions of medical fatphobia. I will post another article later about this topic! There are many scholars and activists who have paved the way for this kind of discussion. If you’re interested in delving into this topic further, I will provide a list of resources below.

TW: Fatphobia, Racism, Sexual Abuse

A round belly. Large thighs. Rolls of fat. Stripes of cellulite. All of these descriptors have been weaponized against those deemed to be too “fat” across Western Society—and increasingly across the globe. The concept of fatness is currently not a neutral one, although many fat liberationists use the term in a neutral manner. Fatness cannot be separated from societal discourse, as a “normal” body is established according to a society’s specific standards. When a person does not meet these norms, they are seen as being resistant to society and are often subject to violence. The relationship between normal and abnormal subsequently must be situated within both personal and cultural groundings.  In a Western context, those who are considered overweight, fat, or clinically obese have their identities conferred upon them through the other’s gaze. This outside perception leads to a negative sense of self for those who are deemed fat in Western society, and more specifically, amongst the female-identifying population of the United States. Outward perception also affects the way fat women see and navigate sexual and romantic relationships. Ultimately, fat female-identifying bodies in America are subject to an outward gaze that aids in the construction of their romantic personhood.

In this article, I use the term “fat” solely as a descriptor of bodies that are deemed “too” large in Western society. The reclamation and neutralization of the word fat has been up taken by various fat activists fighting for fat-inclusivity, including artists such as Scottee and Brenda Oelbaum. In general, modern-day fatphobia— the discrimination against and stigmatization of fat bodies— is a part of the cultural hegemonic discourse surrounding beauty and health. Cultural hegemony is the dominance of a certain culture within a society, thus informing the societies social norms and codes. Ultimately, hegemonic power influences the average person’s gaze i.e., how they view the world. More specifically, dominant discourses shape how those perceive and are perceived, thus, creating the basis for widespread fatphobia.

The emergence of hegemonic beauty ideals related to the ideal woman’s body, can be traced back to the gaze of male artists in the 1500s. During this time, elites created a value system to measure beauty— a system which prioritized refinement and well-proportioned female figures (Strings, 2019). During the Italian renaissance, there was a hyper-focus on the beauty of the Venus de Medici which was the standard that all white European women were expected to meet. In the beginning of the slave trade, the so-called “plumpness” of African women was seen as a novelty, but by the 17th century African women were described as the aesthetic counterpart to white women (Strings, 2019).  The slave trade and pseudo race-science led to certain aesthetic and scientific developments that still impact Western ideas of fat bodies today. For example, Buffon, a French enlightenment thinker who focused on differences between peoples, was one of the first to argue that corpulence was linked to laziness, specifically among men (Strings, 2019). While fat was originally seen as a sign of wealth, with enlightenment and the influx of sugar from the booming slave trade, fatness subsequently became a sign of laziness. During this time, the outward gaze of male elites controlled the narrative surrounding beauty and body ideals.

Emerging preoccupations with body size during this time also became increasingly tied to racial science. Race scientists cataloged and wrote about the body shape and size of different peoples, resulting in a fabricated link between fatness and blackness as well as whiteness and slimness (Strings, 2019). Therefore, it was easy for white elites to associate fatness with negative racist stereotypes of those they considered “lesser.” The slimness of white women became evermore important as time went on, especially in relation to perceived attractiveness by males.

With the 18th and 19th century protestant revivals in America, slimness as both a moral and aesthetic cause became a priority for white women. During this time, women of color and their relationship to body size were not extensively studied in comparison to white Christian women. It was also in the 18th and 19th centuries that body size truly became an issue of vanity and identity. Women’s magazines, such as Harper's Bazaar, wrote articles focused on the repulsiveness of fatness. One writer, Edith Bigelow (1897), wrote, “fatness is a most undesirable state. It is dangerous to the vital organs, and it is destructive of vanity…I say that to be fat— to be, oh, awful word obese— is to be miserable.” Through popular media, a specific identity became tied to fatness. Fatness was increasingly seen as ugly, undesirable, and unhealthy. This idea was also expounded upon by scientists who also saw fat as unsightly and unhealthy, spreading this ideology to the masses. In the 20th century, the invention of personal weight scales coincided with widespread knowledge of popular aesthetics and health concerns surrounding fatness. It also fell in line with the increasingly common use of the Body Mass Index (BMI) which measured obesity (Strings, 2019).

With the history of fatphobia in mind, how then, is identity conferred upon women deemed fat in Western societies?  Philosopher Jean Paul-Sartre writes about how the gaze of the other shapes our own understanding of ourselves in his work Being and Nothingness. According to Sartre (1996), “to be looked at is to apprehend oneself as the unknown object of unknowable appraisals'' (p. 267). In other words, to be looked at is to be acutely aware of others’ value judgments of ourselves and our actions. One way in which identity is conferred upon fat women in this manner, is in the realm of sexual and romantic relationships.

Sexual attractiveness in the United States is controlled by dominant discourses surrounding outward appearance. Women often receive the message that fat is ugly, specifically because it does not align with hegemonic ideals related to femininity. Fat women supposedly challenge this hegemony and thus are perceived as more masculine, and therefore, not as desirable. This shapes how fat women understand themselves as objects of desire. In one study, professor Jeannine Gailey interviewed 36 fat-identifying North American women about body image, sex, and fatness. According to Gailey (2012), “thirty-four women (94% of the sample) indicated that they experienced a life of ridicule, body shame, and numerous attempts to lose weight” (p. 118). This life of ridicule from others leads to internalized body shame that later affects these women’s romantic and sexual experiences, especially as body image concerns play an important role in sexual pleasure and functioning (Wiederman and Hurst, 2008). If one feels self-conscious during sexual acts, this may impact the entire experience and will ultimately result in negative feelings towards sex and romance. In an interview by Gailey, a participant named Karen details her personal experience regarding sex and romance:

“I would find these random, like, mostly disgusting men and I would let them take me out to dinner and then I would have sex with them, because then I would be able to eat, you know? And I started getting a really awful image again, because, for most of those men, fat was a fetish. It wasn’t, like, an acceptable thing. It was a fetish thing. Like, “Obviously, lady, I would never date you, but I will screw you because I have this weird fetish thing.”

In Karen’s experience, she was turned into a fetish. This is often the case for fat women looking to date. They either experience themselves as overly sexualized by those with fetishes or as lacking any sexuality by those who dislike fat bodies. In this way, Karen and other women who have similar experiences become dehumanized and objectified. The other’s gaze becomes one that transforms these women into objects based on sexual desires or lack thereof. This coincides with Sartre’s notion that the gaze of the other is alienating and makes one feel a surplus of emotions, including fear and shame (1996). This influences fat women’s identity formation in relation to sexuality, making many women feel ashamed of their body size. This fear and shame also affect fat women in terms of sexual abuse. In fact, according to Fabrizio (2014): “The blatant denial of fat women’s sexuality enables abusers to objectify and assault fat women. It also produces a rhetoric that enables society as a whole to excuse violence against fat women and blame these women for their deviant bodies by emphasizing how fat women should be thankful for any type of sexual attention, since they are so unworthy of it” (p.7).

Fat women are seen simultaneously as objects of sexual desire and sexual disgust, making them more prone to abuse. This is a paradox. If someone is somehow attracted to a fat body, this is seen as straying far from the norm. These thoughts and feelings surrounding attractiveness, which are superimposed onto fat bodies, are both impacted by the objects perceived and the subjects which perceive. The outward male gaze and the women’s self-perception combine to form female identity— ultimately shaping how fat women understand themselves sexually. 

Overall, the way in which women have historically been treated as objects by men has shaped how women perceive themselves. Women will often unintentionally internalize this outward gaze and begin to see themselves through the eye of the observer (Frederickson and Roberts, 1997). Throughout history, fat women have been the subject of much attention, whether in the realm of the arts or in the sciences. The development of fatphobia, which coincided with race-science, continued to spread its influence into every sphere of American life. Information and misinformation spread from media to the masses, solidifying a fatphobic and omnipresent gaze. This gaze has made fat women feel as though something is inherently wrong with them and that they are straying from the norm. This stigma is unavoidable, especially in the realm of sexual experiences. Thus, identity formation for fat American women is directly impacted by the other’s gaze. Despite the impact of the others’ gaze on identity formation, many fat activists and feminist scholars are working to combat negative stereotypes that have so often become internalized. As many have said before me, being fat is an act of political resistance.

Fat Activists/Academics/Podcasts/Etc

• Sabrina Strings (you have to read Fearing the Black Body!)

• Aubrey Gordon

• Sonalee Rashatwar

• Lindy West

• Dr. Asher Larmie

• Sofie Hagen

• Substantia Jones

• Kayden Coleman

• Taylor T

• Maintenance Phase Podcast

References and Resources:

Bigelow, E. (1897). The Sorrows of Fat, Harper’s Bazaar, Apr. 3.

Butler, J., (1956). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.

Fabrizio, M., (2014). ‘Abundantly Invisible: Fat Oppression as a Framework for Sexual Violence against Women,’ Spaces Between: An Undergraduate Feminist Journal, pp.1-14.

Farrell, A.E., (2011). Fat shame: Stigma and the fat body in American culture. New York: NYU Press.

Fisanick, C., (2005). ‘Too fat, too hairy, too (in) visible: Polycystic ovarian syndrome and normative femininity,’ Gender Forum, Vol. 12, pp. 36-57 Fredrickson, B. L., and T.-A.

Fredrickson, B. L., and T.-A. Roberts., (1997). ‘Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks,’ Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21 (2), pp. 173–206.

Gailey, J.A., (2012). ‘Fat shame to fat pride: fat women's sexual and dating experiences,’ Fat Studies, 1(1), pp.114-127. [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2012.631113. 10763827 January 17th, 2022 14

Khandpur, G., (2015). ‘Fat and Thin Sex: Fetishised Normal and Normalised Fetish,’ M/C Journal, 18(3). [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.976.

Ronti, C., (2017). ‘Fat Activists' Strategies on Stage: Redefining Fat Identity, A Comparison of Scottee, Brenda Oelbaum, and Sins Invalid,’ DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 4(2), pp.47-60. Saguy, A., (2012). ‘Why fat is a feminist issue’. Sex Roles, 66(9-10), pp.600-607.

Sartre, J.P., (1996). Being and nothingness. London: Routledge.

Strings, S., (2019). Fearing the Black Body. New York: New York University Press. 10763827 January 17th, 2022 15

Wiederman, M.W. and Hurst, S.R., (1998). ‘Body size, physical attractiveness, and body image among young adult women: Relationships to sexual experience and sexual esteem.’ Journal of Sex Research, 35(3), pp.272-281. [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499809551943.

Vigarello, G., (2013). The metamorphoses of fat: a history of obesity. New York: Columbia University Press.