Fashioning fat fem(me)ininities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses interview data to explore how queer fat femme women and gender nonconforming individuals negotiate a dominant cultural fashioning of fat fem(me)ininity as hyperfeminine, fat “in the right places,” white, cisgender, and upper/middle-class. By considering the pressures queer fat femmes experience to embody this culturally intelligible fat fem(me)ininity; the consequences participants experience for deviating from this fem(me)ininity; participants’ feelings of failure in relation to this fat fem(me)ininity; and participants’ articulations of queer fat femme as a space of resistance and community via their own fashionings of fat and queer fem(me)ininities, this article argues that there is a need to broaden narrow cultural conceptions of fat fem(me)ininity. Expanding conceptions of fat fem(me)ininity offers opportunities to recognize and value queer fat femmes’ own (re)fashionings of fat fem(me)ininities.