“Why is your body a different shape?” fatness and masculinity in the superhero film

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, American superhero films, and with them often very traditional constructs of masculinity, have become omnipresent in cinemas worldwide. This article examines a specific type of male representation, male fatness, in two examples of the genre, Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). The author argues that in both films the fat male character is depicted as demasculinized, thereby standing in a tradition of male fatness stereotyped as outside of normative masculinity. In the superhero genre the body plays a particularly relevant role in signifying a hegemonic masculinity, which is highlighted by the way the two films position the characters’ fatness, or also behaviors associated with fatness, in contrast to the expectations of superhero masculinity.