Fat Is a Queer Issue, Too": Complicating Queerness and Body Size in Women's Sexual Orientation and Identity
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Communication ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 5-18-2020 "Fat is a Queer Issue, Too": Complicating Queerness and Body Size in Women's Sexual Orientation and Identity Hannah R. Long University of New Mexico - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cj_etds Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Long, Hannah R.. ""Fat is a Queer Issue, Too": Complicating Queerness and Body Size in Women's Sexual Orientation and Identity." (2020). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cj_etds/131 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. i Hannah R. Long Candidate Communication & Journalism Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Dr. Shinsuke Eguci, Chairperson Dr. Myra Washington Dr. Jaelyn DeMaria Dr. Shadee Abdi, External member, San Francisco State University ii “FAT IS A QUEER ISSUE TOO”: COMPLICATING QUEERNESS AND BODY SIZE IN WOMEN’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND IDENTITY by HANNAH R. LONG A.A. Liberal Arts, Lehigh Carbon Community College, 2010 B.A. Psychology, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 2013 B.A. Communication Studies, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 2013 M.A. Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2015 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Communication The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2020 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my fellow queer fat folks. I hope that I was able to do us justice and provide some ways for us to be able to at least take up some space on the page and in the minds of those who read this document. To my eight interviewees, thank you for trusting me with your energy, your time, your stories and your experiences. I hope that I was able to treat what you so freely gave with care and respect. Thank you for being willing to share with me such intimate details of your selves. To my inner child, to eight-year-old Hannah, who was shamed into thinking her body was a problem, you are not the problem, societal structures are. I’m sorry it took me so long to give you the love you deserved. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS One of my constant strivings is to live in gratitude, and so it is with deep and complete gratitude that I wish to enter this space and begin this document. This dissertation is the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of strength and support from a community of people; no one completely writes a dissertation alone. While it is impossible to name everyone that had a part in me completing this project, I wish to highlight a few specific folks in this moment without whom I would never have made any progress. First, the interviewees: without your participation, I would have had nothing to talk about. Thank you for being willing to share some tough shit with me and allowing me to be the keyboard behind sharing your experience(s). Your trust and willingness to share with me touches my heart in a way that gives me hope for the future, and anyone who knows me knows how rare of a thing that is. To my dissertation committee and those who mentored me on this journey: Drs. Shinsuke Eguchi, Myra Washington, Jaelyn DeMaria, and Shadee Abdi. Thank you for your labor (time, emotional, physical) that you contributed to my education and to this project. I have appreciated and grown from each of your insights and presence on my committee. Thank you for pushing me and encouraging me to dig deeper through this process. Thank you for your presence in my life these last five years. I want to thank my chosen family, who supported me through every crisis over the past three years. I am especially grateful for the support of Charlie Verploegh and Kristopher Zink, who afforded me countless hours of kindness and empathy through this process. Writing a dissertation is an impossible thing to articulate to folks, and I am grateful to have had people in v my life who not only understood but provided support in a way I didn’t know I needed until they offered it. And while continuing to name individuals would result in another dissertation chapter, I do want to specifically acknowledge the labor of my advisor, Dr. Shinsuke Eguchi. We have both grown together so much over the last five years, and I am forever grateful for your patience and presence with me in the life and scholarship shifts that occurred over this last half a decade. Without you, Shin, I wouldn’t have finished. Never did I ever think I would be finishing this dissertation during the pandemic, but here we are. Lastly, to my dear pup Callie, without whom I literally would not have survived grad school and this dissertation process. Thanks, muffin. vi “FAT IS A QUEER ISSUE TOO”: COMPLICATING QUEERNESS AND BODY SIZE IN WOMEN’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND IDENTITY by HANNAH R. LONG A.A. Liberal Arts, Lehigh Carbon Community College, 2010 B.A. Psychology, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 2013 B.A. Communication Studies, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 2013 M.A. Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2015 Ph.D. Communication, University of New Mexico, 2020 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the experiences of self-identified Lesbian-Bisexual-Queer- Transgender (LBQT) women wearing U.S. clothing size 1x and up. Drawing on research within queer theory, fat studies, and Crip theory, the main goal of this study is to explore how these women engage in their embodied everyday performances of the body and identity, particularly through looking at relationship to body and self, intersectional complications, and navigation of physical and discursive space(s). Through analyzing their narratives collected in in-depth interviews, I find that fatness contributes to how people see desire for their selves and others, community, and space-taking. Additionally, within the narratives of the participants’ ideologies around white femininity, whiteness, fatness and privilege and internalized fatphobia are present vii and influential in how these women related to themselves and the world. Lastly, when considering everyday identity performance, notions of failure and success, relational understandings of queerness and then queerness as a political choice are significant to participants in understanding how their bodies and identities are read within the world. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………1 Problem Statement………………………………………………………………………...2 Rationale and Research Goals………………………………………………………...…13 Research Questions……………………………………………………………...……….17 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………..18 Queer Theory…………………………………………………………………………….18 Beginnings of Queer Theory in Academia………………………………………18 Queer of Color Critique……………………………………………………….…21 Crip Theory………………………………………………………………………………25 Fat Studies………………………………………………………………………………..29 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………...34 Methodological Framework…………………………………………………………...…34 Performance Studies……………………………………………………………..35 Interviewing……………………………………………….……………………..37 Critical Reflexivity…………………………………………………………….…37 Data Collection…………………………………………………………………………..41 Interview…………………………………………………………………………41 Interviewees……………………………………………………………………...43 Data Analysis and Interpretation……………………………………………………...…47 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS…………………………………………………………………..…49 Intersections of Fatphobia and Queerness…………………………………………….…51 Fatness and Desire…………………………………………………………….…52 ix Fatness and Queer Community………………………………………………..…75 Complicating Fat Embodiment…………………………………………………..84 Concluding Thoughts on Theme One…………………………………………....99 Whiteness and Privilege………………………………………………………………...102 The Invisibility of White Femininity……………………………………...……103 Degrees of Fatness and Privilege……………………………………………….112 Internalized Fatphobia………………………………………………………….117 Concluding Thoughts on Theme Two……………………………………….…123 Everyday Identity Performance……………………………………………………...…126 Queer Failure and Successes……………………………………………………126 Relational Understandings of Queerness………………………………...……...137 Queer and Fat as a Political Choice…………………………...……………..…140 Concluding Thoughts on Theme Three………………………………………...151 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS…………….…………………………………………………154 Theoretical Implications………………………………………………………………..160 Queer Theory…………………………………………………………………...160 Crip Theory……………………………………………………………………..163 Fat Studies………………………………………………………………………166 Communication Studies …………………………………………...……...……168 Methodological Reflections……………………………………………………….……171 Challenges in Interviews……………………………………………………..…171 Challenges with analysis……………………………………………………..…173 x Limitations and Future Directions………………………………………………...……174 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…182 Appendix A IRB Approval…………………………………………………………………..…187 Appendix B Invitation Email Letter……………………………………………………………189 Appendix C Interview Guide…………………………………………………………………...191 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………193 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION …fat bitch / whale / lazy / unintelligent / insatiable / too much / fatass / failure / ugly / sloppy / no self-control / monster / massive / unhealthy / unintelligent / your fault / desperate