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PERFORMING FAT: THE CREATION OF THE “FAT” FEMALE IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA by Leah Turner A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences with a Concentration in Women’s Studies Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University Jupiter, Florida August 2017 PERFORMING FAT: THE CREATION OF THE “FAT” FEMALE IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA by Leah Turner This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Wairimu Njambi, and has been approved by members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ___________________________ Dr. Wairimu Njambi ___________________________ Dr. Michael Harrawood ___________________________ Dean Ellen Goldey, Wilkes Honors College ___________ Date ii Acknowledgments All of my deepest respect and love must go to the entire Honors College staff, both academic and otherwise. I came to this university as a non-traditional student and honestly believed that I would not succeed. It was only with the help and (extreme) patience of the faculty and staff that I made it at all. From the bottom of my heart: thank you. Special thanks go to all the Humanities professors, Dr. William O’Brien, Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes, Dr. Miguel Vazquez (I’m sorry I’m not better with languages!), Dr. Yasmine Shamma, and Dr. Gavin Sourgen. All of you give so much to this university and your students and, especially in my case, we could never do this without you. Finally, to my thesis advisors Dr. Wairimu Njambi and Dr. Michael Harrawood, both of you have shown me what it means to not only care for your students, but to encourage and shape them into better human beings. Professor Harrawood, your endless positivity and optimism for my future was such a confidence boost and you saved me more often than I care to admit from falling into that dreaded hole of fear and self-doubt. Professor Njambi, I tried so hard to fight against my calling to be in Gender Studies, but I think you knew from the beginning how this would all turn out. The knowledge you have given me, the confidence that I DO in fact know what I am talking about, is an irreplaceable gift. I can never repay both of you for what you have given me but I can try to make you both proud and succeed in the realm of academia. It is only because of you that I now feel prepared to do so. Thank you. iii ABSTRACT Author: Leah Turner Title: Performing Fat: The Creation of the “Fat” Female in 20th Century America Institution: Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Wairimu Njambi Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences Concentration: Women’s Studies Year: 2017 The body of the “fat” female in America is a place of convergence for many different conflicting social ideas. Feminist social theory has only recently begun to recognize the “fat” female body as a battleground where social anxieties and inequalities have not only been built, but justified as well. While current academic research has explained the modern “fat” woman and the Freak Show “Fat Lady” separately, rarely has there been a line connecting them theoretically. The purpose of this research is to critically analyze and contextualize the created role of “fat” women throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through this work I use studies of history and media culture to show how this characterization has been modified through the 20th century to reinforce American society’s changing attitudes and ideas about “fatness” and to show that the creation of “fatness” is a representation of white, upper class, patriarchal control. iv To My Sister Who Teaches Me To Laugh, My Father Who Teaches Me To Love, And My Mother Who Teaches Me To Live Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………..……...…………1 Chapter One: The Historical Creation of Fatness………………..…………….8 The Freak Show “Fat Lady”……………………………..……........….8 The American Industrial Revolution, Immigration, Class, and Race...11 Women, the Home, and Patriarchal Space……….…………………..17 Chapter Two: Media Representations of Fat Women………….…………….25 The Modern Freak Show……………………….………………….…30 Melissa McCarthy’s “Fat” Woman…………………………….…….34 The Loss of Motherhood……………………………………….…….36 Conclusion………………………………………………………………....…37 Bibliography……………………………………………………………….…38 vi Introduction American Actress Melissa McCarthy is a plus-sized TV and movie star well known for her comedic chops. She is funny, charming, and an outspoken “fat” rights activist. Watching her (as a fat woman myself) is not outwardly a negative experience and I often find myself laughing at the wonderful characterizations she seems to so effortlessly embody. Indeed, Melissa McCarthy plays characters which seem to encompass many different traits. She can be masculine and sexually aggressive as in the film Bridesmaids (2011), meek and relatively asexual as in Spy (2015), stupid and exaggerated but loveable in Tammy (2014), and even a strong and in-charge business woman in The Boss (2016). These characteristics, despite how unrelated they may seem, are stereotypical ideas which surround the fat female body in America. These stereotypes are often contradictory and that, in part, is what makes them so difficult to discern and disarm when applied to the fat body. They are the product of over a century of the creation, invention, and distortion of the fat female body in America. The purpose of this thesis is to explain how these characteristics have culminated into the idea of fatness that is understood today, and to illuminate the failings of our modern mass media to get us away from harmful images and largely fabricated ideas of what a fat woman in America should be. Weight is never neutral. Depending upon cultural context, weight can have differing meanings that are both positive and negative. In our current societal context in America, weight and particularly “fatness,” is viewed as decidedly negative. When we see a “fat” person, we are looking at the embodiment of multiple symbolic messages. 1 “Fatness” in America represents, in the words of Samantha Murray, “…a body that is uncared for, uncultivated, and, indeed, a body that has failed as the subject of aesthetics” (Murray 2008, 237). What is important to realize is that these societal messages which surround the “fat” body, and particularly that of the “fat” female, are not universal perceptions, and, in fact, they aren’t even very old ideas. I aim to trace the creation of the “fat” woman from the late 19th and early 20th century to her modern incarnation today by showing the evolution of the “fat” female body throughout the major social changes of America, with special emphasis on the Freak Show “Fat Lady” and her comparison to the modern “fat” actress. Before delving deeper into the material, there are a few important questions which must be answered to fully understand the task at hand. First and foremost, we must ask: “What is “fat?’” or perhaps more specifically “How do we recognize someone else as “fat”? I believe there are two main ways to determine a “fat” body: by using the medical definition and the social definition. In the Preface to Weighty Issues, Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer use the terms “objectivist” and “constructionist” to make just this distinction between the approaches to defining social problems such as weight and, more specifically, “fatness” (Sobal and Maurer 1999, vii). An objectivist view is something like a scientific or medical approach and is described as an assumption that “…when a negative condition reaches an intolerable point, it self-evidently becomes recognized as a social problem”. On the topic of weight, “Objectivists view overweight, for example, as a condition in which individuals develop excess fat stores. They define obesity as a social problem to the degree that people’s 2 weights are above medically accepted standards or ideals” (Sobal and Maurer, viii). Objectivists, then, are making the argument that due to data which they have compiled, it becomes self-evident that “fatness” is a problem. We recognize a “fat” body as fat because it is self-evident. The constructionist perspective takes a different view: “While an objectivist designates particular conditions as problems, a constructionist examines the processes by which people come to identify certain phenomena as problematic”. In other words, “…from a constructionist standpoint, a social problem has no independent ontological status; it depends on public definition” (Sobal and Maurer, viii-ix). I think more consideration can be given to this constructionist perspective rather than the objectivist perspective. When we consider the cultural understanding of a fat individual, it is determined by a universality of definition. Looking at the body of an actress like Melissa McCarthy for instance, we all understand her to be a fat woman. We may have different feelings towards her regarding attractiveness, talent, or even level of fat (whether she is “obese” or merely “chubby”), but we can all agree that fat is an appropriate term for her body. None of us came to this conclusion due to the self-evidence of her fatness, but rather, I argue, because we decided she is fat, or as is more likely, we as a society are told and taught that she is fat by media and the medical community, and believe it to be true. The objectivist view ignores the social constructive background of “fatness,”and simply focuses on its current understanding, making it insufficient as an explanation. Additionally, “fat” is described by Stefanie A. Jones to be as a term “…incredibly slippery” (Jones 2014, 33).

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