University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies Gender and Women's Studies 2018 Fat Girls: Sexuality, Transgression, and Fatness in Popular Culture MaryAnn Kozlowski University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2018.511 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Kozlowski, MaryAnn, "Fat Girls: Sexuality, Transgression, and Fatness in Popular Culture" (2018). Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies. 1. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gws_etds/1 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Gender and Women's Studies at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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MaryAnn Kozlowski, Student Dr. Susan Bordo, Major Professor Dr. Karen Tice, Director of Graduate Studies Fat Girls: Sexuality, Transgression, and Fatness in Popular Culture DISSERTATION A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By MaryAnn Kozlowski Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Susan Bordo, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies Lexington, Kentucky 2018 Copyright © MaryAnn Kozlowski 2018 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Fat Girls: Sexuality, Transgression, and Fatness in Popular Culture This dissertation focuses on representations, histories, and personal accounts of fat women’s bodies and sexualities. I address stereotypes and representations of fat women's sexuality in popular culture, including film, advertising, television, and literature. Through this examination, I move beyond one-dimensional representations of fat women's sexualities to a more complex, nuanced understanding of the realities of being fat, sexual, and a woman today. Fat women are often represented as either sexless, miserable, and lonely, or alternately, hypersexual and sexually deviant, with the inability to control their appetites for both food and sex. (see Bordo, Gilman, Farrell, Shaw, Wolf) By parsing through histories of fat representation, I show that these stereotypes can be quite harmful to fat women; they also fail to represent the nuances and contradictions of fat women’s sexual experience and sexual self-image. The project is hybrid style: I include narratives from my own life, as I am a fat women also dealing with these issues. I examine experiences of girlhood in this cultural climate of anti-fatness, as well as images and representations of fat beauty. I close by thinking about efforts to "normalize" fat bodies in popular culture and their impact. KEYWORDS: Fat, feminism, sexuality, popular culture, beauty, women. MaryAnn Kozlowski 12/6/2018 Date Fat Girls: Sexuality, Transgression, and Fatness in Popular Culture By MaryAnn Kozlowski Susan Bordo Director of Dissertation Karen Tice Director of Graduate Studies 12/6/2018 Date DEDICATION To Jack and Stella, the loves of my life. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The following dissertation, while an individual work, benefited from the dedication and support of my friends and mentors. First, I want to thank my Dissertation Chair, Susan Bordo, whose writing and generosity of spirit always inspire me. In addition, Mel Stein provided timely and instructive comments and evaluation at every stage of the dissertation process, allowing me to complete this project on schedule. Next, I wish to thank the complete Dissertation Committee, and outside reader, respectively: Pearl James, Chamara Kwakye, Janet Eldred, and Robyn Brown. Each individual provided insights that guided and challenged my thinking, substantially improving the finished product. In addition to the technical and instrumental assistance above, I received equally important assistance from family and friends. Thank you so much to my wonderful partner in crime, Jack Miller. You’ve spoiled men for me forever. I also want to thank Lauren Copeland for the constant moral support, all the laughs, and for the many punches that got me through some pretty dark times. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................iii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1. LIVING IN A FAT FEMALE BODY .................................................... 8 1.1 Growing Up Fat: Fat Girlhood.............................................................................. 27 1.2 Should I Just Take What I Can Get?..................................................................... 37 1.3 Daddy’s Pretty Princess ........................................................................................ 41 1.4 CHAPTER OUTLINE.......................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 2. FATNESS, THE MISSING PIECE IN FEMINIST BODY STUDIES 45 2.1 Centering Fat Women’s Experience..................................................................... 46 2.2 Historical Context for Fatness .............................................................................. 51 2.3 Placing This Study In The Context Of Feminist Body Studies ............................ 56 2.3.1 Foucault, 1970s feminism, and the “turn towards the body” ......................... 56 2.3.2 The “Tyranny of Slenderness” and “Feminist” Dieting................................. 60 2.3.3 Feminist Philosophers, Foucault, and “The Gendered Body”........................ 65 CHAPTER 3. THE ARCHETYPES ............................................................................ 88 3.1 The Sad, Unloved, Sexless Fat Girl ...................................................................... 89 3.2 Fat Black Women as the Asexual Mammy......................................................... 115 3.3 The Annoying, Immature Fat Girl ...................................................................... 119 3.4 From Representation to Reality .......................................................................... 124 3.5 Fat Girls Will Do Anything ................................................................................ 128 3.6 What I Learned From Ursula the Sea-Witch ...................................................... 152 3.7 I Like My Girls BBW: Fat Black Women and Hypersexuality.......................... 157 CHAPTER 4. SEARCHING FOR FAT BEAUTY.................................................... 165 4.1 Lillian Russell: Beautiful Excess........................................................................ 175 4.2 Economics, Race, Ethnicity, and Race ............................................................... 179 4.3 Lesbians: Making Fat Beautiful?........................................................................ 186 4.4 Is Consumer Culture “Getting It”?: Capitalism and Changing Body Ideals ...... 199 4.5 Fat Lovers: Fetishization and Attraction............................................................. 211 iv CHAPTER 5. FAT IS FINE? NORMALIZING FAT................................................ 228 5.1 Making Fat Fine.................................................................................................. 232 5.2 Normalizing Fat Ridicule ................................................................................... 244 5.3 “Looking Past” the Fat: Attempted Normalization via Fat-Blindness................ 252 5.4 Fatness is Not Our Only Story: New Ways of Representing Fat Girls............... 258 5.5 Fat Girl Fantasies................................................................................................ 264 5.6 Fat People as “Real” ........................................................................................... 272 5.7 Can Fat Women Be Fashionable?......................................................................