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Shaping the online fat acceptance movement: talking about body image and
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Article in Journal of Gender Studies · April 2015

DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2015.1028523
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Shaping the online fat acceptance

movement: talking about body image
and beauty standards
a b
Adwoa A. Afful & Rose Ricciardelli
a
Department of Humanities, Faculty of Graduate Studies, York
University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
b
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 4066 AA, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
Published online: 14 Apr 2015.
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To cite this article: Adwoa A. Afful & Rose Ricciardelli (2015): Shaping the online fat acceptance
movement: talking about body image and beauty standards, Journal of Gender Studies, DOI:
10.1080/09589236.2015.1028523
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Journal of Gender Studies, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2015.1028523
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Shaping the online fat acceptance movement: talking about body image
and beauty standards
Adwoa A. Affula and Rose Ricciardellib*
a
Department of Humanities, Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada; bDepartment of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 4066
AA, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
(Received 8 October 2013; accepted 5 March 2015)
Over the past decade, in Canada and the United States, blogs have become a popular
Downloaded by [99.246.195.24] at 15:24 09 June 2015
and important space for fat women and their allies to create and further develop
discursive strategies to contest the gendered anti-fat discourses perpetuated by the
media, governments and the field of medicine and institutions of public health (e.g.,
Elliot, C. (2007). Journal of Canadian Studies, 41, 134– 149. Gimlin, D. (2002). Body
work: Beauty and self-image in American culture. Berkeley: University of California
Press; Herdon, A. M. (2006). Social Semiotics, 15, 127– 141. Rice, C. (2007). Women’s
Studies International Forum, 30, 158– 174. Currently, popular discourses pertaining to
fat people, particularly women, tend to range from larger bodies implicating a ‘moral
deficit’ to a ‘risky behaviour’ to ‘political discrimination’ where elements from each
discourse shape how fat women’s bodies are read within the broader culture (Fikkan, J.
L., & Rothblum, E. D. (2011). Sex Roles, 66, 575– 592. Kwan, S. (2009). Sociological
Inquiry, 79, 25 – 50. These messages in positioning the thin body as the ideal body are
embedded in neoliberal discourses around citizenship that, in emphasizing personal
responsibility, encourage (sometimes) punishing regimens of strict diets and exercise,
and perpetuate an image of responsible citizenship as an extension of modern
interpretations (Herdon, 2006). Using content and thematic analysis, we systematically
analyze how four female self-identified fat acceptance (FA) bloggers discuss beauty
standards and body image as a means to challenge these discourses. Findings suggest
bloggers import elements from LBGTQ movements to extend dominant discursive
strategies, model alternative forms of fat embodiment, and address the economic
marginalization of fat women in industry. Moreover, through discussions on beauty and
body image, bloggers use online spaces to contest anti-fat discourses and to develop
discursive strategies that move beyond the binary of fat as a lifestyle choice, and
body size as biologically or genetically determined that dominate the fat acceptance
movement.
Keywords: fat acceptance; citizenship; body image; blogging; online activism; beauty
Women involved in fat activist (FA) movements in Canada and the United States have
been among the first to recognize how health is narrowly defined within current beauty
standards that help reify neoliberal discourses of public citizenship and, in turn,
circumscribe the extent and facility with which fat women negotiate everyday social
interactions and navigate public spaces (Farrell, 2011; Halse, 2009; Herdon, 2006;
Roehling, 2012). The fat acceptance movement first emerged in reaction to the popularity
*Corresponding author. Email: rricciardell@mun.ca
q 2015 Taylor & Francis

2 A.A. Afful and R. Ricciardelli
of anti-fat discourse and the medicalization of obesity that began in the United States and
Canada during the 1950s (Kwan, 2009; Wisniewski, 2011). Forged in a political and social
climate marked by the rise of influential social justice movements, such as the African-
American civil rights, gay liberation, and feminist movements, FAs adopted early
discursive strategies and approaches to collective organization that reflected the rhetorical
influences of these other movements (Farrell, 2011; Hartley, 2001). In this sense, it is
a movement centered in encouraging critical debate about dominant understandings
of gender in visual representation by challenging normative societal assumption of
body image.
Today, social media provides new tools for women FA activists to use to renegotiate
how fat and gender have been reframed within the rationale of neoliberal citizenship,1 and
innovate on the popular FA notion of fat as a kind of body diversity, through discussions
on body image, beauty, and health. Jessie Daniels (2009) has found that the internet has
become a site to contest prescriptive and gendered modes of embodiment, often through
transgressive re-articulations of difference. Given women tend to suffer the material and
social consequences of fat stigma disproportionately to men (Fikkan & Rothblum, 2011;
Rice, 2007; Roehling, 2012), it is not surprising that women comprise the majority of
persons partaking in the FA movement online (Dickins, Thomas, King, Lewis, & Holland,
2011). However, little existent critical fat and feminist scholarship examines the kinds of
discursive strategies used to transgressively rearticulate fat embodiment online, and less
focuses on how those strategies have developed within online spaces. Thus, our objectives
for this paper are twofold. First, we seek to examine how FA bloggers, through discussions
on beauty standards and body image, contest fatphobic and medicalized narratives around
gender, public citizenship, and fat embodiment. Second, we seek to provide insight into
how these discursive strategies are employed to frame such discussions and extend or
challenge broader FA discourses around body diversity. To this end, our paper extends
feminist and critical fat scholarship around diversity in gender and visual representation,
as it pertains to gendered fat embodiment within Canada and the United States.
Feminism and the fat acceptance movement

The largest and oldest fat acceptance advocacy group in North America is the National
Association to Advance Fat Americans (NAAFA); founded in 1969 by self-identified fat
admirer William Fabrey (Saguy & Ward, 2011). Of the other movements that emerged in
the early 1970s, proponents of fat acceptance were most politically aligned with radical
feminist and queer fat advocacy; one of the most influential of these feminist groups was
the fat underground (FU), founded by Californian FAs and therapists Fisherman and
Freespirit, in 1973 (Cooper, 2008). The FU began as part of a radical therapy collective
(RTC) and feminist women’s caucus of the NAAFA that operated out of Berkley,
California’s Radical Psychiatry Centre. With the original goal of creating problem solving
women’s groups, Fisherman and Freespirit expanded the RTC’s mandate to include
issues related to fat stigma and discrimination, informed by their experiences of being
fat and literature on stigma and fatphobia (notably: Cooper, 2008; Goffman, 1963).
When coming up with a name for the NAAFA, Fabrey intentionally selected one
similar to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in
an effort to parallel weight and race based discrimination (Saguy, 2013). The goals of
the NAAFA were assimilationist in nature; focused on uplifting the self-esteem of its
members and changing negative cultural assumptions about fat people. In contrast, the
goals of FU, as outlined in their 1973 manifesto, focused on eliminating the structural
Journal of Gender Studies 3
barriers fat people, especially fat women, face due to institutionalized fatphobia (Cooper,
1998; Laurenyay, 2012; Saguy, 2013). Freespirit, in discussing the different approaches to
fat activism taken by the NAAFA and TFU, stated:
It was like the Black Panthers working with the NAACP . . . . Their [NAAFA] idea of activism
was to go to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and do volunteer work so that people would say
that fat people are nice. Ours was to demonstrate – break into a university lecture hall at
UCLA during a class on behaviour modification (for weight loss) and take over the classroom.
(Relly, 1998, online)
FU’s structural approach, a confrontational and unapologetically feminist stance, to fat
activism includes a stated commitment to ally their goals with those of other social justice
movements (e.g., Black power and gay liberation), particularly the queer and feminist FA
groups that formed in the 1980s and mid 1990s (Cooper, 2008; Farrell, 2011; Herdon, 2006;
Lebesco, 2004). Two noteworthy projects here include (i) FaT Girl: A Zine for fat Dykes
and the Women who Want Them that operated out of the San Francesco Bay Area, a now
defunct zine that sought to celebrate fat and touted being fat as the preferred body (see
Lebesco, 2004), and (ii) the Toronto based Pretty Porky and Pissed Off (PPPO), a
performance art and FA group founded by Allyson Mitchell and Ruby Rowan (see Johnston
& Taylor, 2008).
For the contributors and founders of FaT GiRL, the world that fat women inhabit was
made difficult to navigate through artificial barriers (e.g., small seats on buses); not fat
bodies (Lebesco, 2004). The politics promoted by FaT GiRl diverge drastically from more
conservative approaches to fat activism employed by groups like the NAAFA. PPPO’s
performances, however, underline how public spaces can be and have been organized
according to consumerist and fatphobic assumptions that circumscribe how fat women
engage with them. In mounting such a performance, PPPO also gives a nuanced structural
analysis of the relationship between fat, feminism and consumerism (Taylor and Johnston,
2008). Together, both groups rely on activist tactics that address or use visibility (or lack
thereof) to highlight anti-fat attitudes and stigma – as too often reinforced by the
organization of public spaces.
Visibility, flaunting, and coming out as fat

Visibility refers to how fat women may experience being fat in relation to anti-fat
discourses and contest these discourses through visual strategies. Murray (2005) asserts
that in the West, ‘we live in a culture of a negative collective “knowingness” of fat
women‘ (p. 154), where fat women are ‘known’ to be lazy, lacking willpower, and
(sexually) out of control. Such ‘knowledges’ are thought to ‘inform every interaction we
have with others and the world, and position us along a spectrum of bodies and identities’
(p. 154). Murray (2005) asserts that current fat politics asks that the fat body be
reconceived within dominant frameworks of beauty; demands sometimes superficially
read as subversive. In response, FAs, have appropriated the phrase ‘coming out’ from the
LGBTQ rights movement (Saguy & Ward, 2011) to create new ways of ‘knowing’ fatness
that challenge discourses around the fat endemic. FAs reject the terms obese and
overweight on the grounds that they pathologize what some view as a kind of body
diversity and instead reclaim the word ‘fat’ in an attempt to transform the word into a
‘neutral or positive descriptor’ (Saguy & Ward, 2011, p. 62).
Yet, ‘coming out’ as a strategy for resisting fat stigma may be ineffective because fat is
already a ‘discredited identity’ – visible and non-concealable (Goffman, 1963; Saguy &
Ward, 2011). ‘Coming out’ as fat is then similar to other visualization strategies used by
marginalized groups with discredited identities who cannot ‘pass’ in society (e.g., hide or
mitigate their difference(s) in ways that allow them to better navigate or gain access to
certain spaces or institutions) but may try to ‘cover’ this by taking measures to deflect from
or even embrace their differences (Yoshino, 2007). Johnston and Taylor (2008), for
example, note that PPPO performers had to already be ‘out’ as fat in order participate in
these performances, meaning they had to be comfortable enough with their bodies to
perform in front of fat-phobic audiences who may express discomfort when forced to
confront fat women’s bodies in tight and revealing leotards which outlined every curve.
Visibility is central to the process of ‘coming out’ as fat, and ‘flaunting’ (Yoshino, 2007),
allows FAs to draw attention to how anti-fat discourses paradoxically render large,
especially female, bodies invisible (e.g., ignored in fashion magazines) yet hyper-visible
by creating physical barriers that make it difficult for large people to navigate public
spaces. As such, many FA bloggers adopt ‘coming out’ as a rhetorical device to describe a
process of politicizing fat embodiment; a useful discursive strategy for adding nuance and
even shifting stigmatizing medical discourses around weight and obesity. Such strategies
then, help FAs promote alternatives narratives to conventional and stigmatizing
knowledge that upholds a direct relationship between weight, body size, beauty, and
health.
Shifting and competing discourses

Bailey (2004) argues the naturalization of anti-fat attitudes has occurred in part through a
conflation of notions of health, morality, and beauty in North America. In response to the
medicalization of anti-fat discourses, FAs and organizations have focused efforts on de-
medicalizing obesity (Cooper, 2010; Kwan, 2009). This medicalization and the
proliferation of discourse around self-responsibility are intimately intertwined in that
they rely on the perpetuation of longstanding cultural bias toward fat persons to bolster the
legitimacy of their claims. Boero (2007) argues that both ‘medical’ and ‘self-
responsibility’ discourses as perpetuated by medical professionals and researchers, are a
means to reconcile discrepancies in findings about weight fluctuations, as science has yet
to find the ‘magic bullet’ to explain how and why people weigh what they weigh and what
leads to some people gaining or losing weight, but not others. In affirming what people
already believe is true, medical professionals and researchers maintain their status as
experts within a society in need of their expertise to contain the obesity epidemic.
Halse (2009) for example contends that the notion of a ‘normative’ Body Mass Index
(BMI; a tool used to measure fatness), rooted in the assumption that everyone should
aspire to fall within a healthy weight range as determined by scientists, has made the
obesity epidemic possible. The simple calculability of BMI helps situate the tool within an
easily understood yet scientific, positivistic framework that makes anti-fat discourses seem
reliable, transparent, and objective – yet it ignores the incomplete indicator of individual
health that is BMI (see Halse, 2009, p. 47). The concept of a normative BMI, then,
exemplifies a ‘virtue discourse’ (Halse, 2009, p. 47) where a host of values, beliefs, and
practices are presented to establish and perpetuate truth, by upholding binaries that
marginalize certain, in this case larger women and fat accepting subjectivities. Fat bodies
in these medical virtuous discourses convey certain truths about the people who inhabit
them and so serve as ‘virtual confessors’ (Murray, 2005). As a bodily marker, fat tacitly
provides access to the subjectivities of bodies marked by it, and so the fat body is read as if
it is already ‘known.’ The fat body then is always performing a silent act of confession
that upholds power dynamics that pathologize fat bodies, which are held as evidence of
a person’s lack of restraint, weak moral fortitude, and resulting threat to the stability of the
community of which he or she is a member (Halse, 2009). By bringing these truths into
relief, a high BMI renders these silent confessions audible (Murray, 2008). With increased
political and media attention paid to weight and health, virtue discourses pertaining to a
normative BMI have become important in determining who is or is not meeting their
responsibilities as virtuous citizens. Fat, then, remains popularly understood as an
individual responsibility and moral failure and FA tantamount to celebrating bad behavior
or poor lifestyle choices that lead or contribute to poor health outcomes (Rich & Evans,
2005; Saguy & Riley, 2005).
Medical and self-responsibility discourses work as truth claims that perpetuate a
neoliberal model of citizenship and embodiment by focusing on individual behaviors to
explain, in deceptively simple ways, complex phenomena like a marked increase in
overweight people over a 50-year period (Boero, 2007). These discourses deny the
possibility of structural or other barriers that prevent fat people from enjoying the benefits
of full public citizenship, by placing the onus on the individual to conform to standards of
physicality, which are constituted as natural within these discussions.
Neo-liberalism and citizenship

In North America, citizenship and the ability to participate in the public sphere is, in part,
contingent on the extent individuals can participate in consumer culture (Guthman &
DuPuis, 2006). However, in many areas of the economy (e.g., clothing and beauty
industries) fat individuals find their bodies are neither catered to nor accommodated, thus
limiting their ability to participate conspicuously in consumer culture (Lebesco, 2004;
Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013). Neoliberalism may be characterized, in part, as the extension
of market rationality and values to all areas of public and private life, which as a
phenomenon justifies and accelerates the defunding of public welfare institutions and
services while calling for ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘self-care’ (Brown, 2005). Self-care
is an understanding of the self as enterprise where the notion of individual autonomy serves
to de-politicize subjects, thus requiring more dynamic strategies to resist neoliberal
governmentality (McNay, 2009). As a result, individual and collective bodies, as well as
institutions, corporations, and states, must present as ‘lean,’ ‘fit,’ ‘flexible,’ and
‘autonomous’ to demonstrate power (Elliot, 2007; Lemke, 2001). The fat individual is
then characterized as possessing none or limited amounts of those traits and, therefore,
putting a strain on the ‘public’ (e.g., the perception that fat people drain government
resources, increase medical insurance premiums, and literally take up more space in public
areas). Not surprisingly, fat people are targeted by government interventions in an attempt
to mitigate the ideological risk they present, which then leads to their further stigmatization
(Elliot, 2007; Guthman & DuPuis, 2006; Lebesco, 2011).
This stigmatization of fat bodies encourages the use of self-disciplinary practices (e.g.,
extreme dieting and exercise) to achieve a socially desired version of selfhood. The
choices geared toward meeting the thin body ideal made by individuals exist within larger
power structures maintained through ‘self-subjectification,’ defined as how individuals
attempt to shape their bodies to meet, often unachievable, physical ideals (Connolly, 1985;
Leahy, 2009). Meleo-Erwin (2011) suggests that individuals are ‘disciplined’ through self-
subjectification in late capitalist society instead of through techniques of overt coercion;
she argues that individuals are regulated through their active engagement with promoted
practices and techniques that are normalized by self-subjective behaviors. To this end, the
fatosphere exists as a space where activists may challenge discourses and an alternative
community can be formed that shares resistance strategies and reframes public citizenship
to help renegotiate its terms so fat people too can experience its privileges.
Researching the fatosphere

The fatosphere, an online network of FA blogs, is a virtual public space where FAs,
through their writing, try to renegotiate the boundaries of fat embodiment, citizenship, and
neo-liberal forms of self-subjectfication within the social and political context of the
obesity epidemic (Meleo-Erwin, 2011). Meleo-Erwin (2011) contends that these online
spaces have become a vital site for fat activism and collective organization; sites for the
production of bio-sociality which, when applied to fat activism, describes communities
and identities formed around a biomedical designation like obese or fat. In response, FA
bloggers, like activists involved in earlier iterations of the movement or based offline,
focus on resituating discussions on obesity within a political, non-medical, context (Kwan,
2009). The emergence of the fatosphere has been credited with helping to evolve body
diversity discourses from mostly consumer choice and assimilationist narratives to

nuanced narratives that more effectively incorporate the interests of newer generations of
FAs on- and offline (Saguy, 2012; Lebesco, 2004). Implicit in body diversity discourses is
the assumption that genetics determine the extent to which bodies regulate hunger and/or
metabolize food at a weight-maintaining pace. This assumption has led FAs to assert
people have a set weight point that their bodies will revert to without sustained or extreme
dieting and exercise (Guthman & DuPuis, 2006; Saguy & Riley, 2005). While this
argument may minimize or ignore important factors (e.g., agency); its appeal lies in its
implicit recognition that if body weight is genetically predetermined; some people will be
fatter than others naturally (Saguy & Riley, 2005).This genetic deterministic
understanding, first taken up by proponents from earlier waves of the fat acceptance
movement, has enabled FA bloggers to help further shift the emphasis away from
individual fat people to the structural factors that prevent fat people from enjoying the
benefits of full public citizenship (Saguy & Riley, 2005).
Though limited, researchers examining the online FA movement (e.g., Dickins et al.,
2011; Lewis et al., 2011; Meleo-Erwin, 2011) purport people are drawn to FA, and use the
space, to help cope with or improve their poor body image – the result of years of negative
experiences and traumatic events triggered by a failure to meet thin body ideals. Virtual
FA communities are thus formed around ’shared biomedical experiences’ that offer
members social and emotional support. Interviewees in the Dickins et al. (2011) study, for
instance, revealed they were hoping to find an online community where dominant body
and beauty standards could be contested and experiences shared. By participating in the
fatosphere, they reported experiencing three real world benefits: a sense of empowerment
about their bodies, an increased sense of social connectedness, and improved mental and
physical health as well as well-being. In other words, the internet may represent a needed
public space where FA bloggers, activists, and those who identify with the movement can
develop the rhetorical tools and political, as well as social, strategies to shift fat virtue
discourses.
Through discussions about beauty and body image, the fatosphere also provides fat
women a forum to relate personal experiences of being fat to structural, social, or political
issues (Lewis et al., 2011; Meleo-Erwin, 2011). However, what has not been given as
much attention within feminist FA scholarship is what rhetorical or discursive strategies
women activists use to bridge their personal experiences with the wider claims or goals
of the movement, and how in turn those strategies extend competing medicalized and FA
discourses around body diversity. Thus, we argue that through the fatosphere activists use
discussions around beauty standards and body image in relation to their own experiences
to confront fat stigma and push the limits of the body diversity discourse, as shaped within
the FA movement. Our main research questions (RQ) are:
RQ1: How do FA bloggers evoke, reconcile, and extend competing FA and medicalized
discourses around body diversity, including borrowing from established feminist, queer, and
anti-racist discursive strategies?
RQ2: How do FA bloggers challenge and contextualize their own experiences of cultural and
political marginalization beyond the more traditional FA political practices centered on body
diversity discourses?
To this end, we analyze the role of FA bloggers discussions on body image and beauty in
evoking and extending dominant FA discourses around body diversity. The extent to
which, and how, bloggers borrow and apply strategies from traditional body diversity
discourses and established social justice movements is explored to reveal how this
realignment strategy presents new ways of publically embodying fatness that, we argue,
uncover new approaches to online fat activism and new strategies to resist fat phobia on
and offline. Like Lebesco (2004), we argue bloggers take a more generative approach to
fat activism, and model an online activism that emphasizes creating strategies that resist
and define themselves against dominant discourses around fat that currently bar fat women
from enjoying the benefits of full public citizenship, instead of coalescing around a more
essentialized fat identity. Our main objective is to expose some of the many ways fat
women contest their political and cultural marginalization online and critically engage
with current self-responsibilized discourses around fat.
Methods: thematic analysis

Thematic analysis was employed largely because it is an atheoretical form of analysis that
may be applied to a variety of overarching theoretical assumptions (Braun & Clarke, 2006;
Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). We used both deductive and inductive thematic content
analysis approaches to examine four FA blogs written by women over the course of
6 months; January 2011 to June 2011. A purposive sampling approach was used to select
blogs, where the inclusion of each blog was determined by three main criteria: (1) the
blogger (i.e., author of the blog) had to self-identify as a woman and adherent of fat or size
acceptance; (2) the content of their blog had to relate to FA; and (3) the blog had to be
updated (i.e., new publications posted) between one and five times monthly (i.e., data
collection timeframe). Regarding criterion two, given there is no universally accepted
definition of FA, the definition employed was modeled after that put forth by Dickins et al.
(2011), Lebesco (2004), Kwan (2009), and Murray (2008). Specifically, FA is
operationalized as the blogger dedicating her blog to critically discussing issues related
to fat embodiment and obesity in ways that challenge or complicate medicalized and body
diversity discourses around fat. The publication rate was calculated by averaging the
number of posts published by each blogger per month. No discernable differences between
those blogging at the upper- versus lower-end of the scale consistently (even if one posted
at twice the rate of another) were found when the range was limited to those posting
between one and five times monthly.
In light of these criteria four blogs were selected for analyses: Two Whole Cakes
(Lesley Kinzel), Sex and the Fat Girl (Tasha Fierce), the Rotund (Marianne Kirby), and
Fat and Not Afraid (Jennifer Rowe). With the exception of the author of Sex and the
Fat Girl, all bloggers self-identified as white and cisgender2 (i.e., they identified with the
behaviors and roles of their self-reported gender). Fierce, author of Sex and the Fat Girl
self-identifies as a woman of color, queer, and disabled. Given existent studies have tended
toward the lived experiences of fat white people, very little available current research
centers on the experiences of racialized persons participating in the broader FA movement
and fatosophere (Rice, 2007). Our own cursory review of popular FA blogs reveals, in line
with other research in the area, that the majority of bloggers in the fatosphere are likely
white, middle class, (cis)women, able-bodied, and university educated (Gimlin, 2002;
Kirkland, 2008). However, as Fierce shows, self-identified women of color are active in
the fatosphere. To be clear, one Black American blogger is in no way representative of the
many voices and unique experiences of the non-White FA bloggers; Fierce’s blog was
included because it met all inclusion criteria. As our data show, these bloggers are not
necessarily the most prolific FA writers; however, they consistently express ideas or share
experiences that relate or engage with our research questions. Overall, Rowe blogged
a total of 13 posts, Kirby a total of 17, Fierce had 19 posts, and 39 posts were made
by Kinzel.
In the early stages of our study, a deductive content analytic approach with body image
and beauty standards as the guiding coding categories shaped analyses (see Hsieh &
Shannon, 2005).3 As per Braun and Clarke (2006) contention that a content analytic
process should progress from description to interpretation in order to generatively theorize
the significance of data in relationship to broader discourses and previous literature, we
conducted a second round of coding to encourage methodological and epistemological
analytical progression.4 Thus, after the initial coding was complete (e.g., posts were
organized under the two guiding categories of beauty and body image), a second round of
coding, using an inductive approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006), was conducted to further
refine our coding categories which allowed us to examine in greater depth assumptions,
ideologies, and the cultural myths that inform the content of blogs and guide our research
questions. This process helped situate our data in relation to previous literature and the
broader FA and medicalized body diversity, feminist, and obesity discourses. If a blogger,
for example, discussed the importance of boldly and proudly dressing their bodies in
clothes that flaunt their fatness, the post was first placed under the primary thematic
category of ‘beauty standards’ and then coded into the thematic and theoretical
subcategory of ‘fa(t)shion and fashion as transgression.’ Next, subcategories were grouped
by theme and content (e.g., tone) into a coding table (see Table 1) that was developed and
used to organize the salient and secondary themes identified by (1) its predominance in the
post (e.g., if it was the main or secondary focus); (2) how the blogger addressed the theme
(e.g., tone); and, (3) similarities or differences in how each theme was addressed across
blogs (e.g., a blogger discussing dieting in relation to body image versus another blogger
discussing dieting in relation to lifestyle choices).
The thematic coding resulted in primary themes being further divided into 11 secondary
themes (see Table 1) within the realm of two overarching themes (i.e., the two salient
emergent themes in the blogs). The first, body image was defined as the esteem with which
fat individuals view their bodies, especially in relation to thin bodily ideals. The second,
beauty standards, refers to the structural and cultural institutions as well as dominant socio-
cultural understandings that perpetuate thinness as the female bodily ideal. The primary
themes of ‘body image’ included the secondary themes (e.g., thematic subcategories) of
‘dating and sexuality’ (e.g., any post making reference to dating, sexuality, romance, and
intimacy in relation to fat embodiment or as experienced by the bloggers studied, see Fierce,
9 March 2011); ‘fa(t)shion, and fashion as transgression’ (e.g., using fashion to contest
marginalization); ‘dieting/eating disorders/disordered eating/weight loss’ (e.g., unhealthy
Table 1. Blog posts as quantity and percentage of total number of posts for 6 month period,
presented as overall category and sub-category within the general categories of body image and
beauty standards.
Blog
Fat and not Sex and the Two whole
afraid, by The Rotund, fat girl, by cakes, by
Rowe by Kirby Fierce Kinzel
Posts % Posts % Posts % Posts %
Total posts during 13 100 17 100 19 100 39 100
study period
Body image sub-categories
Media 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 18.42
Dating and sexuality 0 0 1 5.88 10 52.63 4 10.53
Fa(t)shion/fashion as transgression 0 0 3 17.65 2 10.53 2 5.26
Dieting, eating disorders/disordered 2 15.38 2 11.76 0 0 12 31.58
eating, weight loss

Body autonomy, self-acceptance, 8 61.53 2 11.76 3 15.79 4 10.53
non-conformity
Fat activism/discrimination 0 0 1 5.88 0 0 4 10.53
Body image total 10 77.91 9 52.93 15 78.95 37 86.85
Beauty standards sub-categories
Objectifying fat bodies 0 0 0 0 3 15.79 0 0
Beauty industry/cultural visibility 0 0 1 5.88 1 5.26 3 7.89
Sizing and shopping 2 15.38 4 23.59 0 0 2 5.26
issues/consumer advocacy
1 7.69 3 17.65 0 0 1 2.63
Beauty standards total 3 23.07 8 47.12 4 21.05 6 15.78
Notes: Posts, the total number of posts published by each blogger dedicated to each sub-category during the
study’s 6 month time frame; percentage, the total number of posts published by each bloggers dedicated to each
sub-category over a 6-month period divided by the total number of posts dedicated to the general themes of body
image and beauty standards.
or poor eating habits); ‘body autonomy/self-acceptance/non-conformity’ (e.g., fat women

resisting the notion that the fat body is undesirable); and ‘fat activism and discrimination’
(e.g., stories of discrimination due to body fat). The primary theme of ‘beauty standards’
included the secondary themes (e.g., thematic subcategories) of: ‘objectifying fat bodies’
(e.g., any post dedicated to the objectification of fat female bodies, see Fierce, 11 February
2011); ‘beauty industry/cultural visibility’ (e.g., making the fat body more visible in
society); and ‘sizing and shopping issues/consumer advocacy’ (e.g., any post primarily
concerned with the lack of clothing options for larger women and/or that proposes
politicized consumer based strategies for rectifying that imbalance, see Rowe, 2011). Posts
incorporating elements that crossed primary or secondary categories were coded based on
the most salient theme within the blogs and included in multiple thematic categories to
maintain the integrity of the data (see Table 1 for frequency information). To this end,
irrelevant data was omitted from the analysis (i.e., selective coding) as the focus remained
on emergent themes that were consistently discussed and/or the central focus across posts in
each blog. Findings were cross-checked by each author to ensure consistency, any new
information (e.g., the revelation that Kirby identifies as queer) was discussed and pursued
with a revisit of the data, and any discrepancies in coding was resolved via discussion where
mutual agreement was always achieved in terms of thematic coding and interpretation of
the blog.
Results and discussion

Representations of body image and beauty as discussed by FA bloggers were the guiding
coding categories we used to structure our thematic analysis. To this end, three central
themes emerged across the blogs despite variations in the blogger interests. First, how FA
bloggers engage with understandings of body image (23.07% of the posts of Rowe;
47.12% of Kirby’s posts, 21.05% of Fierce’s and 15.78% of Kinzel’s), specifically
visibility as a focus in discussions around normalizing ‘fatness’ and coming out as fat.
Second, their understandings of beauty standards (77.91% of the posts of Rowe; 52.93% of
Kirby’s posts, 78.95% of Fierce’s and 86.85% of Kinzel’s) including how beauty
standards (e.g., the thin ideal) are socially constructed and embedded in capitalist
economies (or lack of consumer choice for fat people) as well as advocacy for a public
response to these realities (see Table 1). Lastly, how bloggers grappled with FA discourse
of fat as a lifestyle choice, especially as these discussions relate to self-acceptance and
love, and engaging in public spaces (see Table 1). We present each theme sequentially and
examine the rhetorical strategies bloggers use to evoke and extend popular FA discourses
around body diversity, through discussion around beauty and body image. We also explore
how this strategy is employed by the bloggers to present new ways to negotiate the binaries
of more traditional discourses around body diversity and how fat women contest their
political and cultural marginalization in public spaces.
Visibility: normalizing fat and coming out

Fat body visibility serves as a key rhetorical bridging tool, referring to how bloggers
rhetorically link the goals of FA with other social justice movements thus underscoring
their legitimacy through association; this allows FA bloggers to further shift discourses
of body diversity from medicalized to more politicised discourses. For the purposes of
this study, visibility was defined as any post dedicated to the structural and cultural
marginalization of fat bodies that result from the perpetuation of the thin bodily ideal by
the fashion and beauty industries. This device further describes the process of relating
and politicizing personal experiences, to broader social phenomenon, such as the
systemic discrimination fat woman experience in social institutions that motivate the
development of critical fat politics (Gring-pemble, 1998; Sowards & Renegar, 2004).
For example, often involved in DIY photography projects, bloggers or their readers
publish ‘selfies’ in their favored fashions to provide shopping advice (see Table 1).
Examples of positive imagery of fat people are also provided to ‘normalize’ fat bodies
and counter reductive narratives around fatness. In Kirby’s visibility project –
recognizing ‘visibility is one of the most powerful tools we have for normalizing fat
bodies – for others but also for ourselves’ (Kirby, 2011) – for example, she curated her
own image by taking almost daily ‘selfies’ ‘to get that mental image settled’ in her mind
about her appearance. These posts are attempts to ‘mainstream’ fat bodies as belonging
to the public sphere; calling for a more inclusive understanding of beauty that celebrates
the fat body. As such, it has strong parallels to the ‘coming out’ narrative many FAs use
to resist fat stigma and bias.
Making the fat body ‘visible’ by ‘coming out’ is engaging in a form of flaunting
founded in the refusal to pass or cover – it is flaunting (Yoshino, 2007) or drawing
attention to visible difference. Kirby writes about flaunting her fatness, by insisting on
having her photo taken wearing clothes she prefers even though they may draw attention to
her fatness instead of away from it. Recognizing the marginalization of the fat body online
and in other public spaces, on 20 May 2011, Kirby posted:
No bold colors, no stripes, nothing that would ever make us look bigger. It’s not that some of
those rules are genuinely about looking slimmer – it’s that we draw less attention to ourselves
when we comply with fashion rules. We occupy less space, metaphorically if not physically.
We minimize ourselves for the comfort of other people. It reinforces the sense of shame we’re
supposed to feel because of our bodies, until we police ourselves.
What Kirby’s posts address is how fat women like herself are forced to participate in
assimilationist strategies which reinforce the fat/thin binary that upholds the cultural
assumptions that fat bodies are ‘deviant’, unattractive, and unhealthy, in direct contrast to
thin bodies, and therefore should be hidden. In response, bloggers may perform a kind of
flaunting to further contextualize their experiences of fat stigma.
In her 24 March 2011 post: ‘Personal Style as Political Resistance’ Fierce, identifying
the transgressive potential of fat fashion and personal style, argues that ‘Because the
oppression of fat women is so entwined with bodily aesthetics, any treatment of fat bodies
as more than something to be hidden is automatically a form of subversion.’ Similarly
Kinzel blogged:
My outfit pictures are not about looking pretty or stylish or enviable or impressive – they are a
challenge to the monotony of normative bodies in normative contexts that slide over our
minds even against our will, every day, every day, every day we live. Look around, instead of
trusting that what culture tells you about what is normal must be true: look around. Diversity
is normal. It is just not culturally valued. We can change that. (25 February 2011)
Kirby and Fierce’s posts describe different strategies for ‘outing’ yourself as a fat person
online. Unlike Kirby, Kinzel avoids assimilationist rhetoric, in that she declares she is not
interested in creating positive or even normative images, but the opposite. She hopes to
highlight how non-normative fat bodies appear to most people because of anti-fat
discourses perpetuated in part by media. In a post published before the time frame of the
study, Kinzel (2009) advocates for ‘coming out’ as fat and presents the reason behind her
outfit posts:
Being out as a fat person means being willing to talk about one’s fatness in a forthright way,
even when it makes people slightly uncomfortable – the more I can help people to get over
that discomfort, if only by being blunt and honest about my body, the less power fatphobia has
over us all.
Fierce’s posts, however, are concerned with how consumer culture undermines fat women
by deciding how they should present their bodies for them. She discusses the limited
clothing options available to fat women and how, in response, some women redesign
pieces not originally made for large women that show off areas fat women are told to hide
in shame. She declares:
The refusal to hide fat behind layers of black clothing (not that there’s anything wrong with
All Black Everything) or under drapey tent dresses utilizes fashion to subvert the dominant
beauty paradigm . . . . Refusing to accept that a piece of clothing was not intended to be worn
on a fat body by altering it to fit is also an act of subversion. (Fierce, 2011)
Such acts allows fat women to support each other through consumerist practices (e.g.,
shopping) while creating the opportunity for more larger women to ‘come out’ as fat by
modeling and styling clothes in ways that reifies Fierce’s argument. Coming out while fat
as expressed by these bloggers involves flaunting fatness in the face of the gendered
expectations that surround fat embodiment; responding to those asking women to mitigate
people’s discomfort around their size by wearing clothes that ‘hide’ their bodies.
By flaunting, or encouraging flaunting, bloggers extend modes of fat embodiment in ways
that sidestep the FA binary of fat as a lifestyle choice or genetically determined. They do
so by refusing to present their size as an unfortunate reality that thinner people should
tolerate, and instead embrace their bodies by performing their fatness (e.g., wearing
clothes that highlight it) to pressure their audience to confront their own fat biases – much
akin to the performances of PPPO. Kirby, for example, states ‘that sometimes I like to
dress to piss people off – I like to use color and texture and certain pieces of clothing really
aggressively to provoke reactions’ (Kirby, 2011); she flaunts her body in an effort to
change the discourses surrounding fatness. By engaging in such performances Kirby
avoids the above limitations of more traditional forms of identity politics.
Kirby’s emphasis on making the fat body visible, despite its potential for being
empowering for those who embrace a similar FA strategy, still demands fat women
recognize they are seen by the world as defined by their fatness; even if they are confident
in their bodies, fat women are always made cognizant of how their bodies deviate from a
thinner ideal (Murray, 2005). Fierce (2 March 2011) posted that one way for some fat
women to get more comfortable with their naked bodies alone or with a partner is by
wearing lingerie, after an earlier post where she proclaimed ‘fat women who feel beautiful
and don’t feel shame about adorning their bodies are subversive’ (9 March 2011). Fierce’s
posts expose two seemingly contradictory realities; first, that fat women do not feel
comfortable with their bodies (and need to learn to be) and, second, drawing from Murray
(2005, p. 160), what may appear to be a subversive and political act parodies
heteronormative ‘visual aesthetics.’ Thus, such performances may not question why
feminine desirability is so narrowly defined or why a woman’s social value is contingent
on how closely her body matches that definition and instead asks for that standard to be
expanded to include fat women. Despite her own recommendations, Fierce acknowledges
that such strategies may require a high degree of gender conformity to be employed
effectively; they do not ‘challenge the dominant view that beauty is a viable concept’ and
instead accept the ‘unilateral standards of beauty that exist and try to shoehorn fat women
into the “beautiful” category’ (2 March 2011). Thus, what may appear on the surface as a
radical act or ‘flaunting’ may also operate as a ‘covering’ or assimilation (i.e. the thin
norm) strategy (Yoshino, 2007). In Fierce’s post, desire is a key term; it denotes how a
women’s sexuality is policed through anti-fat discourse and instead presents larger bodies
as representative as a kind of body diversity. For bloggers and FA adherents, like Fierce,
with multiple marginalized identities (e.g., disabled, queer, and black), these discourses
converge in ways that prop up other biases and structural prejudices towards bodies that
are understood as deviant from that of the ideal citizen across multiple planes.
Beauty standards: fat and consumer culture

Discussions around body image and beauty standards help bloggers articulate how they are
currently underserved and their access to full public citizenship undermined as a result (see
Table 1). Rowe and Kinzel both blogged about how major retailers ignore fat consumers by
not offering fashions in plus sizes. For example, Rowe, given the difficulties she has
experienced trying to find clothing in size 16 –18, wrote about being sized out of her favorite
store. She explained that the retailor in one of her ‘regular shops’ decided to start carrying
‘junior sizes’; which was defined by a shop assistant as ‘the manufacturers don’t make
clothing for women with a bust or hip anymore’ (Rowe, 2011). Rowe further explained that:
‘most stores only go up to 12 or 14. It’s disheartening and frustrating, and I realize it’s only a
fraction of the shit women bigger than me go through every single time they go shopping’
(Rowe, 2011). Here, Rowe demonstrated some frustration at not being catered to by
mainstream clothing stores because of her size. She shows how, by limiting her options as a
consumer, clothing stores perpetuate the notion that the ideal consumer is a thin one.
Like Rowe, Kinzel (2011), prompted by a published interview with the celebrity Gwen
Stefani in the British newspaper (Daily Mail), posted about the limited size availability
and choices for fat consumers. Kinzel’s summary of the interview highlights quotes where
Stefani expressed frustration with feeling unable to eat as she pleased because she had
‘learned over the years’ that if she did, she would not be able to ‘wear the clothes I want to
wear’ (Kinzel, 2011). Kinzel, taking issue with Stefani’s comments, argued ‘I want to be
sympathetic to the pressure Gwen is under, I do. But that’s awfully difficult when SHE
HAS HER OWN CLOTHING LINE. She can MAKE the clothes she wants to wear. As a
big-deal style icon fashion lady, she can contribute to changing fashion culture’ (Kinzel,
2011). Given Stefani’s influence in the fashion industry and access to the type of resources
that would allow her to accommodate large bodies, Kirby presents size availability or
consumer choice as a structural issue; a fashion culture that refuses to accommodate plus
size women.
Body diversity in Rowe’s post reflect on clothing size availability – a discussion
rooted in the initial consumer advocacy of the FA movement – and links to the social
processes that perpetuate the thin beauty ideal. For the study we defined consumer
advocacy as any post primarily concerned with the lack of clothing options for larger
women and/or any post that proposes politicized consumer based strategies for rectifying
that imbalance. And so Kinzel’s suggestion, that Stefani’s seeming inability or
unwillingness to create a clothing line that would accommodate her body if she were to
‘have no rules and eat what she wants’ (Kinzel, 2011) is a symptom of a much larger
structural problem – the fashion industry’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of body
diversity.
Fat as a lifestyle: politics, self-acceptance, and the acceptable fat body

Politically, given a consumer’s weight is often perceived to have an inverse relationship
with their level of disposable income (Sender & Sullivan, 2008), limiting the clothing
options available to fat consumers in the retail and fashion industries reaffirms cultural
biases associated with weight and wealth against fat women. Research documents that
obesity is more common among persons of lower socio-economic status (Lebesco, 2004);
thus, retailers appear empowered to limit the purchasing power of all fat people regardless
of income by denying their existence as consumers. The practice, bringing political issues
to the marketplace, or political consumerism, provides a platform for producers (e.g.,
including politicians) and consumers to bring about systemic change (Friedman, 1996;
Micheletti & Stolle, 2008).
Rowe (10 February 2011), after finding out her favorite retailer no longer carried
clothing in her size, proposed one of the oldest forms of political consumerism – a
boycott. She was calling to boycott retailers that refused to stock clothes in larger sizes to
drive down their business. Beyond the potential negative impact on retail profits, boycotts
assists in presenting political issues as consumer choice issues in a way closely linked to
popular understandings of human rights (see Micheletti & Stolle, 2008). As public
citizenship is increasingly defined by one’s ability to participate in consumer culture,
boycotting a retailer who insufficiently caters to the needs of certain consumers changes
public perception of the retailer. The retailer can become viewed as out of touch with
changing social values and, in consequence, underserving their customer. Though Rowe’s
calls to boycott a specific retailer may draw on more assimilationist FA strategies, like
Kinzel’s, she still draws attention to industry-wide, and therefore structural, barriers that
attempt to control women’s bodies by limiting the extent of their participation in consumer
culture; another obstacle to fat women participating in the public sphere. Fierce, however,
addresses both the concerns of Kinzel and Rowe, by arguing the exclusion of plus-size
options has enable the creation of radical strategies of resistance that subvert anti-fat
structures:
In creating their own market for clothing made for fat chicks by fat chicks, independent
designers present an alternative to the more traditional model of capitalist consumption
offered by fat fashion stores [ . . . ] Supporting this kind of capitalism keeps the money ‘in the
community,’’ so to speak, and offers another path to subversion [ . . . ] In building
communities where fat women can support each others’ creative ventures, whether they be
selling altered clothing or selling custom-designed clothing, we create avenues for consumer
revolution . . . . The capitalist system simultaneously presents us with two forms of
consumption in regards to our weight – supporting the diet industry or ‘celebrating’ our
bodies by buying the clothing mainstream retailers have deigned to provide us with. Taking
fashion and the presentation of your body into your own hands, with creativity and subversion
in mind, can offer a way to throw a monkey wrench in the gears of the beauty industrial
complex. (Fierce, 2011)
In this post Fierce speaks to how consumerist culture both reproduces public modes of
embodiment by presenting diet and purchasing mainstream fashion as forms of self-care;

behaviors that perpetuate the notion that the fat body is unfit for public/consumer
citizenship until it meets the thin ideal. Given how important aesthetics are for women in
terms of socio-economic mobility, this lack of clothing options is doubly detrimental;
Fierce thus promotes strategies that are very much embedded within capitalism. She
advocates for a conscious consumerism that privileges the interpersonal between large
women and is devoted to diverting money away from such fat-people-excluding-retailers
in the hope to, in some small way, disperse power among fat women.
Beyond increasing the visibility of the fat body, bloggers, like Fierce (see Table 1),
discuss the need for self-acceptance. Although Fierce’s postings are contextualized by
queer sexuality, sexual expression and body image, like the other bloggers, she maintains
that fat people, especially women, must learn to love and accept their bodies. She,
however, removes herself from discourses linking genetics and fatness and instead argues
that fat people should take responsibility for their bodies:
I was asked “how to start loving your body?” I gave many suggestions, but I want to touch on
something that I think is integral to truly loving your fat body – taking responsibility for it.
What I mean by taking responsibility is not denying culpability in your fatness to ward off
judgment. (Fierce, 2011)
Here, Fierce argues that her fatness – her weight – is largely the result of personal lifestyle
choices. She is fat because of her diet and she prefers to be fat, not thin. Sidestepping
pervading FA narratives around the fat body, Fierce argues:
You can’t love your body and view it as being outside your control . . . you must LIVE in your
body, and living in your body means accepting the state it is in and the choices you make that
affect it . . . Of course many, many fat people are fat despite their best efforts. But there are
also many fat people who are fat because they choose to be, who may be able to lose weight
but simply choose not attempt it. I am one of those people. (Fierce, 2011)
This assertion that many fat people (not all or even most) are fat due to lifestyle choice
represents a major departure from mainstream FA conventional wisdom. Fierce challenges
a key narrative of body diversity discourses by arguing for agency; that fatness can be a
choice, not simply a result of a genetically predetermined “set-point” and beyond
individual control. It makes the fat person powerful rather than a victim. Nonetheless,
Fierce also acknowledges that “a main party line of many in the FA movement is that
fatness is not a choice” (Fierce, 2011).
Fierce’s (Fierce, 2011) posts on beauty and body image often engages with the
contradictory social messages directed at fat women around desirability. In ‘Fat Bottomed
Girls’ (Fierce, 2011), she asks: ‘What switch goes on in our collective minds to allow big
butts and big hips a pass, but big thighs and arms get cut out of the game?’ She then argues:
I attribute a lot of it to the overall objectification of women. These fat body parts are made
acceptable because they contribute to the hyper-sexualization of women. It’s no accident that
women who possess these characteristics are constantly referred to as sexpots, “bombshells,”
and seductresses . . . [all words that] refer to some kind of “sensual enjoyment” – so really,
any time a woman is referred to as such, they’re basically being rendered solely as an object of
sexual desire and a source of pleasure for the male gaze . . . Anyway you go with fat, whether
it’s a fat body or fat body parts, we’re running into walls trying to keep fatness as “Other.”
Fierce, here, connects the societal discourse of specific body parts to anti-fat discourse of
fat as both sexually repulsive and alluring, yet ultimately transgressive and thus
threatening to social order. Consequently, fat is ‘made acceptable’ through misogynistic
and heterosexist discourses that seek to control the fat female body by objectifying it –
trapping the fat, just as the thin, body in unattainable body ideals (e.g., why is it acceptable
for some parts of a woman’s body to carry excess weight and not others?).
Fierce further presents fat as a feminist issue in employing the term the male gaze5 to
describe how fat prejudice hurts women by marrying their social value to their ability to
meet a heteronormative beauty standard; an unattainable benchmark with strong and
marginalizing associations with thinness. As Lebesco (2004) argued that extending beauty
standards to include certain types of fat bodies largely objectifies the fat female body or,
even, ‘domesticates’ it – ultimately ensuring fat women do not threaten current beauty and
‘health’ standards (p. 68) – Fierce, too, draws attention to the narrowness of dominant
beauty standards. She calls for a holistic and subversive understanding of fat embodiment,
arguing to expand the concept of beauty to the point of unrecognizability with the goal of
eradicating the narrow gendered and racialized discourses currently shaping views of the
fat female body. These discourses are generative in that they offer a less limited
conceptualization of body diversity. Fierce’s engagement with feminist and FA
discourses, arguably, extends discourses on body diversity beyond genetic determinism
without falling back on lifestyle rhetoric. Instead, by combining elements of both in her
feminist critic of popular FA strategies, she emphasizes the larger political goal of leveling
the beauty industrial complex and strategizes how that might be achieved.
Conclusion
The relationship between beauty standards, health, and body image, is well covered within
the field of critical fat studies (Cooper, 2010; Gimlin, 2002). However, it is our contention
investigations into the rhetorical strategies used online by fat acceptance activists are
necessary to advance the field. Rather than reproaching healthcare professionals for the
‘personal responsibility’ approach that configures fat as the ‘fault’ of the fat person and
resulting from an individual lack of willpower, we believe that, to address this, we must
interrogate how fatness has become so strongly associated with morbidity, mortality, and
ill health and therefore unattractiveness. In exploring this relationship we are interested in
how fat women, who are disproportionately adversely affected by fat stigma, discursively
contest this relationship online. By studying these discursive strategies, it is our contention
that to understand how far health professionals and medical institutions must travel to
understand their role in perpetuating fat stigma, we must garner insight into how FA
discourses around body diversity are adapted in online spaces. As such goals for this study
were not to assess the scientific validity of medicalized claims, but to find out, how FA
bloggers evoke, reconcile, and extend competing FA and medicalized discourses around
body diversity, including when borrowing from established feminist, queer, and anti-racist
discursive strategies. As well as how FA bloggers challenge and contextualize their own
experiences of cultural and political marginalization beyond the more traditional FA
political practices centered on body diversity discourses.
In addressing these goals, we put forth two main contributions. First, we highlight how
central the practice of borrowing discursive strategies from more established social justice
movements, especially feminist, queer and anti-racist/African-American civil rights
movements, is for FA bloggers in developing discursive strategies that extend popular FA
discourses of fatness as a kind of body diversity (see RQ1). This finding, we argue, is in
keeping with a complex tradition of self-identified women FA activists employing similar
means to contest their own political and cultural marginalization; one further perpetuated
by anti-fat rhetoric promoted by health professionals and medical as well as other (i.e.,
education and government) institutions. We further argue that recognizing the real ways
medicalized anti-fat discourses circumscribe their ability to enjoy the same privileges of
full public citizenship as thin or average sized people has led the bloggers to formulate
resistant modes of fat embodiment. Thus, the bloggers use their online platforms and other
technologies (e.g., digital cameras) to not only adapt discursive strategies from other social
justice movements that challenge and draw public awareness to their political
marginalization, but also complicate assumptions that sometime belie popular FA
arguments around body diversity. For instance, bloggers Tasha Fierce and Marianne Kirby
used ‘coming out’ as a means to describe a process of politicized fat embodiment and
engagement with (virtual) public spaces that allow them to assert their rights to occupy
those spaces, on and offline, while providing the language necessary for challenging the
monopoly that social institutions (science, medicine, and government) and industries
(beauty and fashion) hold over fatness and fat embodiment discourses.
Our second contribution (see RQ2), is our provision of preliminary understanding into
how bloggers use online platforms to innovate popular FA protest strategies and bridge
their online experiences of social marginalization and growing political consciousness
with similar experiences in real life. It is our contention that since such efforts primarily
target fashion and beauty industries, they challenge prevailing notions of what Guthman
and DuPuis’ (2006) describe as good public citizenship, as defined within a neoliberal
framework of consumerism. Here, civic engagement is increasingly deemed to be
effectively demonstrated in the available consumer choices or lack thereof. As with earlier
fat acceptance activists, such as the Toronto based group Pretty Porky and Pissed Off,
bloggers, like Leslie Kinzel and Jennifer Rowe use or call strategies (e.g., political
consumer activism) to highlight the factors that limit fat women’s participation in
consumer culture, especially in the area of fashion. In calling for boycotts of retailers who
refuse to sell clothing in larger and plus sizes, as Rowe has, fat people can draw attention
to how they remain systemically underserved or ignored by certain industries. Moreover,
as women’s social and political value still often rests in part in their ‘ability’ to conform to
current standards of attractiveness that are closely tied to thinness, fat women are often
excluded from certain facets of consumer culture due to a lack of consumer choice. This
exclusion left the bloggers feeling particularly vulnerable to social marginalization and
being rendered invisible in some public spaces. This consumer based discrimination only
reinforces cultural narratives that devalue fat women as neoliberal citizens. FA bloggers,
however, through their politicized consumerism, suggest otherwise; asserting that their
concerns and realities deserve acknowledgment and accommodation.
Recognizing this study is limited in that we did not analyze the comments left on FA
blogs; future researchers who do so, we believe, could further help shape understandings
of beauty and body image within the FA movement, provide insight into new concerns
being brought into the movement, and new ways FAs are learning to relate to their political
and biosocial identities as the movement grows. A final limitation of this work stems from
the difficulty of accessing if FA is gaining wider acceptance through blogs because none of
the bloggers provide information on the size of their audience and studies assessing the
popularity of FA blogs are scarce. A measure of popularity may be that Kirby, Kinzel,6 and
Fierce7 have recently been either hired as full-time writers or had their work featured on
blogs with very large audiences and active online communities. Overall, our sample size is
small and the experiences, frustrations, and strategies outlined on the blogs chosen are
highly specific to their authors; thus, we in no way claim this study is representative of how
the FA movement has manifested online. Instead, we do provide glimpses into how online
resources are rallied by some proponents of FA, the strategies that have emerged as a
result, and how these strategies are being adopted and innovated to contest dominant
understandings of gender in visual representation by challenging normative societal
assumptions of body image

Keeping this in mind, we found that the sampled bloggers model modes of fat
embodiment that resist the snares of identity politics inherent in discourses that emphasize
genetic predispositions and, instead, shift the emphasis to political goals and strategies that
may help create the cultural conditions necessary for fat women to experience the benefits
of full public citizenship. Increasing knowledge of how self-identified women FA bloggers
engage in FA politics and discourses online then, first, provides important insight into the
way change or new phenomena in the FA movement in North America relates to the
intersection of gender, race, and queer fat politics (Herdon, 2006). Second, this knowledge
helps uncover the limitations of medicalized discourses around fat and fat embodiment,
especially as it relates to women, by highlighting the ideological chasm that exists between
medical and government institutions and fat acceptance activism and the cultural rather
than the scientific assumptions that underpin them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Neoliberalism, as theorized by Brown (2005), presents political and economic practices that
promote the idea that human wellbeing is best advanced ‘by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property
rights’ and free trade (p. 2).
2. At the inception of this study, only blogger Tasha Fierce self-identified as queer but since
Marianne Kirby (17 August 2012) and Jennifer Rowe also publically self-identified as queer and
bisexual, respectively; a revelation the authors in re-examining her posts are confident does not
feel alters the data of analyses and we have paid considerable attention in the literature review and
in the discussion going over the possible intersections between FA and queer activism/politics.
3. They argue a directed approach can help determine coding categories prior to analyses, the initial
coding schemes and the relationships between codes once the coding is underway.
4. In coding under this assumption, our analysis is not circumscribed by any one particular theorist,
such as a Foucault or Bakhtin, as would have been the case with a traditional discourse analytic
approach (Cheek, 2004; Fairclough, 1992; Hook, 2001).
5. A term coined by Mulvey (1975) to describe the objectifying and heterosexual perspective
assumed in film.
6. In 2011 Kirby and Kinzel were hired to write for xojane, which according to Say Media (the
internet publishing company that hosts xojane) the site is visited by 2 million readers monthly.
7. Fierce’s work was featured on Bitch Media; a non-profit feminist media organization visited by
12,000 unique visitors a day (Bitch Media, 2013).
Notes on contributors
Rosemary Ricciardelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, at Memorial
University of Newfoundland. She earned her PhD in Sociology at McMaster University. She has
published in a range of academic journals including: Sex Roles, Criminal Justice Review, Canadian
Journal of Sociology, Journal of Crime and Justice, Journal of Gender Studies, The Prison Journal,
and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. Her first scholarly monograph will be released in the
spring of 2014 which investigates lived experiences in prison. She is involved in a social enterprise
project that supports desistance from crime by offering hands on employment experience to
offenders released on parole as they roast Klink Coffee. Her primary research interests include
evolving conceptualizations of masculinity, and experiences and issues within different facets of the
criminal justice system. Her current research looks at prisoner culture, desistance, their coping
strategies and risk perception as well as those of corrections officers. She also continues to
investigate wrongful convictions and the perceptions of individuals who have had such experiences.
Adowa Afful, a graduate from McGill university, is a Candidate for her Master of Arts Degree in
Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is an active blogger. Her current research interests
include, critical fat theory, citizenship, feminist social movements, race, gender and online social
networks.
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Article in Journal of Gender Studies · April 2015

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Shaping the online fat acceptance

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(Received 8 October 2013; accepted 5 March 2015)

*Corresponding author. Email: rricciardell@mun.ca

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

Feminism and the fat acceptance movement

Visibility, flaunting, and coming out as fat

Shifting and competing discourses

Neo-liberalism and citizenship

Researching the fatosphere

diversity discourses from mostly consumer choice and assimilationist narratives to

Methods: thematic analysis

eating, weight loss

or poor eating habits); ‘body autonomy/self-acceptance/non-conformity’ (e.g., fat women

Results and discussion

Visibility: normalizing fat and coming out

Beauty standards: fat and consumer culture

Fat as a lifestyle: politics, self-acceptance, and the acceptable fat body

embodiment by presenting diet and purchasing mainstream fashion as forms of self-care;

assumptions of body image

historical perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 52, 153– 167. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1996.

Health, 15, 188– 205. doi:10.1177/1363459310361601

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