Article

Men and Masculinities

16(4) 478-496
ª The Author(s) 2013
Normalizing Desire: Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Stigma and the DOI: 10.1177/1097184X13502668
jmm.sagepub.com

Carnivalesque in Gay
Bigmen’s Cultural
Practices

Jason Whitesel1 and Amy Shuman2

Abstract
Girth & Mirth (G&M) is a social group for big gay men who face exclusion and
discrimination from both mainstream and gay communities. Based on extensive
ethnographic research and interview data, we consider a variety of the group’s
activities, including gatherings at coffeehouses, participation in a gay pride parade,
and a national carnivalesque weekend retreat. The group engages in performances
that are complicit with both heteronormative gender practices and normative gay
men’s practices and that reinscribe capitalist commodified desires. This exploration
of the full range of G&M’s activities, from the everyday to the carnivalesque, provides
an opportunity to examine how a stigmatized group negotiates visible and less visible
forms of discrimination through a playful reconfiguration of heteronormative mas-
culine performances.

Keywords
Girth & Mirth, obesity, gay men, fat gay men, carnival, pride, fat stigma

1
Seminole State College of Florida, Sanford, FL, USA
2
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:
Jason Whitesel, Seminole State College, SLM UP-2014, 100 Weldon Boulevard, Sanford, FL 32773, USA.
Email: whiteselj@seminolestate.edu
Whitesel and Shuman 479

Big gay men face discrimination and stigma for both their size and sexuality.
Although they face a ‘‘double stigma’’ with a variety of everyday discriminations,
these men also use play, camp, and carnivalesque events as normalizing techniques
that carve out a space (sometimes literally) for performing their masculinity.1 The
social group ‘‘Girth & Mirth’’ (G&M) offers big gay men both ordinary social events
and carnivalesque weekend retreats where they can, as they say, ‘‘just be them-
selves.’’ What does it mean to be excluded from ‘‘being themselves,’’ and how do
big gay men produce an ‘‘ordinary’’ masculinity to counter the exclusions they face
from everyday life? G&M events often reproduce the very heteronormative forms of
masculinity from which the members have been excluded. This exploration of the
full range of G&M’s activities, from the everyday to the carnivalesque, provides
an opportunity to examine how a stigmatized group negotiates visible and less visi-
ble forms of discrimination in a playful reconfiguration of heteronormative mascu-
line performances.
By situating our work within the literature on carnival, especially Bakhtin’s (1984)
work, which positions size and sizism within a performative framework, we are able to
provide an alternate discourse to medicalized discourses of obesity (Cooper 2010). In
her foundational essay on feminism and the carnivalesque, Davis (1965) asks one of
the central questions that will concern us in this essay: how does the carnivalesque
both reinforce and undermine social stigmas? Our study of a community of gay big-
men continues discussions of the uneasy relationship between social justice and the
carnivalesque by observing a group that faces exclusion and discrimination for being
big and gay, but that engages in performances that are complicit with both heteronor-
mative gender practices and normative gay men’s practices.
Stigma and the carnivalesque, like stigma and camp, operate in seemingly differ-
ent realms of value. Stigma assigns diminished value, measured primarily (but not
exclusively) by outsiders, who determine that a particular practice or attribute is out-
side of whatever they consider to be normal. In contrast to stigma, which sets up insi-
ders and outsiders, norms and the abnormal, the carnivalesque measures the value of
performances that turn norms upside down and that make everyone, performer and
observer, into a participant. Butler (1988, 527) provides an example in the distinc-
tion she makes between the staged performance and personal contact with a cross-
dresser (both public encounters): ‘‘Indeed, the sight of a transvestite onstage can
compel pleasure and applause while the sight of the same transvestite on the seat
next to us on the bus can compel fear, rage, even violence.’’ The staged carnival-
esque, then, although it might not entirely escape stigma, might escape ridicule, and
can produce admiration or acclaim. Carnival, unlike onstage performance, does not
necessarily have an audience. Carnival reconfigures status hierarchies, in part
because everyone is a participant, and the voyeurs are also part of the masquerade.
Both body size (and bodies more generally) and gender displays play prominent
roles in the carnivalesque in western cultures (as well as in many other cultures).
Here, we examine an instance of fat masculinities in the group’s ordinary and car-
nivalesque performances. We observe how these men reconfigure the double stigma
480 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

of being gay and fat in these performances, and we consider whether those reconfi-
gurations serve as a form of resistance.
The lead author Jason Whitesel, a sociologist, spent approximately three years
doing ethnographic research with a G&M group in the Midwestern United States.
During that time, he became a paying member of the group and served functional
roles like working the door at charity bar nights. He was open with the group about
his research; within the group, he fit the role of ‘‘chubby chaser’’ because he fits the
stereotypical category of ‘‘thin.’’ He observed a variety of events, from weekly gath-
erings at a coffee shop, to the Gay Pride March, to a yearly carnival reunion of sev-
eral bigmen’s clubs held in a Southwestern city. Each of these events presents
different opportunities and constraints for negotiating the double stigma that big gay
men face. In addition to observations, Whitesel conducted interviews with members,
both in a Midwestern club, and informally at national events.
G&M started as a national social movement organization in the 1970s in reaction
to weight discrimination within the gay community, and was designed to transform
big gay men’s experiences of shame (Bunzl 2005; Hennen 2005; Pyle and Loewy
2009; Textor 1999). Like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance
(NAAFA) which was started by an average-sized man who was attracted to large
women and was married to one (Millman 1980), G&M was founded by a bigman
and his thin admirer, and it was his partner who took the initiative to place the ad
in an alternative paper (Textor 1999).
At one point, Bigmen who were hirsute, bulky/beefy ‘‘lumberjack’’ types broke
off from G&M, calling themselves ‘‘Bears.’’ They packaged themselves as rugged
masculine men whose natural habitat is the ‘‘wild’’ woods, typically recognized
by their cutoff flannel shirts, tight faded jeans, and their ‘‘woof’’ greeting followed
by a bear hug. The Bears became quite successful because they marketed themselves
very well as ‘‘real’’ men, saving the gay man’s gender reputation (Hennen 2005).2
One Girth & Mirther at a bigman’s Labor Day weekend reunion said over dinner,
‘‘I think the original New York Girth & Mirth was born out of NAAFA, which
started in New York in the late sixties.’’ Neither G&M’s history nor its cultural prac-
tices has been well documented, though members such as this one have cultural
memories that are passed on to new members and discussed on occasion.3 The
beginnings of G&M in 1976 fall in line with the earlier inception of NAAFA in
1969, so it is possible that the two groups were connected. Interestingly, both groups
were started by the admirers of large people—that is, by ‘‘outsiders.’’ Thus, objec-
tification seems to be central to both clubs’ inception.

Desire for Ordinary Space: How Girth & Mirthers

Describe Themselves
Girth & Mirthers describe their group as a social club, distinct from either a sex club
or a political action group.4 As we will discuss, sex and politics are certainly part of
the group’s activities, but we note that trying to find a space for fat people to achieve
Whitesel and Shuman 481

acceptance is a dominant dimension of the group’s discourse. We will return to the

question of how the desire for normality is integrated into cultural practices that
range from the ordinary to the flamboyant. In their weekly coffee gatherings, Girth
& Mirthers provide each other with an opportunity to just be ordinary. For example,
in the following account, one of the members likens the group to other fraternal
groups interested in brotherhood:

Girth & Mirth does things with people who you can be around and be comfortable
with, who won’t ridicule you, or make you feel uncomfortable in any way. As they
say, there’s safety in numbers. We do coffee—it’s a circle of friends and there’s not
a clunker in the bunch . . . . You can feel comfortable no matter what. You don’t have
to feel afraid because you’re big. It’s a way to have a social group and you don’t have
to be stuck at home. It’s nice for the holidays. Somebody has a place to go. When
you’re sick, people care. It’s a brotherhood, maybe not like the Masons; we don’t
have a secret handshake. My partner and I have become real close to some couples.
It is friends to share with—a chosen family. The thing we choose in our life that
provides a place for us.

This group member, like most others, understood a major purpose of the group to
be the creation of a space without the threat of ridicule or discomfort. At the coffee
meetings, being in a group can provide some protection from ridicule. Finding suit-
able places and spaces, having ‘‘a place to go,’’ play an important role in size dis-
crimination, and this is one of the central concerns that shape the Girth &
Mirthers’ desire for the ordinary. Having a place to go for something as ordinary
as a cup of coffee becomes an achievement in the context of the exclusions bigmen
experience, especially in public places where the furniture governs what counts as
normal. Thus, engagement with the suitability of space and size (bathrooms, archi-
tecture, seating arrangements) is a major challenge for Girth & Mirthers. For these
men, the ordinary sizes of things, places, and clothes are never unmarked, as they are
for so many people.5 Instead, the material configuration of sizes is always remark-
able, requiring their attention. The assumption that size and space is unmarked and
taken for granted renders the bigmen invisible, the victims of the general public’s
lack of attention to spatial exclusions. Where the public does overtly attend, it is
always as a deliberate exclusion, sometimes couched as a safety consideration, for
example, on airline flights or amusement park rides.
Over coffee one night, the men mentioned the unfriendly architecture at the new
location of a local gay bar & grille, which was a longtime hub of their city’s gay
scene. They said that big gay men feel uncomfortable at the new location with its
long and narrow entrance ramp enclosed by metal railing, and pub tables that virtu-
ally knock against the booths lining the walls. This design may have been inten-
tional, after all, to create a hopping atmosphere. Nonetheless, it made it difficult
for large men to move around in a space where crowds stand packed like sardines,
and the bathrooms are too tight for bigmen.
482 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

In contrast, the bar & grille at the former location, with its large and open concept,
had a seating area with movable, high, round tables that provided plentiful flexible
gathering space. Some members used to go to Sunday brunch there. Additionally, its
bathroom was spacious and included a roomy, accessible stall. The bigmen com-
plained that at the new location, fat bodies cannot fit comfortably into the ‘‘thin’’
space. As one said, ‘‘aside from lucking into empty patio space, the new design can-
not accommodate us big girls.’’6 Others speculated the new design to be a deliberate
attempt to keep them out: ‘‘They don’t want us there.’’ Soon after, the group that had
this discussion in fact developed a new tradition of frequenting an architecturally
more accommodating restaurant, which happened to be a mainstream one.
Unlike the bar under debate, the Bear bar that hosted the group’s charity fund-
raising events provided a fat-affirming space. The Bear bar was meant for gay bears,
leathermen, and cowboys.7 Its interior space differed, in that patrons entered through
a painted oversized metal door, the bottom flush with the large parking lot. Inside the
spacious, wide-open club was a huge, often unoccupied dance space, two bars that
pushed off against the outer walls, a comfortable seating area with an oversized love-
seat and chairs, and a few high tables with sturdy metal stools. The enormous bath-
room included an oversized stall with a homemade, doublewide plywood door. Out
back, a patio spanned the entire length of the building, complete with a large wooden
bar, and a variety of seating and easy-to-move bistro tables, all of which added up to
a big gay man’s haven, welcoming, rather than humiliating him.
Not being able to use furniture transforms ordinary activities into exclusions,
even without deliberate discriminations. It is these ordinary exclusions that render
the bigmen invisible by the taken-for-granted attitude that presents smaller furniture
as ‘‘normal.’’ In contrast, deliberate exclusions are more visible. The following
example, in which the bigmen were told they could not get on a particular amuse-
ment park ride, provides an opportunity to more closely examine the relationship
between invisible and more visible, audible discrimination.
Fat people, men or women, gay or straight, often are excluded from amusement
park rides. ‘‘Politically correct’’ notices read something to the effect that ‘‘this ride
may not be able to accommodate guests of exceptional size.’’ Theme parks are cau-
tious not to clearly demarcate what exactly qualifies as ‘‘exceptional size.’’ Granted,
it is only sensible to forewarn guests of such restrictions, ‘‘for their own safety,’’ not
to mention legal ramifications, if a ride were to break under the weight of a bigman
and there were no precautionary warning signs. To add insult to injury, however, fat
people find out that they do not fit in a particular amusement park ride only after they
have anxiously waited in line, sometimes for hours, not knowing whether they will
be able to ‘‘fit.’’ And when it is finally their turn, if they do not ‘‘fit’’ and are turned
away because the safety bars on the ride will not lock down on them, they feel humi-
liated having to exit the scene.
The amusement ride transforms the man standing in line into a safety problem
and produces him as an oversized man, a category that the ride anticipates in its
politically correct sign. The power of safety is made unquestionable and appears
Whitesel and Shuman 483

legitimate even to the man who has been thus transformed. This is what Moi (1991,
1030) describes as ‘‘an effect of symbolic violence.’’ In her classic essay on fem-
inist theory, Moi points out that symbolic violence is ‘‘literally unrecognizable as
violence’’ because it seems legitimate. She discusses cases in which ‘‘we struggle
to transform the cultural traditions of which we are the contradictory products’’
(1018). Her discussion of feminism is relevant to our discussion of gay bigmen
who similarly experience discrimination in ordinary life. This is the case in the
amusement park exclusions. The bigman is ineligible to ride because the safety bar
does not close over his belly. He himself acknowledges the validity of the safety
concern. At the same time, his presence at the amusement park as an adult who
is legitimately standing in line but who needs to be ‘‘kicked off’’ a ride calls public
attention to the exclusion and to the otherwise self-evident naturalness of the size
of the amusement ride seat. There is a safety problem, but it is remedied by kicking
the bigman off the ride. The confluence of the categories of safety, amusement, and
size is naturalized and obscures the discrimination. In Moi’s terms, ‘‘it becomes a
social fact with real effects’’ (1991, 1031).8 In the following interview account, a
bigman accepts the ‘‘social fact’’ of safety, but nonetheless articulates his experi-
ence of humiliation.

Now, where I’m from, we have Pride Night at Kings Island Amusement Park. Talk
about the stigmas of being big, my God, some of us can’t ride the rides. Face it—
we’re too big. The safety features don’t allow us to fit in the thing properly. I don’t
blame them, it’s a hazard, but it’s humiliating. A lot of times, we’ll go with a
group of people and it gets to be a big joke, ‘‘How many rides did YOU get kicked
off of?’’

This bigman may have good humoredly called such humiliation a big joke only
because he has developed some immunity to ‘‘the stigmas of being big,’’ though he
still must live with the repercussions of felt sizism. Being ‘‘kicked off’’ is a more
visible form of discrimination than discovering that a bar provides little room to
move around chairs. The two scenes are both humiliating, but the public humiliation
of having to leave the ride intensifies the more generalized humiliation of constantly
finding spaces to be too small. The following member explicitly describes the way
that the group provides an opportunity for male bonding that works against such
humiliation in his interview:

It gives people the opportunity to socialize in a way that they don’t have to worry about
being chastised or looked down upon because of their size. So there’s that format, it’s
set up so that people are expected to be nonjudgmental—they can relate to people that
are the same, or appreciate people the way they are. Gay men of size are generally one
of the most ostracized groups of people that are out there, so we provide an environ-
ment where we don’t allow that to happen, so it’s in its own way more friendly and
non-judgmental than we see with a lot of other gay groups.
484 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

Many of the members interviewed viewed friendships created through the group
as a counterpoint to being ostracized or judged. They often described the group as a
socially, rather than sexually, focused group. For example, in an interview, the fol-
lowing group member specifically differentiated the group from another kind of gay
group that would be ‘‘about sex.’’

One of the things that I pride myself in with this club is that it’s not about sex. It’s
about camaraderie. It’s actually about a friendship. It’s not about who can screw
who first. It’s more about people getting together enjoying each other’s company,
talking about their week, enjoying each other’s lives, and the bad things, and so, I
was impressed that it wasn’t about having sex. It was about actually being a group
of people that like to get together and actually do things together. And if somebody
is having a hard time or going through trouble, the group definitely provides sup-
port. The way that they have reached out to folks who’ve been going through a
rough patch I think is just wonderful.

In actuality, the group was focused on both sexuality and male companionship.
While not the only member to insist on the primary purpose as social rather than sex-
ual, his comment can be understood in terms of his longing for the ordinary possi-
bility of getting together with friends. As we will discuss, body as size can be
separated from body as sexuality. As so many group members attested, discrimina-
tion is not only an assault on their identity, and social standing, it is also an assault on
their masculinity, with implications for their acceptance in ordinary everyday life.
Sitting in a chair at a bar, using a public restroom, and riding an amusement park
ride are ordinary activities, and in the face of these exclusions, the members have
created an environment for ordinary friendship.9

Normalizing Desire and New (Strange) Alliances

Insisting on the social function of the group is one way to normalize desire, to
include big gay men’s sexuality in the realm of ordinary gay sexuality and ordinary
masculinity. Responding to humiliations, the big gay men sometimes reject other
gays (Whitesel forthcoming); for the most part, however, they wanted to be accepted
by other gays. They have not, as far as we know, formed alliances with fat feminists;
nor do the fat feminists recognize them as fat rebels.
Like furniture, architecture, and other spatial constraints experienced by bigmen,
clothing is an important site for sizist exclusion. In some situations, members nor-
malize their desires rather than accept being excluded. In one attempt to normalize,
a member took on The Human Rights Commission (HRC), writing a letter of con-
cern to complain about the Commission’s sizist clothing options. At a spring
potluck, he shared what he had done with some of the men in the group and he later
forwarded this letter to Whitesel. It read,
Whitesel and Shuman 485

This is not a concern about an order that has been placed, but about an order that cannot
be placed. HRC is a great organization, but by offering t-shirts that only go up to a size
2X, it is excluding a large (no pun intended) section of the community. It would be nice
if HRC would offer t-shirts in larger sizes for those of us that do not fit the perfect-body
stereotype. [excerpt]

This letter calls attention to contradictions in human rights practices. Wearing

T-shirts with an organizational logo represents a form of solidarity, but this fat-
affirming group cannot fit into the shirts and is therefore excluded from portraying
organizational allegiance. In the opinion of the letter writer above, the ‘‘Human
Rights’’ commission, which prides itself in working toward equal rights for lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender folks, has overlooked a category of discrimination.
Social justice movements create opportunities for new and sometimes otherwise
unlikely alliances. In this case, the attention to sizist clothing provided an opportu-
nity for an alliance with female fat activists and corresponds to Halberstam’s (2005)
model of ‘‘feminist gay shame.’’ In contesting shame, the letter is consistent with
strategies used by NAAFA (Martin 2000).
Consumer complaints and, in this case, using the strategy of shaming the rejecter,
raise questions about what anchors fat identity, desire, and norms of masculinity
among big gay men. Consumer complaints can be addressed without much change
to the conditions of discrimination. The above letter excerpt reminds us to ask what
niche fat people fill as consumers. How does niche recognition factor into their pro-
duction of culture and ritual? If all complaints were consumer oriented, then a big per-
son’s identity produced by stigma would presumably fade, once manufacturers and
corporations ‘‘fixed’’ all of the conditions and problems. In this way, the T-shirt letter
would be considered not a radical critique of HRC, which creates apparel that perpe-
tuates the conspicuous consumption of gay identity and its conformity, but rather a
negative transvaluation of the norms and physicality associated with the ideal gay
male body. Making the oppositional anchor those gay men who pursue the ‘‘perfect
body’’ prevents organizational and community rejection from becoming one’s own
self-rejection. As Britt and Heise (2000, 256–257) state, ‘‘social movements [provide]
justification for making an attribution about the system rather than the self . . . not only
because the system is unjust but because [people] have been made to feel ashamed.’’
There is disadvantage to the strategy of shaming another, however: it potentially
undermines the stigma, but keeps in place the rejection of another body type.
Finding clothes that fit one’s larger body, which is already difficult in mainstream
society, becomes even more of a challenge when one wants to shop at a trendy gay bou-
tique, since it is rare for stores to carry T-shirts in 2-3-4X sizes. Consequently, bigmen
have remarked that they like supporting vendors that carry gay apparel in extended sizes
whenever they can. One member described how he intentionally patronizes them.

This past year at Pride, it was funny. I got several t-shirts. I got the Stonewall Pride
t-shirt, only because it came in my size. And if a gay organization offers t-shirts for
486 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

fundraising or whatever, and has something in my size, I’m gonna buy it. Because if
they had the forethought to include a person of size, male or female, I’m gonna buy
it. For the True Colors tour, the t-shirts only went up to 2XL. And they were small
2XLs. I was upset. But this year at Pride, there were a couple of times to buy
t-shirts, and I bought them because they were available. And people in the club were
going, ‘‘Why? What’s going on?’’ And I said, ‘‘It’s my size, it’s a gay organization,
I’m gonna buy it.’’ If they’re gonna think enough that there might be somebody big
here, I’m gonna buy the shirt.

Given the fashion consciousness of gay society, denying bigmen the latest trends
in clothing takes away yet another opportunity for them to be like other gay men. As
one way to participate in this crucial, marketplace, dimension of gay masculinity,
big gay men therefore like supporting businesses that cater to their needs because
they appreciate having more options when it comes to finding clothes that fit them.
Rather than condemning the gay cult of fashion, they buy into the system by making
an appeal for stylish bigmen’s fashions. Thus, modes of resistance in commercia-
lized contexts create strange bedfellows; they incorporate outcasts from fashion
back into a questionable system (Whitesel 2007, 2010).

Playing with the Signifiers

Gay Pride Parades provide a different sort of occasion for the Girth & Mirthers to
normalize their desires. Within the carnivalesque context of the parade, they can
assert their right to participate and can experience a measure of inclusion, both in
the availability of appropriate T-shirt sizes and in how they represent themselves
in the Pride event. Most years, the bigmen experienced a combination of derision
and applause by onlookers. One year, they unexpectedly won best float for their cre-
ation, with the theme ‘‘Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.’’ The float consisted of a
larger-than-life bathtub with shower curtains blowing in the breeze, overflowing
with bigmen from the club who were all blowing bubbles. This was an instance
of their having successfully adopted the acceptable party line10; the bigmen played
upon the stereotypes others had of them, and within the context of the parade, por-
trayed a recognizable role for men of their size (i.e., the jolly fat men).
It makes sense that Girth & Mirthers were successful in a festival occasion where
they could play with the multiple meanings of signifiers. Rub-a-dub-dub worked,
given its multiple signifiers: the innocence of a child’s rhyme, the allusion to three
men in any tub meaning gay, the fun of being in a tub and rub-a-dub-dubbing. This
shower act in fact had been tested by Bear groups in other Pride Parades and proven
successful. In the case of either group, this performance is not only about desperately
wanting normality; it is also about insisting on playing with signifiers to refuse any
single oversimplified rejection of fat. This is in line with LeBesco’s (2004) call for a
fat politics that engages constant playfulness and that playful subjectivity and per-
formativity should be the mission of fat politics.
Whitesel and Shuman 487

Play provides an opportunity to reconfigure a stigmatizing discourse, but it also

opens up the possibility for playful but discriminatory interaction. With their award-
winning float, the Girth & Mirthers used a form of self-representation that allowed
onlookers to laugh with them; at other parades, they had experienced more jokes,
taunts, and derisive remarks. G&M’s presence in the gay pride parade was ‘‘disrup-
tive,’’ so to speak, not that it caused any trouble, but that it gave the audience license
to do body talk,11 particularly about body size, which is a completely different issue
than sexuality. For some Girth & Mirthers, therefore, their presence in the parade
amounted to ‘‘coming out’’ two times: as gay and as fat.12
As Probyn (2004) argues, shame erupts when the shamed are in close proximity
to their perpetrators. For Girth & Mirthers, shame gets magnified especially when
the perpetrators are other gays. Bigmen, who often feel shamed by other gay men
for falling short of the ideal gay image, participate in the Pride parade to bring vis-
ibility to themselves and in doing so, they provide an image alternative. As the fol-
lowing bigman reported, ‘‘I think we as a group at Pride have tried to show that
we’re not just all the pretty-perfect, chiseled guys. We are who we are. We accept
who we are. We know we’re not society’s ideal of physical perfection. We’re big
guys, we have fun, and we’re okay with it.’’ In their effort to gain visibility, the men
of G&M march in pride celebrations and wreak havoc on the monolithic notion of
who constitutes the ‘‘gay community.’’
In a cheeky San Francisco Bay Times article on the sanitization of pride, the
author quips, ‘‘The Girth & Mirth Club will be asked to either not be fat or at least
not show a sense of humor about their stout state. After all, we wouldn’t want the
public to think that a bunch of happy, chubby gays represented our community, now
would we?!’’ (Van Iquity 2006, n.p.). Playful remarks such as this not only acknowl-
edge the existence of the category of big gay men but do so affectionately and pose
the idea that to not accept comedic masculinity in the gay world would be ridiculous.
However, as the author suggests, comic masculinity in the form of big men is a
threat. The problem is at its core one of public presentation, the horrific idea that
‘‘happy chubby gays’’ would represent ‘‘our community,’’ that is, that they not only
exist but are recognizable and visible. In a community that not only values perfor-
mance, from seeing and being seen on the street to staged drag, a great deal is at
stake. Here we can return to Judith Butler’s categories of the transvestite on the bus
and on the stage. The question is, if the happy chubby gay is accepted in a parade,
must he then be acknowledged as existing on the street? Once visible in the parade,
can they continue to be made invisible in the gay coffeehouse?

Reconfiguring Stigma: A Carnivalesque Contest

If stigma and the carnivalesque can operate in different realms of value, the realms
nonetheless intersect. Here we turn to one example of carnivalesque performance to
consider how stigma and shame are reconfigured.13 The carnivalesque performance
provides bigmen with an opportunity to play with the same symbolic vocabulary that
488 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

often excludes and shames them in ordinary life. Through the embodied practices of
ritual performance and play, the bigmen perform an alternative queer masculinity.
Once a year, the bigmen gather at the ‘‘Super Weekend’’ attended by Girth &
Mirthers from all over the country at the largest gay resort in the Southwest.14
Whitesel attended this event in the role of a fill-in coordinator. The Super Weekend
provides a fat-affirming sanctuary for the bigmen where they can express their sexu-
ality without fear of ridicule or rejection. The Weekend includes a series of planned
carnivalesque events, including swimming pool games and evening contests and
rituals. We focus on one of those events, a ‘‘Chub and Chaser Contest.’’ For the big
men, although the contestants parade on stage and show off their bodies, this is any-
thing but a beauty pageant, not only because tiaras and satin sashes are absent, but
because if there is an ‘‘ideal’’ body, it is a chub body with an exposed belly and any
accoutrements that further expose the desirability of the big man. The contest is
about performing tropes of gay masculinity.
The entry information form prompts the participants: ‘‘Feel free to be creative
and fun. That’s what this is all about.’’ But, as one organizer said at a planning meet-
ing, ‘‘Just because it’s informal doesn’t mean it has to look informal.’’ It is an unof-
ficial, but organized, contest, not a qualifying one; it should move along quickly and
be ‘‘drama-free.’’ The form asks for ‘‘Chub’’ or ‘‘Chaser,’’ name, address, age, rela-
tionship status, ‘‘top/bottom/versatile,’’ favorite food and drink, and how friends
would describe them. The final section of the form is a ‘‘help us get-to-know you
better’’ exercise. It instructs contestants to ‘‘Circle one word in each line below’’:

1. Bedroom, Backroom, Bathhouse, Patio, Hot Tub, Kiddies’ Pool.

2. Car, Convertible, Pickup Truck, Semi-Truck, SUV, Minivan.
3. Blue jeans, Chinos, Shorts, Kilts, Drag, Leather, Uniform.
4. Boxers, Briefs, Boxer briefs, Thongs, Jockstraps, Commando.

Once the emcee finishes sexualizing each entrant’s word choices, which is all in
good fun, they exit stage right.
After personal introductions, the contestants return to the stage, again one at a
time, and respond to a question. Most of them emerge scantily clad, and a few come
out wearing uniforms. The emcee picks various fantasy scenario questions from a
ready-made list for each of them to answer. The Midwestern group wrote the ques-
tions for a general audience. They ranged from funny and entertaining to scandalous.
For example, ‘‘What was the worst or most successful pick-up line you’ve ever
heard?’’ As soon as each contestant answers his question, he takes a spot with the
other men lining up on stage. Following the questions, the contestants parade around
together, shirtless and in skimpy clothes. No one appears to take themselves too seri-
ously—onstage and offstage; the event is driven by play.
Both the Chub and the Chaser contests end with erotic onstage dance perfor-
mances. During the Chubs part of the event, contestant number one, ‘‘B.J. Boi,’’
or as some folks call him, ‘‘Cotton Candy,’’ looks young and acts femme. He sashays
Whitesel and Shuman 489

onto the stage in a skintight shirt, patterned in wide black and sheer vertical bands
that show off some of the most vulnerable parts of the fat gay male form. Unlike this
entrant, however, most of the contestants ‘‘loosely’’ construct a masculine gay image
of themselves onstage. Since masculine sexual ideals are hard to live up to, their imi-
tation of them at times becomes rather comical.
All the masculine categories are offered as fodder for fat fantasy and carnival-
esque parody. Number four, short and stout, in a Harley Davidson hat and a flannel
work shirt with cutoff sleeves, chooses ‘‘semi-truck’’ from the list and jokes about
trolling for sex in truck stop bathrooms. Number five, with a shaved head and a tat-
too, reports that he served in Desert Storm and claims to have had sex with nine men
in a foxhole. A bearded number six wears a Denver Broncos football jersey. The
seventh contestant’s muscle tee says, ‘‘Bears ¼ Great Head.’’ Contestant number
eight, ‘‘Can I get a ‘WOOF! WOOF!’’’—A silver-haired Daddy Bear with rosy
cheeks sporting a tie-dyed shirt—he kisses the emcee on the lips when he comes out
on stage. The most common responses to ‘‘favorite food’’ include those from the
male-identified food group—meat, or for a laugh, chasers.
The last contestant is a young newbie; he is Hispanic, wears cross necklaces, jean
shorts, and sandals. He says he is new to the Super Weekend, but that everyone made
him feel welcome, and he is really enjoying himself. The emcee asks him what his
favorite cartoon character is, and he answers, ‘‘Casper the Friendly Ghost, because
he can sneak in and sneak out.’’
Before the dance-off, the emcee jokes that for the remainder of the contest there
will be no more doing the splits. ‘‘But, if any of you Chubs can do it,’’ he chides,
‘‘Go ahead, and we’ll get a shoehorn to pop you off the floor.’’ The shirtless Chubs
dance to the song ‘‘Hot Boyz,’’ giving it all they have got. B.J. Boi rolls up his shirt
into a crop top and does a flag dance with the black scarf draped over his shoulders.
‘‘Desert Storm’’ in his white jock flicks his tongue like Gene Simmons. Twirling
around like a diva complete with some breast dancing action, ‘‘Denver Broncos’’
drops his drawers and shakes his behind. ‘‘Casper’’ comes out for this round in a cow-
boy hat, rainbow bracelets, and leather body harness, revealing pierced nipples and
tattoos on his chest. Meanwhile, ‘‘Trucker’’ guy coolly drops his Joe Boxers and wig-
gles his ample buttocks against the stage railing, to the increasing applause and cheers
of the crowd. The music stops, and the emcee returns to the stage to determine the win-
ner by the volume of the audience’s applause for each contestant. The audience goes
for ‘‘Trucker,’’ whose ‘‘total chub’’ performance has won him the competition.
The Chub and Chaser show reproduces the same kinds of exclusionary practices
that any contest enacts, except that the idea of an event for bigmen interrupts con-
ventional contests from which they would be automatically excluded. In the earlier
context of the Gay Pride Parade, performing fatness is both performing shameful-
ness and its liberation at the same time. At the Super Weekend, shame has no place.
During this weekend, The Girth & Mirthers reconfigure the relationship between
invisible material exclusions and visible shame and discrimination. They perform
size as sexuality and masculinity, accentuating and embracing the very things that
490 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

are used to shame them in other contexts. In other contexts, they face size-based
exclusions and discrimination in terms of citizenship, employment, housing, medi-
cal care, and transportation. They do not engage in the discussions that otherwise
usefully articulate those exclusions and unpack their naturalization (Elliott 2007;
Guthman and DuPuis 2006). To the contrary, the Super Weekend organizers are
careful to avoid such topics, by, for example, avoiding discussions of employment
in the contest that might identify some participants as disabled.
These performances are not outside the politics of desire; to the contrary, they
perpetuate and reinscribe capitalist commodified desires. The Super Weekend is all
about the circulation of goods, as desire mapped onto bodies, but the embodiment is
protected from the shame and guilt discourses of dieting or ‘‘getting in shape’’ or any
other fat-demeaning forms of objectifying bodies. At the same time, the events are
inescapably mapped onto the same sexualized discourses that do promote particular
ideal bodies. The performances cannot escape reproducing neoliberal governmental-
ities and economies of consumption; but they can also serve as sites of resistance
(and destabilize these seemingly contradictory options).
Consistent with Mahmood’s (2001, 203) discussion of problems of theories of
agency that ‘‘seek to locate the political and moral autonomy of the subject in the
face of power,’’ we find that the Girth & Mirthers seem to engage in, or even prefer,
ritual events that subordinate their status. We note that the performances are based
on accepted heteronormative forms of masculinity: the trucker, the cowboy, the foot-
ball player, and the desert storm soldier. Mahmood’s study focuses on ‘‘women
whose desire affect, and will have been shaped by nonliberal traditions’’ (Egyptian
‘‘women involved in patriarchal religious traditions such as Islam’’). We find her
argument relevant for discussing the bigmen’s carnival performances, which are
shaped by the patriarchy and liberal traditions that persist even in their carnivalesque
reconfigurations. In Bakhtin’s (1984) terms, the carnivalesque plays with founda-
tional categories. The carnivalesque contest may reference feminine beauty
pageants, but at the Super Weekend, it has been completely masculinized, appro-
priating the male gaze to focus on the bigmen.
Both the Pride Parade float and the Super Weekend event are contests, the first
evaluated by the larger gay community and the second involving an in-group assess-
ment of performances. To some extent, both are assessments of masculinity, although
in different ways. The Pride Parade highly values spectacle, and the Rub-a-Dub-Dub
entry satisfied that criterion. However, to portray oneself as a character in a nursery
rhyme might not be the most masculine of presentations. As discussed, three men
in a tub has gay masculine sexual overtones, however, it is also possible that the nur-
sery rhyme context mitigated against considerations of bigmen’s sexuality. We might
consider that in the queer context of Gay Pride, the float was positively appreciated as
grotesque, as queering everything, from the nursery rhyme to sexuality. In contrast, the
Super Weekend event is unquestionably sexually charged, promoting masculinity on
multiple fronts, from the uniforms, all referring to typically masculine professions to
the ostentatious self-promotion familiar to masculinized sporting events.
Whitesel and Shuman 491

In performance, the bigmen are not just signs to be ridiculed, discriminated

against, or defended, resisted, and politicized, but also are producers of their own
signifying systems, their own self-representations (Russo 1997, 328). In the context
of the carnivalesque, both in the parade float and at the Super Weekend, their size is
hyperbolic and open to play. The rub-a-dub-dub parade float recasts a familiar chil-
dren’s rhyme in sexual terms. The rhyme is already available to the homoeroticism
displayed in the parade float. The float also plays on stereotypes others already have
of them and confirms, most particularly, the idea of the jolly fat man. In one sense, it
is a short step from the rhyme to the float, but it is, nonetheless a step, a reconfigur-
ing that grants the bigmen inclusion and acclaim.
For the most part, the Girth & Mirthers do not engage in explicit discourses of
resistance; the letter to the human rights campaign is the exception rather than the
rule, and is more a part of consumer complaint discourse than organized social jus-
tice work. As the group members explained above, their purpose is to provide situa-
tions where they do not experience exclusion. However, their nonexplicit political
action can be seen as part of a larger refusal to engage in any part of obesity insti-
tutions, medical, or other. They separate themselves from other institutionalized dis-
courses of size, for example, medical discourses. Interestingly, at the Super
Weekend, public discourse carefully avoids questions about the participants’ occu-
pations because everyone is careful to avoid the topic of disability. Some of the par-
ticipants receive disability services and funding, but do not want to be defined by this
category. Importantly, for the men, the name ‘‘bigmen’’ or ‘‘chubs’’ reflects size,
and not a medical disability.
Carnival can operate as a noninstitutional discourse; by rejecting political plat-
forms, the carnivalesque provides distance from neoliberalist antiobesity campaigns.
At the Super Weekend, Girth & Mirthers seem less interested in participating in the
discourses of what counts as a normal body and more interested in expanding and
playing with what qualifies as sexuality. Removed from their ordinary public lives,
in which just finding a bar, a big enough public bathroom, or a place to have coffee is
a challenge, the big men embrace their size and celebrate their masculinity through
sexualized performances. Fat people’s sexuality remains tenuous; bigmen fall out-
side normal parameters for ideal sex objects in various ways, namely as asexual
or as sexually degradable beings (Millman 1980). Therefore, bigmen having sex
at all qualifies as transgressive.
In a sense, the carnivalesque queers fat studies by refusing/queering the politi-
cal.15 Through their activities, whether the ordinary activities of gathering for coffee,
the Gay Pride Parade in which they interact with the larger gay community or the
highly staged in-group contests at the Super Weekend, the bigmen reconfigure
stigma and create new social alignments.16 This form of reconfiguration is at times
self-conscious, but self-consciousness is not its primary element. Building on
Goffman’s (1963) work, we can see that the bigmen do not rely entirely on self-
conscious strategies to manage stigma.17 Instead, through the carnivalesque, they
realign what is visible, what is hypervisible, and what is invisible so they have
492 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

control over it. They counter the contradictory effects of a society that makes big
people invisible by creating their own visibility politics.
In our discussion of a range of G&M performances, from the desire for the ordi-
nary in gathering for coffee to the more public performances of the parade float and
the Super Weekend, we have suggested a range of occasions for considering the
reconfiguration of fat stigma. Here we can elaborate on Butler’s contrast between
the cross-dresser on the stage and on the bus by observing how the grotesque can
be intensified and embraced as an object of desire on stage, though it may persist
as an experience of abjection and rejection in ordinary life. Both the ordinary and
the carnivalesque are embodied experiences. In addition to the discussions of med-
ical and legal discourses of obesity, we suggest that attention to the range of ritual
playful performances, from the ordinary to the carnivalesque, offers insight into the
uneasy relationship between politics and performance in reconfiguring masculinity.
Like other drag performances, the Girth & Mirthers’ Super Weekend pageant appro-
priates some forms and thus offers an implicit critique of mainstream beauty
pageants. However, at the same time, through flamboyant and carnivalesque perfor-
mances, the Super Weekend also claims normalcy, if only by providing hypervisi-
bility as an alternative to the invisible exclusions big gay men face every day.

Authors’ Note
Monica Butler, Daniel Farr, and Mügé Galin provided helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: Whitesel’s research was made possible
by several different grants: a Social Justice Research Grant from Coca-Cola and OSU’s
Multicultural Center, an OSU Sociology departmental award for human rights research,
conference travel grants from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Asso-
ciation and the American Folklore Society, and a summer writing institute grant funded
by the National Science Foundation and OSU’s Criminal Justice Research Center.

Notes
1. Pyle and Loewy (2009, 143) introduce big gay men as a doubly stigmatized group in their
seven-page-long book chapter on ‘‘fat [gay] men and their male admirers.’’
2. In terms of having successfully marketed their identity, television shows even reference
Bears as popular awareness of this gay subculture has grown. Farr (2011) notes an allu-
sion to Bears in the popular television show Pushing Daisies, for example.
Whitesel and Shuman 493

3. See Whitesel’s book Girth & Mirth: Gay Men at Play with Fat Stigma for a more exten-
sive discussion of the collective memories that constitute the group’s oral history.
4. Such discussions occurred in casual settings, at national gatherings, and in response to
Whitesel’s interview questions.
5. It is becoming increasingly common for people to publically challenge the lack of
appropriately sized furniture in public spaces. For example, recently a man sued White
Castle because he could not fit in the booths (see http://www.dispatch.com/content/
stories/business/2011/09/13/unable-to-slide-into-booth-he-sues.html).
6. The category ‘‘big girls’’ here does not imply femininity. To the contrary, as a self-
description, the big gay men refer to themselves as ‘‘big girls’’ to indicate both size and
sexuality, with no reference to women.
7. As the Bear culture matures, some Girth & Mirthers lament that although hairy appear-
ance is extremely welcome, fatness is debatable. Categories such as the Muscle-Bear
attest to this where ‘‘big’’ in this sense means muscular, stocky, and so on . . . Big, hir-
sute Bears configure into questions of class as they aspire to represent ‘‘real’’ men like
a lumberjack, by performing their working-class drag. In terms of masculinity, Bears
do ‘‘masculine’’ things—for example, they go camping. The Bears’ masculine,
working-class or lumberjack drag is a turn on for other Bears and Girth & Mirthers
alike.
8. Durkheim (1982) introduced the concept of ‘‘social facts’’ in terms of patterns of behavior
that have shared status among members of a group. Whether or not these ‘‘facts’’ are true,
they are accepted as true. See ‘‘The Rules of the Sociological Method’’
9. It would be interesting to consider how big nonathletic football fans similarly perform
masculinity through association with each other and, as fans, with the athletes. Unlike big
athletic men whose size can reinforce their masculinity, the big gay men faced daily
humiliations, including a sense of emasculation, in contrast to highly masculinized big
athletes.
10. See Goffman (1963, 103).
11. Body talk is quite simply, talking about the body. Young (1995) considers the multiple
conditions in which people do or do not engage in body talk.
12. See Saguy and Ward (2011) regarding what it might mean ‘‘to come out as a fat person.’’
13. In their discussion of Bakhtin’s (1984, 15) work on carnival, Stallybrass and Allon (1986,
26) warn against ‘‘the current tendency to essentialize carnival and politics.’’ Further,
‘‘There is no simple fit between the imaginary repertoire of transgressive desire and eco-
nomic and political contradictions in the social formation, and yet the two are always
deeply connected.’’
14. We use the ethnographic present to describe the Super Weekend.
15. See Berlant (2007); Guthman and DuPuis (2006), for discussions of the neoliberal agenda
and obesity.
16. Martin (2000, 126) describes clubs like this as ‘‘appearance organizations’’ that coalesce
around shamed physical characteristics, in this case, body shape and size. People typi-
cally experience ‘‘body shame’’ as a result of ‘‘their sexuality or physical appearance’’
(Martin 2000, 125–126). The group is not necessarily an action group; its purpose is to
494 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

rescue big gay men’s dignity. Size is highly normatively regulated, and Girth & Mirth
members push back against obesity as an epidemic narrative.
17. See Coleman (1997), Ellis (1998), Han (2009), Kusow (2004), and Link and Phelan
(2001) for discussions of Goffman’s work on stigma.

References
Bakhtin, M. M. 1984. Rabelais and His World. [Helene Iswolsky, Trans.] Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Berlant, Lauren. 2007. ‘‘Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency).’’ Critical
Inquiry 33:754–80.
Britt, Lory, and David Heise. 2000. ‘‘From Shame to Pride in Identity Politics.’’ In Self, Iden-
tity, and Social Movements, edited by Sheldon Stryker, Timothy Owens, and Robert
White, 252–68. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bunzl, Matti. 2005. ‘‘Chasers.’’ In Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession, edited by Don
Kulick and Anne Meneley, 199–210. New York: Penguin.
Butler, Judith. 1988. ‘‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenol-
ogy and Feminist Theory.’’ Theater Journal 40:519–31.
Coleman, Lerita M. 1997. ‘‘Stigma: An Enigma Demystified.’’ In The Disability Studies
Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis, 141–52. New York: Routledge.
Cooper, Charlotte. 2010. ‘‘Fat Studies: Mapping the Field.’’ Sociology Compass 4:1020–34.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1965. ‘‘Women on Top.’’ In Society and Culture in Early Modern
France, edited by Nathalie Zemon Davis, 124–52. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1982. The Rules of the Sociological Method. New York: Macmillan Press.
Elliott, Charlene D. 2007. ‘‘Big Persons, Small Voices: On Governance, Obesity, and the Nar-
rative of the Failed Citizen.’’ Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’etudes Canadiennes
41:134–50.
Ellis, Carolyn. 1998. ‘‘‘I Hate My Voice’: Coming to Terms with Minor Bodily Stigmas.’’
Sociological Quarterly 39:517–37.
Farr, Daniel. 2011. ‘‘The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies.’’ In The Television World
of Pushing Daisies: Critical Essays on the Brian Fuller Series, edited by Alissa Burger,
137–54. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: The Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood, NJ: Pre-
ntice Hall.
Guthman, Julie, and Melanie DuPuis. 2006. ‘‘Embodying Neoliberalism: Economy, Culture,
and the Politics of Fat.’’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24:427–48.
Halberstam, Judith. 2005. ‘‘Shame and White Gay Masculinity.’’ Social Text 23:219–33.
Han, Chong-suk. 2009. ‘‘Asian Girls Are Prettier: Gendered Presentations as Stigma Manage-
ment among Gay Asian Men.’’ Symbolic Interaction 32:106–22.
Hennen, Peter. 2005. ‘‘Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?’’
Gender & Society 19:25–43.
Kusow, Abdi M. 2004. ‘‘Contesting Stigma: On Goffman’s Assumptions of Normative Order.’’
Symbolic Interaction 27:179–97.
Whitesel and Shuman 495

LeBesco, Kathleen. 2004. Revolting Bodies?: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. Amherst,
MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Link, Bruce G., and Jo C. Phelan. 2001. ‘‘Conceptualizing Stigma.’’ Annual Review of
Sociology 27:363–85.
Mahmood, Saba. 2001. ‘‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflec-
tions on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.’’ Cultural Anthropology 16:202–36.
Martin, Daniel. 2000. ‘‘Organizational Approaches to Shame: Avowal, Management, and
Contestation.’’ Sociological Quarterly 41:125–50.
Millman, Marcia. 1980. Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America. New York: W.W. Norton.
Moi, Toril. 1991. ‘‘Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociol-
ogy of Culture.’’ New Literary History 22:1017–49.
Probyn, Elspeth. 2004. ‘‘Everyday Shame.’’ Cultural Studies 18:329–49.
Pyle, Nathanial, and Michael Loewy. 2009. ‘‘Double Stigma: Fat Men and their Male
Admirers.’’ In The Fat Studies Reader, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay,
143–50. New York: New York University Press.
Russo, Mary. 1997. ‘‘Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory.’’ In Writing on the Body:
Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, edited by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and
Sarah Stanbury, 318–36. New York: Columbia University Press.
Saguy, Abigail, and Anna Ward. 2011. ‘‘Coming Out as Fat: Rethinking Stigma.’’ Social Psy-
chology Quarterly 74:53–75.
Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. eds. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Textor, Alex. 1999. ‘‘Organization, Specialization, and Desires in the Big Men’s Movement:
Preliminary Research in the Study of Subculture-Formation.’’ International Journal of
Sexuality and Gender Studies 4:217–39.
Van Iquity, Sister Dana. 2006. ‘‘Drags on Parade.’’ San Francisco Bay Times, June 22.
Accessed October 15, 2011. http://www.sfbaytimes.com/index.php?article_id¼5300&
sec¼article.
Whitesel, Jason. 2007. ‘‘Fatvertising: Refiguring Fat Gay Men in Cyberspace.’’ Limina: A
Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies 13:92–102.
Whitesel, Jason. 2010. ‘‘Gay Men’s Use of Online Pictures in Fat-affirming Groups.’’ In
LGBT Identity and Online New Media, edited by Chris Pullen and Margaret Cooper,
215–29. New York: Routledge.
Whitesel, Jason. 2014. Girth & Mirth: Gay Men at Play with Fat Stigma New York: New
York University Press.
Young, Katharine. ed. 1995. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Bodylore, edited by Katharine Young, 1–2.
Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.

Author Biographies
Jason Whitesel (PhD, Ohio State University) is a sociology faculty member at Seminole State
College of Florida. His research is driven by the underlying intragroup strife among gay men,
496 Men and Masculinities 16(4)

created by their rigid body image ideal. His book, Girth & Mirth: Gay Men at Play with Fat
Stigma (NYU Press), describes events at Girth & Mirth club gatherings and examines how gay
bigmen use campy-queer behavior to reconfigure and reclaim their sullied images and
identities.

Amy Shuman is Professor of Folklore, English, Women’s Studies and Anthropology at The
Ohio State University, a core faculty member of Project Narrative and the Center for Folklore
Studies and a fellow of the Mershon Center for International Security. Her publications
include: Storytelling Rights: The Uses of Oral and Written Texts Among Urban Adolescents;
Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy; and, with Carol
Bohmer, Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century.