The Hidden Lives of Big Beautiful Women

This book is a deep dive into the largely unexplored space of BBW "bashes"-multi-day gatherings of fat women and their admirers. Using a range of feminist theories of embodiment and affect, the project is guided by autoethnography and in-depth interviews with twelve participants. Participant experiences are first analyzed with a key focus on experiences that cause grief and disenfranchisement; subsequently, the book looks at experiences that may be radical or revelatory. The book does not seek to either villainize or valorize BBW spaces but instead sheds a bright light on the experience of this cultural subspace and all it may offer to analyses of fat life. 

List of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Ways of Knowing and Seeing Fat.- Chapter 3: Methods and epistemologies.- Chapter 4: Interrupting Embodiment-Normalizing Gazes and Diet Culture in BBW.- Chapter 5: Bashes as Spaces for Healing Everyday Trauma of Fatphobia.- Chapter 6: Conclusion

Product details

• Authors: Crystal Kotow
• Assisted by: May Friedman (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2025
• EAN: 9783031544552
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3154455-2
• No. of pages: 210
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 13 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 301 g
• Illustrations: XVII, 210 p.
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories