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Download the Paper (121 K, PDF file) - February 1, 2007 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing.

ABSTRACT:
For those readers who spent their entire lives up till today in a secluded bomb shelter or an abandoned cave in some nearby woods, allow me to share a secret with you: fat persons are stigmatized. As I will discuss, and explore, below, fatness has come to represent a slew of undesirable social identities or traits. Fatness also represents some of the rather scary and perplexing contradictions characterizing many Western, industrialized citizens. Fat people often bring to mind -- as well as print, popular discourses, and daily experience -- conceptions of non-Whiteness, class inequalities, violations of the Protestant Ethic, media-popularized beauty ideals, health, and personal freedoms. That’s a lot of cultural baggage to place on the shoulders of fat folks, no matter how broad or plump they may be.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Lesleigh J. Owen, "Consuming Bodies: Fatness, Sexuality, and the Protestant Ethic" (February 1, 2007). UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Thinking Gender Papers. Paper TG07_Owen.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/csw/thinkinggender/TG07_Owen