Women (Re)making whiteness: the sexual exclusion of the fat “Black” Irish

Abstract

ABSTRACTMuch of the extant whiteness literature treats “white” as a self-evident racial category and focuses largely on white men. Investigations into how the category transformed over time, and how or why white women would have participated in its transformation, have been limited. I performed a qualitative content analysis of articles from Godey’s Lady’s Book, the top women’s media outlet of the 19th century. Findings reveal that elite white women were integral to the remaking of whiteness in the 19th century. Anglo-Saxon women used their media platform to play up racial distinctions between themselves and “part Black” Irish women. In so doing, they treated physical features associated with whiteness, including light skin and thinness, as forms of embodied capital. They simultaneously derided racially-othered Irish women as darker skinned and fat in an effort to undermine inter-racial relationships between Irish women and Anglo-Saxon men.