ABSTRACT Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, Lizzo’s successful extension into reality television content, showcases the rhetorical power of fat-flaunting. This close textual analysis of the series finds that Lizzo enacts emancipatory rhetoric to impart her method of strategic fat-flaunting to aspiring fat women dancers. Self-love and vulnerability emerge as critical elements required for delivering the hopeful Big Grrrls from the burdens of fat-hate and maintaining Lizzo’s buoyancy above her critics.

ABSTRACT Weight stigma contributes to healthcare-related stress and can make pregnancy difficult for people in larger bodies who are frequently denied reproductive healthcare treatment or receive poor quality care. Support from similar others – those who have experienced the same stressor – is particularly useful for navigating these challenges. Our goal in this study was to solicit advice from fat individuals who have tried to conceive, been pregnant, or had a baby. Survey responses from 150 people included 225 units of advice. We used content analysis to code the advice into 10 types that fell under three main categories: intrapersonal advice, communication advice, and social support advice. The two most prevalent pieces of advice were to trust yourself and your body (n = 57) and find an inclusive provider (n = 56). Based on our results, we suggest finding fat-affirming and inclusive providers, seeking nourishment rather than a restrictive diet, engaging in joyful movement, and connecting with a community of other fat individuals.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Additional informationNotes on contributorsNicholas VillarrealNicholas Villarreal is a doctoral student in the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. Nicholas’ research center’s critical disability studies, queer of color critique, feminist cultural analysis, and critical fat studies

ABSTRACT In recent decades, American superhero films, and with them often very traditional constructs of masculinity, have become omnipresent in cinemas worldwide. This article examines a specific type of male representation, male fatness, in two examples of the genre, Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). The author argues that in both films the fat male character is depicted as demasculinized, thereby standing in a tradition of male fatness stereotyped as outside of normative masculinity. In the superhero genre the body plays a particularly relevant role in signifying a hegemonic masculinity, which is highlighted by the way the two films position the characters’ fatness, or also behaviors associated with fatness, in contrast to the expectations of superhero masculinity.

ABSTRACT This special issue of Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society explores fatness in relationships. As a topic receiving attention in the fields of art, anthropology, critical race theory, queer studies, disability theory, and related fields, kinship is fertile ground for contemporary study, and fat kinship deserves an increased focus through an academic lens. As the introduction to an issue featuring manuscripts across a broad definition of fat kinship from intimate partner relationships, friendships, professional/client relationships and more, both fat/fat and fat/nonfat, I suggest that contemporary views on kinship that prioritize self-selected and non-traditional bonds can be restorative of not only relationships but of self. Identifying authors and approaches to kinship whose methods can be adapted to a fat perspective, this introduction aims to set the stage for an expanded examination of fat relationships.

"Fat on Film: Gender, Race and Body Size in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema." Fat Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2