Current medical discourse and endless media debates on obesity and health have rendered the fat body highly visible. However, the lived experiences of fat have to a large extent remained absent in these discourses. This thesis, therefore, expands and reconceptualizes notions of fatness and fat embodiments. Using semi-structured, in-depth interviewing with individuals of marginalized genders living in Sweden who identify as being fat, the thesis explores (1) the individuals’ perception of fat; how it is seen, felt, and known, (2) how their fat, gendered embodiments shape their identity and their ”being-in-the-world”, and (3) the coping strategies and/or opportunities for resistance available to deal with and/or challenge negative and stigmatizing experiences. Merging phenomenology, affect theory, and temporality theories, findings suggest that fat individuals experience struggles and hatred while navigating a thin world that excludes their fat flesh, resulting in feelings of hyperawareness, shame, and being out of place. Through everyday experiences in this intersubjective world, they are also constructed as being out of time, affecting their access to the present. Navigating conflicting demands of visibility/invisibility, embodying the innocent/guilty fatty, and embracing the body/disembodying from it, the author reflects on the implication of these findings for understandings of fat embodiments as multiple, ambiguous, shifting, and at times contradictory. The thesis offers thickened understandings of the significance of fat embodiments for challenging the ways in which power operates on bodies, for (re)conceptualizing normative notions of fatness, and for fat people themselves.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-217963 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Alberts, Alice |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Genusvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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