Lesleigh J. Owen, "Dancing Resistance?: Charting Some Politics of Fat, Feminine Sexualized Performances"
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Conclusion

To summarize this narrative is to further complicate it, since I never reached a solid conclusion but instead find myself juggling opinions, experiences, and social theories in making sense of these fat, feminine, sexualized performances.

While not all of us in the club were straight, feminine, or remotely interested in finding a sexual partner of any sort, most of my interviewees agreed that the space encouraged costumed forays into a type of sexualized femininity usually denied to fat women. We wore thin, feminine sexiness, sometimes pinning our own versions of gender and sexuality and always queering it merely by being fat women doing sexiness.

The embodiment of fat sexuality may not speak equally of empowerment to all persons and identities. As is often the case, while resisting some dominant discourses, we often end up reinscribing others. That said, not only can I not forget the empowered pleasure many of my research participants expressed when discussing the club, but it is impossible for me to think of this space as a purely heterosexist one, in spite of its ostensible meat market atmosphere. Yes, women and men ask one another to dance and oftentimes end up hooking up, but at least within my small group and among folks I interviewed, the emphasis was much more on interacting with other empowered fat women. Even our sexy outfits were more about collaborating on colors and styles, embodying and reworking sartorially-influenced identities, and garnering feminine attention and approval. In fact, I constantly felt that my performances of sexiness and beauty were not competitive in nature with other (fat) women but sources of visual community and mutual empowerment. Our clothing and hairstyles provided room for commonality and bonding, social commentary, and (potentially) friendly public scrutiny.

In short, our sexiness, while limited in its transgressive applicability and scope, was not to attract men at all but mostly to perform for and with other women in a dance of recognition and empowerment.

Endnotes

1. See: E.J. Aubrey, "The Butt: Its Politics, Its Profanity, Its Power," in Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image, Ed. O. Edut (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2004): 22-31; J.E. Braziel, "Sex and Fat Chics: Deterritorializing the Fat Female Body," in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, Ed. J.E. Braziel and K. LeBesco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001): 231-54; W. Charisse Goodman, The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America (Carlsbad, CA: Gürez Books, 1995); A. Mansfield and B. McGinn, "Pumping Irony: The Muscular and the Feminine," in Body Matters: Essays on the Sociology of the Body, Ed. S. Scott and D. Morgan (London and Washington, DC: Falmer Press, 1993): 49-67; M. Millman, Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America (New York: WW Norton and Co., 1990); Steven A. Shaw, "Fat Guys Kick Ass," in Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology, Ed. D. Jarrell and I. Sukrungruang (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005):111-21; A. Stukator, "'It's Not Over Until the Fat Lady Sings:'" Comedy, the Carnivalesque, and Body Politics," in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, Ed. J.E. Braziel and K. LeBesco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001): 197-213; Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation. New York: Perennial, 2001); M. Wann, Fat!So?: Because You Don't Have to Apologize for your Size! Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1998). [Return to text]

2. S.L. Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990); E. Goffman, Gender Advertisements (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). [Return to text]

3. "Supersize," also called "superfat" by those who shun the comparison to fast food options, is a labeling category used by the size-positive community to indicate the largest women. Who qualifies as supersize depends on the definition; some say it's anyone who can't buy clothing from mainstream clothing outlets (like Avenue or Catherine's), while others designate it as a category that encompasses everyone who exceeds 300 pounds or a size 30. Most people I asked to define this term agreed that "supersized" is a highly subjective category and identification with it is quasi-voluntary. [Return to text]

4. As I discuss further in this essay, resistant and empowering messages can be multifaceted and even contradictory. [Return to text]

5. This thought occurred to me several times when attending Divine Curves. In addition to Wolf's and others' claims that women dress for visual public consumption, particularly for men, I wondered whether, in the context of the club, impressing our friends and other fat women isn't also a, or even the, primary motivating force. See Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (New York: Fawcett Books, 1997). [Return to text]

6. As Durkheim would be the first to point out, it is important for groups to establish their own rituals in order to solidify group identification and membership: E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Translated by J. Swain (New York: The Free Press, 1995 [1912]). [Return to text]

7. As Goffman so ironically would have phrased it: E. Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963). [Return to text]

8. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). [Return to text]

9. Note how, in part, fat women's physical strength and solidity help paint us as less feminine; this supposed lack of docile, diminutive femininity challenges the heterosexual dichotomy of male/masculine and female/feminine. In this way, fat women are simultaneously, and contradictorily, seen as asexual and queer. I discuss elsewhere how fat women and men are seen as masquerading in gender drag and also how we are simultaneously regarded as hypersexual and asexual. [Return to text]

10. M. Schippers, Rockin' Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock. (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002). [Return to text]

11. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995 [1977]). [Return to text]

12. My analysis of fat performances of sexuality are quite specific to Divine Curves. My observations and analysis would look quite different in spaces of fat, queer performances of sexuality such as those found at, for example, NOLOSE (National Organization of Lesbians of Size) Conventions. [Return to text]

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