Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women's Gym

Authors

  • Margaret Shalma
  • Professor Rod Michalko New College, University of Toronto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v28i4.150

Abstract

This paper uses feminist disability studies to explore the discursive production of fat embodiment within contemporary Western society. I examine beauty and medicine as fields of knowledge which create and sustain bodily norms, representations and practices. Specifically, I examine the representation of women's (fat) embodiment through an analysis of the promotional material at a well-known women's gym. I show that this gym implicitly references wider health discourses to characterize fatness as pathology, thereby requiring intervention through physical fitness to return the body to normality. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that fatness is not a value neutral embodiment but is socially produced. By bringing together disability studies and fat studies, I highlight the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue, and reveal how different forms of oppression and discourse interlock to create normative understandings of embodiment. I argue that by re-reading fatness we can resist these normative demands and begin to imagine ways of desiring embodied difference.

Downloads

Published

2008-12-08

How to Cite

Shalma, M., & Michalko, P. R. (2008). Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women’s Gym. Disability Studies Quarterly, 28(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v28i4.150

Issue

Section

Special Topic: Disability Studies in the Undergraduate Classroom, Pt. 6: Intersections with Gender and Sexuality