CAHSS Faculty Presentations, Proceedings, Lectures, and Symposia

“I Want a Fat Girl Tonight”: Rhetorics of Fatness in Caribbean Popular Culture

Event Name

31st Annual Conference of the National Women's Studies Association

Event Location

Denver, Colorado, USA

Department

Department of Literature and Modern Languages

Document Type

Panel Discussion

Presentation Date

11-14-2010

Date Range:

2010-11-11 to 2010-11-14

Description

The African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the idealization of slenderness evident in the West, and the Diaspora, including the Caribbean, has been less prone to indulge in North America and Europe's recent expressions of "fat anxiety:' This resistance features a clear opposition to the notion that slenderness and desirability are equivalent, and songs from the Caribbean such as the Heptones' "Fatty, Fatty" and Machel Montano's "Big Fat Fish" have continued this tradition of celebrating the fat woman's body as an agent of desire.

Share

COinS