Women (Re)making whiteness: the sexual exclusion of the fat “Black” Irish

ABSTRACT

Much of the extant whiteness literature treats “white” as a self-evident racial category and focuses largely on white men. Investigations into how the category transformed over time, and how or why white women would have participated in its transformation, have been limited. I performed a qualitative content analysis of articles from Godey’s Lady’s Book, the top women’s media outlet of the 19th century. Findings reveal that elite white women were integral to the remaking of whiteness in the 19th century. Anglo-Saxon women used their media platform to play up racial distinctions between themselves and “part Black” Irish women. In so doing, they treated physical features associated with whiteness, including light skin and thinness, as forms of embodied capital. They simultaneously derided racially-othered Irish women as darker skinned and fat in an effort to undermine inter-racial relationships between Irish women and Anglo-Saxon men.

KEYWORDS:

• Whiteness
• Embodied Capital
• Race/ethnicity
• Fat Studies
• Women Studies
• Sexuality

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Works detailing how European immigrant groups were assimilated into American whiteness (Ignatiev 1995; Jacobson 1998) only slightly trouble the presumption of whiteness as self-evident. Even in these works, “whiteness” itself, that is how it is constituted appears to be inert, static. New groups European immigrants are added to its number, but there is little evidence that the principles of its constitution have changed.

2 The press has been deemed one of the main institutions reproducing racist ideologies in Western societies (Dijk 2015).

3 Not to be confused with the Anglo-Irish who migrated to the U.S. prior to the mid-19th century (Allen 1993).

4 To the extent that the Celtic Irish would have been deemed a semi-African, hybrid race, their belonging in the category of “white” was contested. Some scholars suggest that the whiteness of the Irish was routinely upheld in the courts (Jacobson 1998). Others suggest they maintained an effective positioning as racial “Other” throughout the 19th century (Roediger 1991; Ignatiev 1995; Walter 2002).

5 Grace Elizabeth Hale’s (1998) is the one prominent text to address how white women make whiteness. However, the 1890s, the beginning of her text, marks the time period after the height of race-making. Thus, the analysis does not explore the multi-faceted and long history of race-making strategies that were intended to institute the colour line in the US.

6 Per Bourdieu, embodied cultural capital (or embodied capital) comprises the physical and behavioural traits (e.g. knowledge, skills, talents and appearance) that have a certain social value, which may be exchanged for other forms of capital (Bourdieu 1984).

7 Other works on whiteness as embodied capital consider the value of knowledge, performances, or entitlements affiliated with whiteness (McIntosh 1988; Cherniavsky 2006; Garner 2007; Reiter 2009; Hughey 2012; Lundström 2014). Many fewer studies consider the physical body (Cherniavsky 2006; Lundström 2014). Among these, Cherniavsky (2006) describes white embodied capital as male. Lundström (2014) too implies white embodied capital is male, writing, “femininity poses problems for whiteness because [it is] linked to heterosexual gender regimes and racialized hierarchies” (16). For Lundström, “femininity and respectability” undermine the privileges associated with whiteness, rather than mobilizing them in specific ways. None of the works consider how whiteness as a corporeal privilege may be used to codify white women’s position in a racial hierarchy.

8 See: https://www.lib.umich.edu/database/godeys-ladys-book-1830-1898

9 A comprehensive collection of Godey’s articles from 1830 to 1898 can be found at www.accessible.com

10 A French term commonly used in the 19th century to describe a woman with ample curves.

11 There were far fewer articles in Godey’s using the term “Anglo Saxon” (117 total) than “Irish” (608 total).

12 If John rejects the slender ideal it is critical to mention that this was an era of racial re-organization that led to a reformulation of aesthetic ideals. This does not undermine the argument about thinness as a form of embodied capital associated with whiteness. For even as some white people rejected it in the early years of the transformation, a growing number over time, especially women, deployed it as evidence of racial superiority (Strings 2019a).