In Search of the Fabled Fat Woman

Abstract

This essay investigates the nature of fat women and fat embodiment in literary and genre fiction. The writer draws distinctions between fat “girls” and fat “women,” and recommends more literature foregrounding fat lesbians and women as “heroic,” worthy of inclusion in every canon.

Keywords:

• chick-lit
• fat characterization
• fat fiction
• lesbian hero
• mirroring
• transformation

Notes

1. Fat Girl Dances with Rocks, 1994; Martha Moody, 1995; Venus of Chalk, 2004.

2. From Riverfinger Women, originally published in 1974. Now out of print.

3. The Fat Woman's Joke, 1967.

4. In “Advancing Luna” and “Ida B. Wells” (1970), Walker writes of Luna: “She was attractive, but just barely and with effort. Had she been the slightest bit overweight, for instance, she would have gone completely unnoticed, and would have faded into the background where, even in a revolution, fat people seem destined to go.

5. http://www.salon.com/2013/01/01/contemporary_literatures_obesity_epidemic/

6. Joan Drury, then the publisher of Spinsters Ink.