Narrating Rural Lesbian Lives: Body Image and Lesbian Community in Central Pennsylvania

Abstract

Research on women's body image has focused on the sexual objectification that women experience in society. The present study explored how rural lesbian women experience their bodies and how lesbian communities, as safe havens from the dominant heterosexual culture, contribute to their body image. Ten lesbians living in central Pennsylvania were interviewed for this study. Interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which aims to explore individuals’ experiences and examine how they make sense of their world. The resulting themes focus on participants’ descriptions of their feelings about their bodies, the role that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities played in their sense of body image, and the difficulties of finding these communities in the central Pennsylvania area.

KEYWORDS:

• body image
• rural communities
• lesbians
• qualitative methods

Acknowledgments

Data collection was supported by the Stephen D. Benson’ 56 Research Fund, Department of Psychology, Dickinson College.

Notes

1. The full interview protocol and details about analysis of topics 3 and 4 can be obtained from the first author.

2. We recognize that this term is often considered pejorative. However, our usage is in line with emerging scholarship in “fat studies” that reclaim the word fat as dissociated from stigma (Rothblum & Solovay, 2009).