Fat girl on TV: humor, embodiment and the aberration of fatness in neoliberal media

ABSTRACT

This paper examines discursive embodiment on the reality television show My Big Fat Fabulous Life. I ask how the tension between fat and fabulous is reconciled on the show, as two seemingly incongruous concepts in contemporary society, particularly within the genre of reality television, which is well known for makeovers, bodily transformations and other life interventions that compel disciplinary practices of neoliberal self-governmentality. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, I examine how Whitney’s body is discursively constructed through humorous talk. I argue that the way humor is recruited, paired with multimodal elements such as music and strategic camerawork, serve to undermine the message of ‘body positivity’ that is outwardly promoted on the show, in favor of a standard anti-fat narrative more readily acceptable to the viewing audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodied sociolinguistics
• reality television
• multimodal critical discourse analysis
• humor
• fat studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Thank you to Henry Guckes for pointing this out to me.

2 SeaWorld is a water-based theme park, which used to feature a show with a performing orca whale, known as Shamu.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maeve Eberhardt

Maeve Eberhardt is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on how power is maintained, reproduced, and challenged through linguistic practices. She is currently working on a larger project on the discursive construction of the female body in popular culture.