Queering beauty: fatshionistas in the fatosphere
Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to analyse the representations and experiences of beauty amongst fat women to understand how females located outside of the normative ideal consume, express, challenge and resist "straight" beauty. Design/methodology/approach
‐ A netnographic approach is taken to analyse 922 blog posts written by five female "fatshionistas" who play a significant role in the Australian fat activism movement. Findings ‐ The research findings illustrate that fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions
of beauty through three performative acts ‐ coming out as fat, mobilising fat citizenship and flaunting fat. Research limitations/implications ‐ The study demonstrates how beauty is negotiated as a mode of praxis, a performance in the interaction of day-to-day
life, whereby the possibilities for multiple and provisional beauties are highlighted. Practical implications ‐ Given the active participation of those outside of the idealised form in "mainstream" beauty consumption, practitioners should make visible multiple bodily
representations that are not reduced to an unhelpful construction of what is considered to be "real". Originality/value ‐ By emphasising the lived experience of beauty as something subjective, communal and resistant, this research poses a challenge to mainstream marketing
that constructs beauty as normative, singular and conformist. The paper further calls for a "queering" of the gender research agenda within marketing to better interrogate the linkages between an individual's fluid and contested identity work, consumption and marginalised or excluded status
within the marketplace.
Keywords: Australia; Beauty; Consumer psychology; Fashion; Fat; Fatshionista; Female consumers; Marketing; Netnography; Queer; Self actualization; Women
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 07 June 2013
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