[Discussion] CFP: Is Fat Still a Feminist Issue? Gender and the Plus Size Body (9/11/04; journal issue)

[sule tarakcioglu]

Is Fat Still a Feminist Issue? Gender and the Plus-Size Body

In parts of the Western world, especially, Britain and the US, issues of
body size and in particular, the obese body, have been dominant
thematics in media discourse for some time, often discussed in the
context of poor health and diet but often more insidiously framed within
a rhetoric of excess and loss of control.  But while the expanding
waistline of, say, Michael Douglas, appears to have little impact on his
marketability, the rounded curves of Sophie Dahl or Renee Zelwigger or
even Kate Winslett generate streams of commentary about fat girl
politics. Recent feminist media scholarship has tended to be oriented
towards a critique of the media?s infatuation with the thin-is-beautiful
rendition of modern femininity, concerned with the messages which girls
and women consume about what women should look like and the attendant
rise in disease conditions such as anorexia and bulimia and the mostly
American craze for breast implant birthday presents for pubescent girls.
However, the media?s same-but-different impulse in disciplining our
bodies through snide gossip which resonates with many of our own
problematic relationships with our bodies, for example, the
preoccupation with Oprah?s yo-yo dieting regime which manifests as
Oprah-regular in smart suits or Oprah-lite in tent-dresses, is the flip
side of the industry?s insistence on framing us in their image. And of
course the focus on celebrity is markedly different from the
presentation of the 400-lb bodies who are paraded before us on
daytime talk shows where the audience is explicitly invited to read
those bodies as grotesque and in desperate need of downsizing.

This CFP, then, is focused on the media?s imaging and imagining the
plus-size body and we are interested in receiving papers on any aspect
of that mediated representation, in film, TV, news, magazines or new
media. As usual, essays should be no more than 1500 words and should be
styled as opinion pieces rather than short versions of research papers,
ie no more than 6 references!  The deadline for submission is 11 September.

If you would like to discuss submitting a contribution to this volume,
please email both Karen Ross and Sujata Moorti at:

k.ross@coventry.ac.uk
smoorti@odu.edu

We look forward to receiving your essays.  Please pass on this CFP to
anyone you think might be interested in contributing.

For details of Feminist Media Studies style guide, please go to:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rfmsauth.pdf


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