The embodiment of disobedience : fat black women's unruly political bodies

Despite the West's privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the Western European and North American indulgence in 'fat anxiety.' The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety. Author Andrea Shaw explores the origins and contradictions of this phenomenon, especially the cultural deviations in beauty criteria and the related social and cultural practices. Unique in its examination of how both fatness and blackness interact on literary cultural planes, this book also offers a diasporic scope that develops previously unexamined connections among female representations throughout the African Diaspora. Despite the West's privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the West European and North American indulgence in "fat anxiety." The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass-market fat anxiety. Andrea Elizabeth Shaw looks at the origins and contradictions of this phenomenon, especially the cultural deviations in beauty criteria and the related social and cultural practices. Unique in its examination of how fatness and blackness interact on literary and cultural planes, this book develops previously unexamined connections among representations of women throughout the African Diaspora Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Fatness and Blackness: A Compelling Coincidence of Erasure 1 Reshaping Identity 2 The Anatomy of Sexual Unruliness 3 Bodily Abundance 4 Spectacles of Size: The Performing Bodies of Fat Black Women Conclusion: Consumption and Control: The “Epidemic” of Fatness Bibliography Index About the Author "The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety."-- Provided by publisher