Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online
Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University, 311 Academic Building, College Station, TX 77843-4351, USA
Academic Editors: Jenny L. Davis and David A. Banks
Soc. Sci. 2017, 6(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015
Received: 30 September 2016
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Revised: 10 January 2017
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Accepted: 8 February 2017
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Published: 14 February 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Media, Internet and Society)
Though the general populace has been introduced to the idea of thin privilege, the fat activist movement has been slow in gaining momentum. This is due, in part, to the symbolic annihilation of “fat” people in media. Within the fat activist framework, women of color are often further excluded from the overarching discourse and white privilege is sometimes unacknowledged. Taking an intersectional approach, I examine the Tumblr page, Fat People of Color. I use Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) to examine the images and conversations posted by users. Findings reveal that Fat People of Color uses an intersectional, communal approach to posit counter-narratives against normative ideas about white thinness. This research contributes to an understudied area of sociological inquiry by presenting an analysis of the experience of “fat” women of color within a feminist framework. Ignoring the variation of experiences strengthens the types of privileges that fat activism and feminism hope to dismantle.
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Keywords:
race; ethnicity; intersectionality; feminism; social media; social movements; fat activism; CTDA; Tumblr
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MDPI and ACS Style
Williams, A.A. Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online. Soc. Sci. 2017, 6, 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015
AMA Style
Williams AA. Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online. Social Sciences. 2017; 6(1):15. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015
Chicago/Turabian StyleWilliams, Apryl A. 2017. "Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online" Social Sciences 6, no. 1: 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015
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