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Palgrave Macmillan

The Hidden Lives of Big Beautiful Women

  • Book
  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Crystal Kotow

    1. York University, Toronto, Canada

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editors:
  1. May Friedman

    1. Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Explores BBW “bashes”—multi-day gatherings of fat women and their admirers
  • Considers a range of feminist theories of embodiment and affect, autoethnography and interviews with twelve participants
  • Analyses the cultural subspace of fat life and experience of grief and disenfranchisement that are radical or revelatory

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
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  2. Introduction

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 1-13

  3. Setting the Stage: Ways of Knowing and Seeing Fat

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 15-35

  4. Methods and Epistemologies

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 37-51

  5. Interrupting Embodiment: Normalizing Gazes and Diet Culture in BBW Bash Spaces

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 53-106

  6. Bashes as Spaces for Healing Everyday Trauma of Fatphobia

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 107-179

  7. Conclusion

    • Crystal Kotow
    Pages 181-186

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 187-210
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Keywords

About this book

This book is a deep dive into the largely unexplored space of BBW “bashes”—multi-day gatherings of fat women and their admirers. Using a range of feminist theories of embodiment and affect, the project is guided by autoethnography and in-depth interviews with twelve participants. Participant experiences are first analyzed with a key focus on experiences that cause grief and disenfranchisement; subsequently, the book looks at experiences that may be radical or revelatory. The book does not seek to either villainize or valorize BBW spaces but instead sheds a bright light on the experience of this cultural subspace and all it may offer to analyses of fat life. 

Authors, Editors and Affiliations

  • Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada

    May Friedman

  • York University, Toronto, Canada

    Crystal Kotow

About the editor

The incomparable Crystal Kotow was a brilliant writer, activist, and educator whose research explored fat women’s relationships with their bodies. She got her PhD from York University and was a self-identified fat feminist killjoy who practiced radical vulnerability in her activism, storytelling, and community building. 

May Friedman is a faculty member at Toronto Metropolitan University.  Much of May’s work explores issues of fat activism and weight stigma in many different settings.  Using a range of arts-based methods including digital storytelling as well as analyses of treasured garments, May has explored meaning making and representation in relation to embodiment and experience.

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