ABSTRACT
While fat sexual bodies are highly visible as vehicles for stigma, there has been a lack of scholarly research addressing this facet of contemporary body politics. Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism seeks to rectify this, bringing debates about fat sex into the academic arena and providing a much-needed critical space for voices from across the spectrum of theory and activism. It examines the intersection of fat, sex and sexuality within a contemporary cultural landscape that is openly hostile towards fat people and their perceived social and aesthetic transgressions. Acknowledging and engaging with some of the innovative work being done by artists, activists, and academics around the issue of fat sex, this collection both challenges preconceptions regarding fatness and sexuality, but also critiques and debates various aspects of the fat activist approach. It draws on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together work from the UK, US, Europe, and Australia to offer a wide-ranging examination of the issues of size, sex, and sexuality. A cutting-edge exploration not only of fat sex, but of identity politics, neoliberalism and contemporary body activism in general, Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism will be of interest to scholars of sociology, cultural studies, geography, porn studies and literary studies working on questions of gender, sexuality and the body.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |36 pages
Fat Histories, Fat Communities
part |50 pages
Fat Gender Politics
chapter Chapter 4|16 pages
Transforming the Looking-Glass: Fat Women's Sexual Empowerment through Body Acceptance
chapter Chapter 5|18 pages
Against “Good Taste”: Class, Corpulence and the Subversive Pleasures of “Unfit” Femininities
part |14 pages
Creative Interlude
chapter Chapter 7|12 pages
Hidden and Forbidden: Alter Egos, Invisibility Cloaks and Psychic Fat Suits
part |39 pages
The Pornography of Fat
chapter Chapter 8|18 pages
Queering Porn: Gender and Size Diversity within SF Bay Area Queer Pornography
chapter Chapter 9|19 pages
Bodies Like Our Own? The Dynamics of Distance and Closeness in Online Fat Porn
part |3 pages
Creative Interlude
part |56 pages
Culturally (In)visible Bodies
chapter Chapter 11|22 pages
Amy Lowell's Appetites: Food, Consumption and Homoerotic Desire in Amy Lowell's Poetry
chapter Chapter 12|18 pages
Coming of Age through Weight Loss: The Fat Woman as Sexually Amature in Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle
part |10 pages
Creative Interlude