ABSTRACT
Fat bodies in Western (popular) culture hold a position of constant duality – they are obvious problems to solve (fat equals unhealthy, unproductive, costly), as well as blanks spaces (fat equals unattractive, undesirable, unworthy of attention). At the same time hypervisible and invisible, fat bodies of all genders suffer unusually cruel scrutiny that is translated from everyday life into fiction across various media. Unsurprisingly, the representation of fat bodies is equally drenched in dichotomy: narratives centred on fat bodies are either fervently attached to the notion that fat equals bad, or, in recent years, are painfully didactic in their effort to divorce fatness from immorality. When not blatantly offensive, they tend to be boring. In this chapter I turn to author Carmen Maria Machado further to examine the many dualities fat bodies are burdened with. Machado’s innovative and exciting approaches to writing about fatness serves as a basis for my analysis, but also as a general reminder that fatness deserves all genres, all tropes, all language. All of it.
