ABSTRACT
This essay presents a Black fat feminist analysis of Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album, specifically breaking down the erasure of fatness within the Black Southern thematic elements presented. This essay explores antiblack beauty standards and desire politics as the groundwork to break down the dehumanization of Black fat bodies even by other Black women and femmes. Fatness as an embodiment and praxis is foundational to the Deep South and the historical pain and trauma weaponized against Black femmes and women in that space. Within Beyoncé’s work and art, why do Black fat women and femmes lack representation in something that should inherently include them? Why did Beyoncé only include fewer than three bigger-bodied women whose presence and body only represented that of mammification and unresolved pain?
