ABSTRACT
Below we will present the analysis and main findings. Of the themes that emerge from the material, we have distinguished four discursive practices the fatshionistas draw on in negotiating and enacting their performative identity. We will elaborate on each of these practices in turn, as well as discuss the functions of the practices and the motivations for fatshion blogging more generally. We will first present the two practices that underscore difference and diversity in relation to normative conceptions of beauty, femininity and the female gender, namely destigmatisation of fat, and reappropriation of older fashion styles and social space by demanding cultural and social visibility. We will then proceed to presenting the two practices of communality and mimicry that revolve around emphasising similarity and affiliation with the hegemonic representations. These resistant practices form two wider, superordinate categories of identity management tactics that underlie the bloggers’ performative acts of identity, categorised as they relate to normative understandings of femininity as either mobilising diversity or similarity. We will next explore the resistant aspect of each practice.
