ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two of queercore's most bodily "excessive" performers —Beth Ditto of the Gossip and Nomy Lamm of Sins Invalid. Both women are staunch fat activists and unapologetic bodily performers— with Lamm extending her queer punk mischief to disability. Before delving into a discussion of their work, the chapter explores a series of instructive contexts for understanding it, including discourses of the unruly and the (queer) body politics of fatness and punk. For Rowe, the unruly woman offers a space for acting out and against the dilemmas and constrictions of femininity. Radical body politics, particularly within the domain of style, have been persistently intertwined with punk. In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Hebdige discusses the startling nonconformity of early British punk hairstyles, makeup and fashion, which offered a symbolic critique of consumer/beauty culture. Punk has also provided a space for LGBTQ+ artists wanting to queer dominant norms of appearance.
