ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the overlap between anti-fatness and specifically anti-Latina/o/x discourse and how it simultaneously reflects and reinforces racialized and gendered policies around immigration, child-rearing, and parenting, in particular, motherhood. For Latina women in the United States, the intersection of misogyny, racism, and anti-fat attitudes have not only threatened our presence in the United States but also shaped governmental policy and associated discussions by narrating Latinas as unfit mothers through a discursive framing of excess. This discourse frames Latina women and mothers as physically and culturally embodying excess, as well as being the bearers of excess bodies, both their own and those of their children. This excess, often symbolized through fatness, overeating, or eating the “wrong” types of food, is then wielded as “evidence” of their cultural pathology and unfitness to mother, accusations that shape public sentiment and resulting policies about immigration in general, and specifically Latina women.
