Fashionable subjects and complicity resistance: power, subjectification, and bounded resistance in the context of plus-size consumers (original) (raw)
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Fashionably Voluptuous: Normative femininity and resistant performative tactics in fatshion blogs
Journal of Marketing Management, 2015
While research on consumer identity projects has begun to include marginalized consumers, we nevertheless lack insight of the ways in which socio-historical understandings of gendered identity are (re)constructed in the context of consumer resistance and in relation to the market. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we draw on Butler’s notion of performative identity formation and combine this with Bourdieu’s notion of capital as identity resource, first to explore performative identity construction of fatshion bloggers embedded in the normative understandings of gendered identity, of adopting and negotiating the dominant cultural discourses of fashion, and second, to consider the subversion of such discourses and resistant acts as these are enabled by normativity. We establish two performative identity tactics that highlight normativity as a resource for resistance.
Drawing on participant observation at a women's plus-size clothing store, “Real Style,” this article draws on the unique experiences of plus-sized women in their roles as workers, managers, and customers, to examine how mainstream beauty standards, body-accepting branding, and customers' diverse feeling rules shape service interactions. Despite branding that promoted prideful appreciation for “Real” bodies, the influence of these body-accepting discourses was constrained by women's internalization of mainstream fat stigma, resulting in an environment characterized by deep ambivalence toward larger body size. This ambivalence allowed hierarchies between women to be reified, rather than dissolved; although plus-sized employees and customers expressed gratitude to have Real Style as a “safe space” to work and shop, workers experienced gender segregation of jobs, and thinner employees were privileged with special tasks. Further, managers and white (but not black or Latina) customers used body-disparaging “fat talk” to elicit workers' emotional labor while confronting thinner workers for defying aesthetic expectations. This research offers a more nuanced understanding of the ties between aesthetic labor and emotional labor, while highlighting some of the factors that prevent stigmatized groups from successfully reclaiming status within consumer contexts.
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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse the representations and experiences of beauty amongst fat women to understand how females located outside of the normative ideal consume, express, challenge and resist "straight" beauty. Design/methodology/approach -A netnographic approach is taken to analyse 922 blog posts written by five female "fatshionistas" who play a significant role in the Australian fat activism movement. Findings -The research findings illustrate that fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions of beauty through three performative acts -coming out as fat, mobilising fat citizenship and flaunting fat.
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