‘I like the way you move’: Theorizing fat,black and sexy

Abstract

Moving past conceptualizations of ‘mammy,’ this article discusses fat black female sexuality through experiences of black women in the plus size fashion world. I posit that these women, their clothing, and their bodies’ movement underneath their clothing, subvert previous notions of fatness, blackness and sexuality. By mapping a black feminist lens onto sexual script theory, I analyze in-depth interviews with plus size models, bloggers and designers to show that fat black women and their utilization of clothing both embody and reject mammy, regard sexuality as public and private enterprises of self-reclamation, and subscribe to and complicate cultural norms of fat black (a)sexuality.

Keywords

Black sexuality black women body size fat sexuality fashion

Whenever fatness and blackness share a theoretical space with sexuality, they more than likely manifest in the corpulent body of ‘mammy,’ the smiling, docile, asexual figure designated to care for white children and their families. Patricia Hill Collins’ (2000) controlling image of mammy asserts that this woman's lack of sexual prowess permits her surrogacy to white children, not only because she can claim them through no sexual act of her own, but also because she—the embodied opposite of westernized beauty ideals—is the impossible partner of white men (Collins, 2000 [1990]: 84), thus causing no threat to Eurocentric frameworks of race, gender and sexuality. Often portrayed as fat, dark and covered from ankle-to-headscarf, mammy's sexuality is further muted by her clothing and her perceived invisibility to white men, and thus all men.

I posit that mammy, her clothing, and her body's movement underneath her clothing were indeed visible, if not hypervisible, to white women and men, and that her proximity to whiteness furnished fat black women, specifically those with bodies deemed unattractive and excessive in size, with peripheral power to subvert previous notions of fatness, blackness and sexuality. By employing a black feminist lens, mapping it onto sexual script theory and analyzing in-depth interviews with plus size models, bloggers and designers, I will theorize a fat black female sexuality by discussing and analyzing how fat black women have: (1) long embodied and rejected the conceptualizations of mammy; (2) consistently regarded sex and sexuality as both public and private enterprises of self-reclamation; and (3) utilized clothing as a means to subscribe to and complicate cultural norms of fat black (a)sexuality.

Theoretical framing: (De)scripting mammy

Behind her wide grin, underneath her headscarf, and covered by her long skirt, lies the truth about ‘mammy.’ She is scripted to be the ultimate caretaker; she not only knows how to rear children and clean households, but she also relinquishes the definitions of femininity and sexuality to be defined by white men (and acted out by white women).¹ However, the mammy that we have come to know and understand, birthed in slavery and developed through waves of popular culture, does not exist in a cultural or historical vacuum. Instead, mammy's complexity has been formed and reformed alongside her long-established identity of corpulence, asexuality and docility.

In fact, what is occurring underneath her apron is just as significant as her donning the service garment. Just as Foucault (1990 [1978]) outlines, the struggle for power to define one's sexuality exists concomitantly with society's ability to regulate and monitor sexuality.²

Current plus size models and their experiences in the fashion industry are a testament to this paradigm. Under the guise of mammy, these women struggle to be recognized by mainstream fashion outlets as beautiful and sexually attractive. However—as I imagine how mammy operated in her own community—they create their own spaces where their respective aesthetics are celebrated, revered, and upheld against mainstream beauty ideals.

Society's depiction, or scripting, of mammy's sexuality tells us that she is no sexual threat to (white) women anywhere because her bigger body simply does not fit into a westernized ideal of beauty, and thus makes her undesirable. However, I know mammy to have a family of her own, complete with a sexual partner and children. These discrepancies are indicative of the interplay between cultural scripts, which act as ‘instructional guides’ that dictate social behavior; interpersonal scripts, which are one way for people to collaborate and act as scriptwriters to change dominant cultural scripts; and sexual scripts, which are scripts that give meaning to sexual activities and naturalize that meaning through those who engage in said sexual activities (Simon and Gagnon, 1986).³ The cultural script—mammy as servant—represents how a woman of her stature is supposed to behave. Mammy conceived as a lover or mother of her own children is indicative of an interpersonal script, where mammy and her partner/child are ‘scriptwriters’ and ‘actors’ working together to alter the larger, more accepted cultural script. In terms of sexual scripts, mammy and her sexual partner would engage in interpersonal scripting to rewrite sexual scripts that give new meaning to their sexual activities.

This article focuses on those interpersonal scripts between fatness and sexuality that not only challenge our conceptualizations of mammy, but also encourage us to move away from discourses that make these two categories mutually exclusive. Historian Thavolia Glymph disrupts the mammy script by arguing that black women working inside of plantation homes were often teenagers with smaller physiques that caused them to be a direct sexual threat to white female slave owners/employers (2008: 53, 119). Jennifer Morgan (2004) does the same by asserting that enslaved African women served as both productive and reproductive laborers, where all women (regardless of size) were expected to tend to the fields/home and birth children at the mercy of their slaveholders (2004: 36, 92). While both authors may reinforce cultural scripts that label black women as overtly sexual because of their African heritage, or the idea that only young, thinner bodies are considered attractive, I recognize their conceptualizations and argue that they speak to mammy's pervasiveness.

Looking to plus size models (and plus size women more generally) we can redirect our attention to how self-representation is especially important for fat black women as they engage in interpersonal scripts.⁴ What these women wear and how they wear their clothing represents how they see themselves in relation to their environment and how their environment views them. Like mammy, they may have a ‘uniform’ of sorts, a collection of clothing that signifies ‘what plus size models wear,’ such as restrictive garments (formally referred to as ‘girdles,’ popularly referred to as ‘spanx’) or dresses with belt-cinched waistlines. Unlike mammy, they do not have to wear clothing that mutes their sexuality. These women, whose bodies are often masculinized and made deviant when juxtaposed to white femaleness and/or thinness (Shaw, 2006: 50), have lived at the intersections of body size, race and gender with full, complete lives that are rife with social, sexual and cultural experiences that continue to be flattened under mammy's existence. I argue that perhaps the mammy script by itself is no longer useful for fat black women, and that we need to find alternative ways through which to examine and explore fat black women's sexuality.

This article offers one of those alternative lenses through which to view fat black female sexuality. Picking apart the idea of mammy's uniform, I argue that fat black women's sexuality can be discussed through what I define as sartor-sexuality, which means that how the group defines and executes its sexuality is directly correlated to the relationship between their clothing and their bodies. Moving beyond the idea that sexual attraction can be fixated on the naked body, sartor-sexuality is attributed to the specific struggle that fat black women experience with self-representation. How a fat black woman presents herself to the world can be indicative of her socioeconomic status, self-esteem and self-actualization. Of course, people can treat clothing as a façade through which they can conceal various parts of their lives, but with black women, the idea of concealing (or not concealing) a fat body is as much an act of agency as it is a response to society's dominant cultural scripts. Because of this, I believe sartor-sexuality becomes a critical analytical tool through which to view black female sexuality.

I organize sartor-sexuality into two subcategories: silhou-sexuality (the idea that a fat black woman's silhouette is directly related to her sexuality) and kine-sexuality (the idea that the movement of fat black women's bodies sends sexual messages to society members). While both of these terms are generalizable and can operate independently of clothing, I argue that for fat black women, and their ability to fashion silhouettes and movement through the clothes that they wear (and do not wear), it would be virtually impossible to define and explore these terms without considering their relationships to clothing. Under silhou-sexuality, I acknowledge that fat black women's bodies have long varied in size and shape. However, culturally speaking, those who find black women attractive typically gravitate toward a low waist-hip ratio (WHR) that accentuates a smaller waist with robust posterior (Freedman et al., 2004). For fat black women who do have a low WHR, this preference may increase their perceived cultural desirability, but – according to Robert Staples (2006: 90) – fat women without these dimensions are ‘lucky’ to receive sexual attention. This attitude is present in both straight and queer communities, rendering black women who have large stomachs and/or small posteriors and/or small hips invisible to a desiring gaze (Weinstein, 2012).

Of course the relationship between WHR and female attractiveness is not a closed concept. Many people find a variety of silhouettes attractive. Large or small sexualized body parts, like breasts or thighs, may not be a factor for some, but dominant narratives within black communities insist that someone with a small waist and a large behind is considerably more desirable than someone lacking these characteristics. For fat black women, silhou-sexuality is the consideration of how their bodily silhouettes directly impact the development of their sexualities. We might also consider within this category some of the ways in which black women tailor and manipulate their clothing and bodies (or not) in accordance with a particular aesthetic. Some women wear corsets, girdles, bras and other types of restrictive garments underneath their clothing to gain a certain silhouette, while others wear clothing that ‘fits their body type’ so as to appear thinner or more proportionate. However, there exists a group of women who wear little to no restrictive garments and embrace whatever shapes manifest through their clothing from their naked bodies.⁵ This manipulation (or lack of manipulation) is critical when thinking about the fat black woman's conceptualization of herself and the way that she wants to present herself to the world.

With kine-sexuality, I focus particularly on the literal movement of fat black women's bodies that sends sexual messages to society members (fat black women included) who decode these movements into sexual and non-sexual behavior. How fat black women's bodies move makes the movement itself imperative to investigating how they develop their sexuality. Because fat bodies make larger bodily movements, can fat women ever escape being sexualized, even when they do not set out to do so? How can they be invisible when this motion, especially for those who choose not to wear restrictive garments, is insistent as well as persistent? Bodily movement, whether voluntary or involuntary, has a considerable impact on how fat black women develop their sexuality and how others develop their ideas of fat black women's sexualities. For example, I saw a model walking down a runway wearing a ‘work-appropriate’ ensemble that included a blouse whose buttons puckered and exposed her bra as she walked. Although it was not her intention to do so, the model inadvertently drew attention to her breasts, thus giving the audience an opportunity to sexualize her. Had she been modeling lingerie or sleepwear with her bra already exposed, the audience may have still sexualized her, but her (or rather the designer's) intention would have been for them to do so. Kine-sexuality connotes the tensions between intentionality and the idea that fat bodies have been historically sexualized, whether they are in sexual scenarios or not.

I believe sartor-sexuality will help conceptualize fat black women's sexuality in ways that have not been previously explored. First, because I know dominant cultural scripts are synonymous with mainstream ideals, I, like other black feminists, look to works in both black literary and music traditions to find the interpersonal scripts or subversive spaces that support fat black women's sartor-sexuality. I look to any novel, poem or song that not only spoke about fat or fatness, but also complicated the ways in which we generally view fat and fatness, offering another view of fat black women. In this way, literature and music both tap into the imaginary and emotive spaces where marginalized peoples converge to practice their resilience and exercise notions of freedom and resistance.

Next, I look to fat black women in fashion, namely those in the plus size fashion industry, to understand how they see themselves, (un)clothe their bodies, and write scripts for their own sexualities. The eight women included here, taken from a larger data-set that includes 32 interviewees (21 formal interviews, 11 semi-formal) aged 26 to 65, plus size blog content analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork at plus size fashion shows, represent a nucleus of mostly US-born black women, some with continental African or Caribbean parents or grandparents, that help me consider what type of standards exists for plus size models and how these standards affect fat black women. Chosen mainly from their popularity in the plus size blogosphere and audience reaction during the Full Figured Fashion Week (FFFW) in 2013, women were interviewed in person or via skype/telephone about connections between their body size and childhood experiences, development of sexuality, and fashion experience.

Situating their experiences at the center of my analyses, I use black feminist thought to anchor their responses in notions of agency, inequality and self-definition. I combine these two material sets, first literature and music and then qualitative data from interviews with members of the plus size fashion industry, to not only support the significance of interdisciplinarity when researching intersectional identities,⁶ but also because when they merge, they offer several layers of analysis and help to synthesize a rich, robust conversation that gives sociocultural insight into fat black women's real-life experiences and imagined possibilities.

Fat black female sexuality in literature and music

In the black feminist tradition that treats literature as a safe space for black women's self-definition (Collins, 2000), black female authors use their words to nuance black women's local, national and global identities. For nuanced depictions of fat black female sexuality, readers may turn to Zora Neale Hurston's Bertha in ‘Sweat’ (1926), Alice Walker's Sofia in The Color Purple (1982) and Lucille Clifton's woman in ‘What the Mirror Said’ (1987). All of these characters perform fat black female sexualities, which feature unruly borders for those on the outside attempting to navigate inside. For this article, I turn to Grace Nichols (1984) and her poem, ‘The Fat Black Woman Remembers,’ in which the voice of the poem reminds readers why she is not mammy (here mammy is referred to as Jemima):

The fat black woman

remembers her Mama

and them days of playing

the Jovial Jemima …

Starching and cleaning

O yes scolding and wheedling

pressing little white heads

against her big-aproned breasts

seeing down to the smallest fed

feeding her own children on Satanic bread

But this fat black woman ain't no Jemima

Sure thing Honey

Yeah. (Nichols, 1984: 9)

What Nichols expresses here is twofold. On the one hand, she clearly distinguishes herself from the mammy figure. She embraces being fat, black and a woman in opposition to how her physical identity may be interpreted by others. On the other hand, she remembers a mother, also black and fat, as a mammy, whose care for and discipline of white children, shown explicitly through depictions of her clothing and the body underneath, may have caused her to neglect her role as mother to her own children.

However, Nichols is careful to mention that the fat black woman remembers the mother ‘playing’ the jovial Jemima role, which reiterates my point that mammy's exterior did not necessarily match her interior.⁷ The mother in this poem, wearing an apron over her robust breast, was cognizant of the cultural role she was supposed to play, and acted accordingly. In her own home, perhaps with a daughter like Nichols, the mother was able to remove her apron (and possibly her bra), or at least treat her apron as an extension of herself rather than the reverse, to pass on other virtues of fat black female identity opposite to mammy, thus creating interpersonal scripts of fat black female sexuality. Other poetic works, including Napo Masheane's assertion that ‘I am fat thighs/curvy curves/pot belly/thick waist/big breasts/flabby arms/broad shoulders/tight ass’ (2011: 32) and Nichols’ entire collection, The Fat Black Woman's Poems (1984), demonstrate this complexity by offering sex-positive and fat-positive messaging along with poems of self-doubt, turmoil and personal triumph regarding sex, politics and fashion. Such texts do not flatten characters. Instead, they carve out a space for discourse about, as well as alternatives to, fat black female sexuality.

Black sexuality has historically shown its dynamism in music, but disproportionately at the expense of fat black women. Early on, bigger women like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith complicated notions of black female sexuality (Davis, 1983). However, the efforts to reconceptualize fat black female sexuality by women like Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah and Jill Scott are often overshadowed by male artists. Whether it is the blues reference to ‘big fat momma wit de meat on huh bones’ or Sir Mix-A-Lot's (1992) ode to scantily clad black posteriors in ‘Baby Got Back,’⁸ fat black women's bodies and sexualities have been both hypervisible and silenced in black genres, especially in male-dominated hip hop. Outkast's Big Boi, in the duo's 2003 release Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, shares what he would label ‘love’ for fat black women, followed by what he thinks of skinny women, in his song ‘The Way You Move’:

Now they got me in the middle feeling like a man whore

Specially the big girl, big girls need love too no discrimination here, squirrel

So keep your hands off my cheeks, and let me study how you ride the beat

You big freak!

Skinny, slim women got the camel toe within them

You can hump them, lift them, bend them, give them something to remember

Yell out timber when you fall through the chop shop. (Outkast, 2003)

The fat black woman here seems to have an insatiable sexual appetite as she gropes the speaker's posterior. This forwardness, juxtaposed with how pliable Big Boi considers thin women to be, allows the listener to think that the fat black woman is more in control and takes on the role of the penetrator (perpetrator?). Does the kine-sexuality of her gyrating posterior and groping hands complicate how men are supposed to consider her fat black body? Is fat black female sexuality considered masculine by some heterosexual men and therefore unattractive? I argue that because of her fatness, the ‘big girl’ becomes a ‘big freak’ and her overt sexual desire is automatically correlated with her fatness.

Physically bigger sexual organs, more sexual gestures and larger bodies must mean larger sexual desires. She is the aggressor or the initiator because she has a perceived sexual hunger that needs satisfying. Unlike the thin woman, who has no agency in the sexual act mentioned in the song, the big girl has to be asked to withdraw from touching, so the male figure, the ‘man whore’ can reclaim control. Unlike mammy, this fat black woman is undeniably sexual because her actions have been classified as such by the male speaker. Other male hip hop artists, such as Redman and De La Soul, have also displayed fat black women as sexual objects, more so than agents of desire. This proves that fat black women's kine-sexuality, whether objectified, rejected, or appreciated certainly impacts how those around her perceive her sexuality.

Both literature and music can offer rich examples of the fat black female body, even if juxtaposed with dominant cultural scripts. Nichols' refusal to play mammy relies on an understanding of what mammy means and what she looks like. Big Boi's inclusion of the often-ignored big girl in his video/lyrics still sexually objectifies women overall. However, it is this proximity to dominant culture, as Foucault would describe, that allows subcultures to define their own identity. In the fashion world, this is especially true. Ranging from high fashion to ready-to-wear to catalogue, the fashion world has set up boundaries of inclusion and exclusion (Ash and Wilson, 1993). As black models and white plus size models make strides to increase their presence in magazines and on the runway, plus size black models are met with limited opportunities. These limited opportunities depend heavily on what fat bodies look like inside of a designer's creation and how much a plus size model is willing to manipulate (hide or accentuate) her body to fit a designer's aesthetic.

Fat black female sexuality, clothing and fashion

There was a person dressed in drag at the show … one of the women in my row said, ‘Look at that body, I’m almost mad,’ referring to the person's silhouette. Everyone here seems to be aware that they have to have their bodies ‘snatched’ meaning they have to have the right undergarments to smooth out any lumps/bumps and get as close to an hour glass figure as possible.⁹

Whether a body is scantily clad, fully clothed, or naked, it is important to look at how the body is dressed because the way we wear (and do not wear) clothing has always had a significant impact on our social development, especially in terms of power and access (Ash and Wilson, 1993; Crane, 2000). Sartor-sexuality, generally speaking, is a reflection of this phenomenon. Frequently executed and exhibited in the fashion world, sartor-sexuality creates aesthetic boundaries as women walk on runways, appear in magazines and pose for photographers. For fat black women, who are virtually invisible to high fashion designers such as Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada, and magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, sartor-sexuality is a way in which they can negotiate notions of beauty and empower themselves to make choices about how they present their bodies to the world.

Mammy, in her apron, button-up shirt, long skirt and head tie, may have dressed herself, but she aligned her self-presentation to what was expected of her occupation. What if mammy had dressed ‘sexy’? Was it her fatness or her sartorial representation (or both) that rendered her non-threatening to the white male and female adults in the household? Could her protruding bosom underneath her apron be considered sexy? Furthermore, if she did dress ‘sexy,’ what would that look like and how would it be compared to what was conventionally sexy or fashionable? I argue that a fat black woman's sartor-sexuality is dependent mainly on how she desires to present her body and sexuality to the world. Mammy's type of sartor-sexuality can be considered as a protective mechanism, whereby she may have been able to avoid sexual advances from men and violent attacks from women who were threatened by her embodying a more overtly recognized sexuality. Mammy's sartor-sexuality can also be seen as a way to subvert definitions of sexy. What did she have on underneath her uniform? Does her fatness make her sexier with or without clothing?

I believe the power inherent in choosing a particular type of clothing speaks to the ability of fat black women to create a space for their varied identities. It is true that another person's perception of a fat black woman's body in this clothing impacts her decision-making, but I would hesitate to assert that it is a total motivator. For instance, a fat black Muslim woman wearing an abaya may be adhering to religious beliefs, but if she has large breasts and/or large buttocks, the fabric may very likely outline her body, especially when she moves. This kine-sexual marker shows that while she makes the conscious decision to cover her body, her body's movement is just as important as the body itself when considering how her body can be sexualized. She may be muting her sexuality under religious law, but how we view her body underneath the abaya complicates how we would (or should) label her sexuality.

To grapple with the question: ‘Does a fat black woman look sexier with or without clothing?’ invites us to have a conversation about who determines what ‘sexy’ should look like. What makes ‘six-pack’ abdominal muscles more attractive, or acceptable, than a ‘hanging’ stomach? Medical literature, religious doctrine and middle- and upper-class values have all had a hand in determining what is medically, morally and socially acceptable when it comes to how we present ourselves and our bodies to our communities (Campos, 2006; Crane, 2000; Wilson, 2003). The ‘obesity epidemic’ that links fatness to chronic disease is laced with moral, personal responsibility narratives that imply that ‘overweight and obese’ people are responsible for their ‘inevitable’ health afflictions (Campos, 2006; Kwan, 2009; Rothblum and Solovay, 2009; Saguy and Riley, 2005). This placement of blame ignores the impact of sociocultural realities on overweight and obese peoples, causing even more pronounced stratification between mainstream society and fat black women, especially in terms of healthcare, access to healthy foods and environmental racism.

Whether building their sartor-sexuality through silhou-sexual or kine-sexual ways, fat black women are critically aware of mainstream ideals of blackness, fatness and womanhood, and how the cultural scripts belonging to these social constructs continue to relegate them to the outskirts of society. Because of this, Shaw (2006) asserts that the mere existence of fat black women is an act of resistance. However, there are women who present themselves, knowingly, as sites of resistance. Gabi Gregg, of ‘GABIFRESH’, is a key player in the plus size blogosphere who acknowledges that the fashion world does not make much room for a woman of her stature. In 2012, Gregg was involved in controversy that included her appearance in a ‘fatkini’ on her website, and 30 other ‘fatshionistas’ who posted pictures of themselves in fatkinis on the XOJane website. The pictures received mixed responses, but two main threads dominated the conversation. Some celebrated the women's courage to wear two-pieces and attempted to motivate other women to do the same; whilst others blamed the fat women for encouraging obesity and demanded that they cover up (‘Gabi Fresh’, 2012; ‘Gabi Gregg’, 2012; Gregg, 2012a, 2012b).

Gregg responded on the Today Show noting that she took the pictures to encourage people to love the bodies that they were in ‘right now,’ and that she was a strong supporter of healthy living. Gregg may have been referring to the ‘health at every size’ movement,¹⁰ but I posit that the responses insisting that the women cover up, while couched in references to obesity and unhealthiness, were really ways to attempt to regulate these fat (mostly) black women's bodies. As Foucault (1990 [1978]) reminds us, sexuality is built upon regulations and people's response to the regulations. The women consciously donning their two-piece bathing suits and posting them for public consumption were exercising their silhou-sexuality to a very narrow audience. They brought the private, oppressed reality of fat and fatness into a very public arena to resist larger cultural and sexual scripts that demand they cover up and/or lose weight.

These types of regulatory responses are not limited to the women wearing fatkinis. In fact, a number of plus size fashion bloggers have become accustomed to responding to this type of discrimination. Marie Denee of ‘The Curvy Fashionista’ admitted to experiencing some anger in regards to a 2011 Essence.com article entitled ‘Sound-Off: Suffering from a Confidence Overdose?’ in which the author not only reprimanded fat women for wearing clothes that did not fit them, but also for not losing weight in order to fit into them. The Essence.com contributor writes:

But baby, on the flip side, if you are a size 16, no amount of squeezing, pulling, tugging, yanking, or praying is going to make getting into a pair of size 10 shorts look good. Yet I see sisters strutting around all the time in clothes that are clearly from the junior section when they need to be front and center at Ashley Stewart. They're parading around in baby tees with their tummies spilling over their waistbands, ready to verbally assassinate anybody who dares suggest it ain't cute … but it's not a good look. (‘Sound-Off ’, 2011)¹¹

Is it the movement or silhouette in or outside her clothing that makes this size 16 woman's look unacceptable? Is she aware of how she is seen by others insomuch as she purposefully wears her clothing small as a way to assert her sexuality, no matter the audience member? Or maybe is it that she has lost weight and is struggling to find clothing that she believes fits her body well? Perhaps she has gained weight and is in transition to purchase new clothing. Either way, this author shows how cultural scripts will always attempt to regulate behavior, especially when related to how a fat body is supposed to be dressed.

Fat black women are scrutinized both inside and outside of their clothing, and many of those whom I have interviewed revealed that until they performed the psychological work to accept themselves, they felt sexier covered up and in private. The growth that occurs from their psychological labor most times reverses how fat black women define their bodies and sexualities. In my interactions with plus size fashion models and entrepreneurs, they are clear that how they view and value (their own) fat bodies is not only contingent upon the industry in which they work, the communities where they live and the networks in which they participate, but also upon a bevy of personal experiences intertwined between these three spaces. The next section explores how all of these factors coalesce to determine their respective realities regarding fatness, blackness and sexuality in both public and private spaces.

Fat black women's sexuality and reality

Plus size fashion is one of the main venues that transports the fat black woman's body between private and public spaces. It not only directly bridges fashion with the fat black female body, but it also gives insight into how plus size models, bloggers, designers and other women can subscribe, reject or integrate dominant cultural scripts of sexuality. Structured and semi-structured interviews with these women in the plus size industry showed me just how complex fat black female sexuality can be. Many of the women acknowledged a need for a sartor-sexuality framework by either sharing how cultural scripts determined how they were made to think about their bodies, using language akin to silhou- and/or sartor-sexuality, or refusing outright to believe that fat black women are not sexual beings.

The women, who all varied in shape and size, were very aware of how important their body size was in their sexual development.

When asked about when she was made aware of her body size, Danielle,¹² a 31-year-old plus size model and blogger stated, ‘I’ve always been aware,’ explaining that from a young age, she was not only teased by classmates, but pressured to dress appropriately by family members. She said ‘My grandmother taught me how to hide,’ and that: ‘You don't tuck your shirt in on the inside. No belts,’ so she could draw attention away from her body and thus escape scrutiny. However, Danielle indicated that older men became interested in her (at a young age) and that boosted her confidence. She admitted that ‘boys my age were never interested in me. They wanted the stick-thin girls.’ While Danielle's silhou-sexual development was not exercised overtly through her clothing, it appears that her developing body—arguably her kine-sexual development—still drew men to her. She also mentioned ‘If I were smaller, I wouldn't have my husband.’

However, women like Sarah, a 27-year-old entrepreneur and fat-advocate said, ‘I felt like my body was objectified … my confidence in my own body made me comfortable,’ meaning that the attention she got from men made her feel exploited, and her sense of attractiveness stemmed from the way she processed these interactions. Another woman, a stylist named Janelle said, ‘I don't need outside validation. God made me this way, so this the way I’ma stay.’ Her ‘staying the way that God made her’ is indicative of religious cultural scripts that discourage body modification. In either case, whether potential partners gave them attention or they had to process their sexual identity through their own sociocultural processes after the attention, these women have used interpersonal scripts to rewrite ‘fat as sexy.’

Because of this, most of the women identify as ‘plus positive’ and have come to love the bodies that they have. Nevertheless, this did not prevent some of the women from deploying obesity epidemic language. A few of the women felt strongly about the obesity epidemic, saying that they did not believe in health at every size and that people should do whatever they can to be medically healthy. Michelle, a petite plus size model and aspiring designer simply stated, ‘Fat is fat. Obese is a problem.’ Michelle tapped into the notion that obesity denotes disease and deviance, and that while fat is simply ‘fat,’ there is a limitation on its healthiness.

Building upon the ‘fat is fat’ quotation, all of the women had very strong opinions about the usage of ‘fat’ to describe their bodies. A majority of the women preferred alternative terms with positive connotations such as ‘plus size’ or ‘curvy’ to describe themselves. The politics surrounding their terms of choice stemmed from negative childhood experiences, awareness of fat fetishization and the perceived linkages between fatness and disease. These women used the word fat when they referred to themselves negatively, especially when they gained weight or did not like how they looked in a particular garment. However, a few of the women had reclaimed the word fat, and as a political statement used the word to describe themselves whether inside or outside a group of fat women. One of the women confessed, ‘I’m just fat,’ meaning that she did not subscribe to any negative aspects of the word and that those who had issues saying or hearing the word still had ‘work to do’ in regards to their body size.

Whether they referenced fat in negative or positive ways, all of the women seemed to have a keen understanding that a proportionate silhouette was not only what designers look for when they cast plus size models, but also what potential sexual partners prefer. Michelle confidently asserted, ‘Cuteness depends on the silhouette.’ Here, Michelle was engaging the core of silhou-sexuality. Some women have hour-glass, proportionate figures and some simply do not.

Casey, a plus size model I met during Full Figured Fashion Week in New York, noted that she thought her proportionate body enhanced her sexuality (and along with her warm personality, it increased her chances of getting hired): ‘I love my body. I love that I have big boobs, a small waist … I put on a pair of jeans from [Levi's] curvy collection … killa!’ Her enthusiasm and confidence at the end of her statement made me understand that while she had the silhouette that a potential partner and plus size designers preferred, she, doing what many women do, still desired to dress her body in a certain way to accentuate her physical attributes. To gain further insight, I asked her to describe a time when she felt really confident on the runway, and she said one time when her, ‘stomach was looking really flat, I had on the high shoes, the right bra that had the girls sittin’ up … I stepped on that stage and the people were like, ‘Go ‘head girl! You working it!’ ’ To me, it was not enough that Casey's well-proportioned body walked the runway. Instead, it was her presentation of the curvy, proportioned silhouette that garnered the attention. Her wearing the ‘right’ bra, appearing taller in heels and having a dress that cinched at her waist are what gave her confidence and the audience something to which to react. Women without the hour-glass shape accentuated their best attributes as well in hopes of garnering the same type of validation.

Portraying and confirming who we are vis-à-vis our clothing choice has always been an integral part of fashion (Arnold, 2001). For black women in particular, appearing ‘well put together,’ especially in the workplace, is representative of one's socioeconomic status (Gill, 2010; Miller, 2009). Casey declared, ‘Clothing says who we are, it's a way to communicate. I’m a lady. I want you to acknowledge that I am a lady. It's how you wear it as well. I wear them, they don't wear me.’ This shows that what our bodies do in our clothing is pivotal to how we wear our clothing. By saying ‘it's how you wear it,’ Casey, like the majority of the respondents, employed kine-sexuality to discuss what is meant to move and what it meant to be restricted.

Fat black sexuality, at least on the runway, did not necessarily mean larger movements. In fact, less movement was preferred. For instance, Michelle declared that she disliked it when ‘people don't wear foundations.’ Here, she was referring to foundation garments, such as body shapers, that pull a woman's body in so that it appears smoother and smaller, making her clothing look more ‘presentable’ on her body. Michelle said that people should wear these garments, as well as clothing that fits their body type, to put forward their best sartorial representation. Her usage of such terms, couched in respectability politics, dictated that black women should always present their ‘best’ selves to stave off negative stereotypes (Higginbotham, 1994). For fat black women, the idea of restricting their bodies through these foundation garments shows how inequality can be replicated in plus size fashion. Can a fat black woman ever put forth her best sartorial representation without foundation garments? What about fat women larger than size 26 who struggle to find foundation garments that fit? Can their clothes ever be flattering?

The types of clothing fat black women wear and what their bodies do underneath their clothing are both vital to understanding their sexual development. Not simply because of self-representation, but also because of the impact that the ‘right’ type of clothing has on a woman's confidence and sense of self. When asked what type of clothing she liked to wear, Bethany said, ‘Anything tight! I’m so serious! I love it! I love everything that accentuates my curves.’ Bethany, a plus size model and blogger who had dated both men and women, mentioned that at times she would like her thighs to be smaller, but her breasts ‘sit up on their own’ and she felt good about herself when her curves were displayed through her clothing. This is a different narrative from her days as an adolescent when she noticed that she was ‘always overly developed.’ She went on to say, ‘I never understood my body, and I guess, the power of what it could do for someone or have on someone. I remember being young and not that I was never called pretty or beautiful, I was always being called sexy by someone.’

Her clothing was not tight then, but people could label her body as sexy without any intention of her own. Through her own psychological work to figure out the power of her body, Bethany has since chosen to wear tight clothing to flatter her curves, boost her confidence and satisfy her self-representation of ‘sexy.’ Danielle was one of the first models to admit, ‘if clothes are flattering, they make me less self-conscious.’ She was referring to clothing made to fit her body type, or clothing that made her feel proportionate. Because of the inability to have flattering clothing at the ready, many of the respondents described the difficulties of shopping for fashionable, age-appropriate clothing. Sarah said it was ‘hard to find dresses so I started to sketch my own.’

Literally taking her representation into her own hands, Sarah had done what many fat black women, especially those in the plus size fashion world, have done in a world that scripts fatness outside of fashionable. Lynette declares, ‘Plus [size] fashion is very much driven by black women. We have huge buying potential and an incredible sense of style and we want better options … black women are represented more than anything else.’ If four out of every five black women are overweight or obese in the USA,¹³ this is highly significant because it shows that over half of the black population in the USA is made to deal with issues pertaining to intersections of race, gender and body size. It also provides insight into the actions of and beliefs about fat black female sexuality as it pertains to sexual activity and sexual partners. Fat black women, while being labeled deviant, are thriving and writing their own interpersonal scripts with partners who find them sexually attractive. Lastly, it proves that fat black women have economic agency when it comes to self-representation through clothing and/or sexual identities.

Danielle voiced her frustration about not exercising her economic agency when seeing fashionable clothing on the runway that she could not wear: ‘I should be able to see what that garment looks like on me.’ This is indicative of how many fashion companies, even those who have plus size lines such as Michael Kors, do not wish to market plus size clothing as a part of their image. I argue that companies do this not only to uphold mainstream fashion ideals, but also to apply the power that they have to define what is fashionable to people outside of their fashion boundaries. Brenda, a popular blogger who would not categorize herself as a plus size blogger but has a considerable plus size following said:

They don't even want press surrounding the fact that they have plus sizes. They think it will affect their image. They want to make sure that their brand is in line with what the industry standards is … that the industry standard is that my collection is for the size 4, Upper East Side debutant. That's who we want to showcase in our advertisements and that's who we're gonna do outreach for for press … they want the plus size dollar, but they don't be associated with the community.

Brenda's statement about how mainstream clothing designers seem to follow the conventions of straight-size fashion (namely white, thin and upper class) mirrors the ways in which mainstream society has compartmentalized fat black female bodies into images of mammies. Just as white households profited from fat black female bodies only being considered as mammies, these companies are able to profit from conceptualizing fashion in such a manner that excludes plus size black consumerism while still accepting black plus size dollars. Thus, it has become critical for plus size black women to design, purchase and wear clothing that not only gives women choices in representing themselves, but also gives them the confidence to use clothing to define their sexuality. Working collaboratively as ‘fat,’ ‘thick, or ‘curvy goddesses’ to redefine blackness, fatness and sexuality, these women recognize that the act of wearing clothing is inextricably tied to their identity formation.

Conclusion

Venturing into a theoretical space with fatness, blackness and sexuality requires an alternative and reflective approach that leaves space for unconventional understandings of what these three identities mean. While important in understanding fat black women's sociopolitical positions throughout the world, mammy is no longer the only way to discuss how sexuality is embodied in a fat black female body. Both historical and contemporary black female identities, even the mammies themselves, need other ways in which to define and redefine their sexualities. The use of plus size fashion allows us to view fat bodies alternatively and in a more complete manner. Unlike the dominant fashion world, plus size fashion shows us that fat black women are indeed visible and active in inscribing meaning onto their bodies and experiences. Together, they are designing, choosing and wearing the outfits that help them, their sexual partners and their communities rewrite cultural scripts that define what is attractive, sexy and fashionable.

When Danielle said, ‘If I were smaller, I wouldn't have my husband,’ she conveyed exactly what I aim to prove: although fat black women have been rendered invisible and somewhat powerless by dominant scripts, there have always been scripts that highlight this group's visibility, proving that they are indeed worthy of (sexual) attention and powerful enough for self-definition. Women like Danielle show that blackness, fatness and sexuality straddle public and private spaces, and that the plus size fashion world reminds us of what Foucault discovered and fat black women have worked so hard to prove—that dominant norms of blackness, fatness and sexuality do not occur and will not exist alone.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to extend gratitude to the editors and anonymous reviewers who have provided substantial support and feedback, as well as Jakeya Caruthers and Marcus Hunter for their invaluable input and comments in developing the ideas presented here. A special thank you to the black women of the plus size blogosphere, who continue to share their experiences with me.

Funding

The research for this article was financially supported through a Graduate Research Grant from The Graduate School at Northwestern University and Darlene Clark Hine’s Small Grant Fund.

Notes

Courtney J Patterson-Faye, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University. Her dissertation, Fat Chance, Slim Chance: Identity, Culture, and a Politic of Fatness, studies fat black women and the political construction of body size through lenses of (popular) culture, fashion, and sexuality to understand how their socio-cultural experiences may frame, define, and regulate their identity. Her research interests include: black women’s socio-political histories and realities; Fat Studies; race, class and gender; cultural sociology; and HIV/AIDS.

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